Fitness Centers

          Do you belong to a fitness center or gym?  I don't. I think exercise is important and I exercise everyday, but for me, going to a fitness center is boring and expensive.  I like to exercise with a purpose. I would rather walk outside than walk on a treadmill inside. The idea of walking and not going anywhere is strange to me. Why walk on a treadmill inside a gym when you can walk outside and enjoy the view and fresh air? Same with the stationary bicycle. Riding a bike and not going anywhere?  If I want to ride a bike I will jump on my bike and go for a ride around the neighborhood. I walk several miles every other day. I walk to the public library, get a book, and walk home. Two miles. That's walking with a purpose. When I walk, I look for interesting rocks to give to my grandson, Alex, who likes to collect and polish them. Sometimes I go for a two-mile walk with Alex; we stop at a gas station after one mile to buy some candy. He looks forward to walking with me because he knows he's going to get some candy.  Sometimes when we walk together, we take a plastic bag and pick up trash that we find on our walk. We make the neighborhood more beautiful. Once we found a Spiderman hat on the sidewalk. That's his favorite superhero. So we took it home and washed it. He loves it. When I drive to Ivy Tech to teach, I park my car in a parking lot far from the building where I teach.  I take the the stairs instead of the elevator to the fifth floor. So my walking has a purpose. According to statistics, only about 20% of  the people who sign up for a fitness center membership continue to go after a few months. It takes a lot of self-discipline to go several times a week, every week, especially when it is so boring. Finally, there is the cost; most fitness centers charge about $40 per month. I'm cheap, so I don't like to spend money to exercise. I like to exercise naturally, and whenever possible, with a purpose in mind.  Do you belong to a fitness center?  What has your experience been?  

Indiana weather

          Indiana weather is very unpredictable. Crazy. Here in Indiana we say that if you don't like the weather, just wait 15 minutes! March 20th was the first official day of Spring. Now it's April 15th and it is 50 degrees. It was 75 degrees just last week. It is supposed to snow tomorrow and get down to 30 degrees. I'm confused. Even the plants are confused.  The flowers are starting to bloom. The grass is turning green. And it's going to snow?  Is this climate change or just typical Indiana weather?  What do you think? 

Best way to learn another language

          In my opinion, the best and fastest way to learn a language other than your native language is to go to live in a country where that language is spoken. Find a place to live where there are no other speakers of your native language. No other people from your country. Do not speak your language at all. Take some classes in the language you are learning, but spend most of your time using the language in everyday life.  Speak the language 24/7. Use the new language for everything you do: take the bus, ask for directions, order food, go to the movies, go to parties, make friends,  read the local newspaper every day, read books and magazines, ask questions, and so on. Do this and you will be amazed how fast you will become fluent in the new language and understand the culture of the new place. This is called the immersion method. Think of the way babies learn language. It's called the immersion method.  It isn't the easiest method, but is the most effective and fastest method. What do you think?

English Passive

          There are some aspects of English grammar that can be presented as a kind of formula. Active and Passive sentences are an example of this. The most common type of sentence in English is an Active sentence, which has an Actor + Verb + Receiver, such as John robbed the bank, or an Actor + Verb, such as John slept, which has no Receiver. We can change an Active sentence into a Passive one by changing the positions of the Actor and Receiver, moving the Actor to the end of the sentence and moving the Receiver to the beginning of the sentence: Actor + Verb + Receiver ==> Receiver + Be + Past Participle + by + Actor. For example, John robbed the bank. ==> The bank was robbed by John.  Passive sentences always have some form of Be: be, for future tense and modals, am, is, are for Simple Present Tense, was, were for Simple Past Tense, being for Present Progressive, and been for Present Perfect. That's how to form a Passive sentence, but when do we use Passive sentences instead of Active ones?

We use Passive sentences in these four situations:

1. No one knows who the Actor is.  The bank was robbed (by someone).
2. We don't want to say who the Actor is.  The window was broken (by someone).  I know who broke the window (the Actor), but I'm not going to say.
3. Everyone knows who the Actor is. Rice is grown in China.  Everyone knows that Chinese people grow rice in China.
4. We want to put the emphasis, or focus, on the Receiver. In the Passive sentence, The man was bitten by the dog,  I'm more concerned about the man than the dog.

I want to leave you with a question. Can you make a Passive sentence out of an Active sentence that has no Receiver, like John died? If not, why not?

Bad News Addiction

Watching the news can be bad for you. And let's face it, most news on the TV is bad news. I found this out the hard way. You see, last November my wife went to Mexico to be with her mother, who was dying. I was lonely and thought I didn't have anything else to do at home in the evening, so I started watching TV. I liked MSNBC news. So every weeknight, usually from around 6pm to 11pm or midnight I would watch MSNBC. Its news coverage is mostly about Trump. I don't like Trump and think he will go down in US history as the worst president we have ever had. Anyway, I liked watching these news programs because they reinforced my negative opinion of Trump. I started to become addicted to the news. After a while, the evening programs weren't enough, so I would wake up early most weekday mornings and watch Morning Joe, another MSNBC news program mostly about Trump, for a couple of hours. On Sunday mornings, I would watch one or two of the Sunday morning news talk shows, like Meet the Press and Face the Nation. More bad news about Trump! But that wasn't enough. I started listening to NPR radio in my car to keep up with the latest news about Trump.  I had become completely addicted to the news, and was spending more than eight hours a day watching and listening to it. I had become a news junkie. An addict. In the middle of December, I started feeling depressed.

          So I went to see a psychologist. He talked to me about how news can be negative, addicting and bad for our mental health, just like drugs.  He told me that we should practice good mental hygiene to have healthy brains,  just like we ought to have good dental hygiene (brushing and flossing our teeth every day) to have healthy teeth. We have to be careful about what we put in our brains. News can be like "mental garbage." I took his advice and completely stopped watching the news and  listening to NPR radio.  I started listening to a Classic Rock station in my car. At first it was difficult, and I was tempted to turn on MSNBC and listen to NPR radio,  but I resisted the temptations. I spent the evening reading a book, watching sports and movies on TV, and spending more time with my grown daughters and grandchildren, all things that I love to do.  I started to feel better. I was recovering from my addiction and my mental health was improving. I'm not addicted anymore, and I feel better.

          This is my advice to you. If you find yourself doing anything too many hours a day, you might have an addiction that isn't good for you. I'll leave you with this thought. I read an article recently about a research study that showed that young people (15-30 years old) spend an average of 10 hours a day on their cell phones. That is more than half of the time they are awake. I will be writing more about this subject in a later post. Could cell phones become an addiction?  Could they be bad for our mental health?  What do you think?

Modals

          One of the hardest things to learn in English is modals, their meanings and when to use them.  Modals are sometimes called modal verbs, or helping verbs. In my opinion, it's better not to refer to them as verbs, because they are really not verbs. Verbs express actions (like eat, talk,  go),  phenomena (like rain, believe, live), and states (like be, have, sit).  Modals are those words that we put before verbs to express our attitudes, beliefs, and feelings about the verbs, such as degrees of certainty, politeness, expectation, necessity and advisability. Most modals are one word (like must, might, can, should, and would), but there are also phrasal modals that consist of more than one word (like have to, have got to, be able to, ought to, and would rather). One tricky thing about modals is that one modal can have several different meanings and uses, such as would. For example, would like is a polite way to say want, would rather expresses a preference,  would can be used for a  polite request, such as Would you mind helping me?, and talking about something that you did repeatedly in the past, such as I would ride my bike every day when I was a kid. 

          Many ESL students think that the only modal we use to express necessity is must. Actually, we don't use must very much at all when we speak, and only when we are referring to rules that you must follow or in legal written documents, such as You must pay your rent on the first day of  each month (in your rental agreement). Otherwise, when we refer to necessities, we use have to, or in more informal speech, have got to.

          Some ESL students are surprised to learn that we give advice with both should and ought to. It probably doesn't help that in normal, fast speech we say otta instead of ought to, just like we say wanna instead of want to. So should and ought to (otta) mean the same thing and they are equally common.  Learning how to use modals is more like learning words than learning grammar. You learn how to use them best by listening to how native speakers use them and in what situations.