Sensei Michael

Adjectives can be "stacked" into a long string of words that describe the noun that comes after them, but not many users of English are aware that there is an order to stack them. Opinion.  lovely, wonderful Size.  big, humongous Age.  young, old Shape.  square, round Colour.  red, green Origin.  Chinese, American Material. iron, leather Purpose or function.  grilling, measuring I guess you can say that Sensei Michael is a  wonderful tall middle-aged Singaporean teacher . Now to come up with a phrase that uses all 9 for an epitome of the use of the above rule!

Answer on @Quora by Santhosh Chowdary Gonuguntla to What can I learn in the next ten minutes about English vocabular… http://qr.ae/0Qkww

Answer by Joseph Michael Pallante: Turn left! turn right! You use "turn" mostly with directions or something that moves on a pivot point briefly . Spin around, spin in a chair, my head is spinning. These are all fixed on one point and involve a rotation or series of rotations. Think of turning as the process for spinning, but to spin you need to complete a circle. For example I can turn down streets going only left or right and complete one circle, yet I had to turn at 3 pivot points. A turn has pivot points, a spin has 1 central pivot point and rotates in at least 1 circle. What's the difference between "spin" and "turn"?

Answer on @Quora by Jim Gordon to Why is Lieutenant General a higher rank than Major General, while the rank of Majo… http://qr.ae/LZBDN

Answer by Michael Chan: "a" refers to anything of that type, nothing specific. "the" refers to a specific something of that type, nothing else. It is usually used when referring to something that both parties already know of. I am a vice-president in the company. In this case, I am probably one of the two or more vice-presidents in that specific company that we have been talking about previously. I am the vice-president of the bank. In this case, there is no other vice-presidents, there is only one, which makes me a lot more "big-shot" in that particular bank we have been talking about, than any banks which have tons of vice-presidents all over the place. What are some tips to correctly use "the" and "a"?

When I first arrived in China, we had to adjust to how some food have different Chinese names from the ones we are accustomed to, or even how we have become so used to the English names that we struggle for the Chinese terms for the food item. We found out that potatoes in Shanghai is not 马铃薯 but 土豆 (although the Shanghainese understood the former). It was also really hilarious when we wanted yam 芋头 (and we were sure we got the pronunciation right) but our domestic helper got for us fish-head 鱼头 instead. And since quite a few Singaporean dishes have turnips in them, it was an interesting occasion when we could not find them in Shanghai. We tried describing it to our chefs in school, tried giving searching for pictures, all to no avail. They had no idea what it was called in Chinese too, even with the pictures. It took one of my northern Chinese student Haylin to let me know what they call those things 萝卜. I went "huh?" at that. I knew 萝卜 as radishes, not turnips. It was then ...

An essay by my student Sarah Zhang, Grade 6 During the winter holiday, I went to Xiamen. It is a city in Fujian province at the south of China. Xiamen is near both the ocean and Gulangyu Island. When the airplane arrived at Xiamen, it was already 1am midnight. We went to the wharf and waited for the ship to the Gulangyu. It was night, I just saw the dim lights around me, only the moon still in the sky. The sea breeze stroked my face, and brought the special smell from the sea. When we arrived at Glangyu Island, the story started. It was a fantastic adventure. My mom and I must find the inn at a strange place. First we followed mom’s GPS and tried to find the place. But, it was not an easy thing, the result was that we got lost! We circled at the island, but because it was really dark, we could not clearly see the road sign. When we walked to a church, it was really scary. The light was flickering, the cat went “meow”, it was so weird. Finally we turned back to the wharf, it was 2am. At...