This book expands your world through English. It helps to improve your English, gain the skills to interact with English speakers confidently.
1. Expand Your World Through Language Improve your ENGLISH • '" EVERYDAY LIFE Hear and see how English is actually spoken -from real-life speakers • learn what to say in any situation • Gain the skills to interact with English speakers confidently • Recognize slang and idiomatic expressions Stephen E. Brown and Ceil Lucas
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3. Improve your ENGLISH in EVERYDAY LIFE Stephen E. Brown and Ceil Lucas New York Chicago San Francisco Lisbon London Madrid Mexico City Milan New Delhi San Juan Seoul Singapore Sydney Toronto
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6. For more information about this title, click here Introduction vii CHAPTER 1 LIFE IN AMERICA 1 1. Driving Across America 1 2. What Do You Like About America? 2 3. An Island in Maine 4 4. West vs. East 5 5. Canada vs. the U.S. 6 6. Living in Washington 8 7. Coming from Spain 9 8. Time in Egypt and America 10 9. American Memories 11 10. Coming from India 12 11. Changing Times 14 12. Small-Town Life 14 CHAPTER 2 THE FAMILY 19 1. A Family in Maryland 19 2. Italian Roots 21 3. A Family Sabbatical 22 4. Changing Families 23 iii
7. 5. Siblings 23 6. Family in New Zealand 24 7. Mothers and Daughters 27 8. Fathers and Daughters 28 CHAPTER 3 THE HOME 33 1. Row Houses 33 2. A Log House 34 3. Walking Through the House 36 4. A Favorite Room 37 5. Lincoln Logs 38 6. Living at the Drop Zone 41 CHAPTER 4 THE ROLE OF WOMEN 47 1. A Good Wife 47 2. Options 48 3. Working Moms 50 4. Changing Perspectives 51 5. Balancing Work and Family 52 6. Cultural Differences 53 CHAPTER 5 EDUCATION 57 1. School in Philadelphia 57 2. Getting Recruited 59 3. A Liberal Arts Education 60 4. The School Newspaper 61 5. An Indian Perspective 62 CHAPTER 6 RECREATION AND ENTERTAINMENT 67 1. RVs and Horses 67 2. Computer Games 69 iv
8. 3. Stopper and Sweeper 70 4. Running 71 5. Climbing Mountains 72 6. The Soccer League 73 7. Flying 74 Contents 8. Outdoors in New Zealand 76 9. Wallyball 76 10. Making Movies 77 11. Life-Work Balance 78 12. Playing the Piano 79 13. The Performing Arts 80 14. Books on Tape 81 15. Reading 82 16. Opera 82 17. Playing Pool 83 18. Hobbies 85 CHAPTER 7 THE USE OF LANGUAGE: PART I 93 1. Sounding American 93 2. Linguistic Chameleon 95 3. Speaking Spanish 96 4. Listening 97 5. Color Commentary 98 6. Growing Up Bilingually 99 7. Getting Comfortable 100 CHAPTER 8 THE USE OF LANGUAGE: PART II 105 1. American English/ British English 105 2. Baltimore 108 v
9. 3. A French-Canadian Perspective 110 4. Where Are You From? 112 5. Change over Time 113 6. A Caribbean Perspective 113 7. A Southern Accent 115 8. Language and Culture 116 CHAPTER 9 FOOD 121 1. Cooking Vacations 121 2. A Wide Range 124 3. Midwestern Cooking 125 4. Noodles and Sausages 126 5. Cameroonian Cuisine 127 6. Cooking in Guyana 128 7. Food Phases 129 CHAPTER 10 SPORTS 133 1. Minor League Baseball 133 2. Second Baseman 134 3. Football Tryouts 136 4. Watching Sports 137 5. Hockey 138 6. A Common Ground 139 7. Baseball Strategy 141 vi
11. experiences. We recommend that you consult a com- prehensive American English dictionary in conjunction Introduction Introduction with the use of the DVD and workbook. About the Transcripts What you will hear on the DVD and see in the transcripts are examples of actual speech. Our goal is to provide examples of English as it is spoken by a wide range of people in the United States today. You will hear speakers from many states—Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Arkansas, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, and Michigan—as well as speakers from Canada, India, Guyana, England, New Zealand, Cameroon, Egypt, and Spain. Also, you will hear one speaker whose speech has many features of what is known as African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). So you will hear English spoken with many dif- ferent accents. You will also see a deaf user of American Sign Language (ASL) with her interpreter. You will notice that while all of the speakers are flu- ent, they sometimes use what some consider nonstan- dard or even ungrammatical forms of English. And you will see that not only do the nonnative speakers use these forms but native speakers of American English frequently use them as well. Some of these speakers are very fluent users of varieties of English used in other countries, such as India, varieties that have been referred to as “World Englishes” and that differ from American or British Eng- lish in very systematic and nonrandom ways. You will notice that when people speak, it is not at all like a newscast being read by an anchorperson on the evening news or like the written language that you might see in textbooks. You will see that people don’t always speak in complete sentences—they hesitate; they inter- rupt themselves; they correct themselves; they start one sentence, give it up, and go on with another one. While viii
12. the speakers clearly knew that they were being fi lmed, what you see and hear is, for the most part, very natural speech. Our goal was to reflect this naturalness in the transcripts. Interjections and discourse markers such as um, uh, or er appear throughout the interviews and are Introduction transcribed exactly as they are spoken. Sometimes peo- ple talk at the same time, which is indicated in the tran- scripts by brackets around the simultaneous speech. The transcripts also reflect the use of many custom- ary and idiomatic constructions found in American Eng- lish: take it up a notch, so-and-so, such and such, like, y’know, c’mon, gonna, wanna, and many others. Notes explaining such constructions appear at the end of each It is our hope that you will find these materials inno- vative and useful for learning English as it is used in America today. How to Use These Materials in the Classroom The DVD and workbook of English in Everyday Life have been designed for use in any classroom, laboratory, or home setting. These materials, which are suitable for high school classes, university courses, and adult educa- tion programs, can be used as the second semester of an elementary course. The way that language is used by speakers in these materials can serve as the basis both for in-class discus- sions and for homework assignments. The DVD and the workbook provide eighty-four seg- ments, which should be used as follows: 1. Select the segment to be used and simply listen to it, before reading the transcript of the segment. The student can do this on his or her own or as part of a class activity. ix
13. 2. After listening to the segment, read and discuss the transcript carefully, making sure that all of the Introduction Introduction vocabulary words and structures are understood. 3. Then, listen to the segment again, this time using the transcript. Students may want to listen to the segment several times at this point. 4. In the classroom, answer and discuss the questions about both the segment and the students’ experi- ences. And, of course, these questions and exercises can be assigned for homework. Outlining a Course by DVD Segment The instructor can decide how many segments to cover per week. Eighty-four DVD segments allow you to use the DVD and the workbook for an entire academic year. And the flexibility of the materials allows you to pick and choose the order in which to present the material. Each segment on the DVD is numbered on the menu and in the text so that you can pick exactly which one you want to focus on. Sample Lesson Plan: One Week First Day: Listen to the selected segments perhaps two or three times in class (do not read the tran- script at this point). Second Day: Read the transcripts out loud, making sure that the students understand all of the gram- matical constructions, vocabulary words, and cultural references. Third Day: Listen to the segments again, first with- out the transcript and then with the transcript. Fourth Day: Discuss the transcript and the DVD segment and answer the questions pertaining to the segment. Assign as homework the questions and exercises that pertain to the students. x
14. Fifth Day: Go over the questions and exercises pertaining to the students. Ask them to read their answers aloud, and have the class ask additional questions. Introduction The DVD segments and their transcripts can very easily be supplemented with materials that relate to the topic of the segment. For example, the segments on Food can be supplemented with menus or recipes. The important thing is to be creative and to get the students Additional Activities 1. Ask the students to summarize in writing and also aloud what is said in a given segment. 2. Ask the students to write the question that leads to the speaker’s response. Also, ask them to write addi- tional questions to be asked. 3. Have the students interview one another on the topic of the segment in front of the class: • Help the students write their interview questions. • If possible, record these interviews on audiotape or miniDV. Listen to or view the interviews and discuss them as a group. • Have the students transcribe these interviews, complete with hesitations, self-corrections, and so forth. Make copies of the transcript for the other students. The teacher may review the tran- script but should make corrections only to errors in transcription—in other words, if the speaker uses a nonstandard form and the student tran- scribes it accurately, you should not note it as an error. This is a good opportunity to point out the differences between spoken language and written language. xi
15. • Have the students write questions about their transcripts, similar to the ones in the text. Introduction Introduction • Have the students record an interview with a native or fluent speaker, based on one of the DVD topics, and follow the same procedures just listed. Help the students prepare their questions, review the transcripts, and share them with the class. Also, ask the students to write questions to accompany their transcripts. Acknowledgments We are very grateful to Patrick Harris for his excellent work filming and editing the DVDs. We thank all of the people who were willing to be interviewed and Holly McGuire, Christopher Brown, and Julia Anderson Bauer of McGraw-Hill Professional; Jim Dellon, Ivey Wallace, and Jayne McKenzie of Gallaudet University; Kevin Keegan of Hubert Blake High School in Silver Spring, Maryland; Mike Solano and Merchant’s Tire in Laurel, Maryland; and Jim Smith, Kim MacKenzie Smith, and The Skydivin’ Place in Kingsdale, Pennsylvania. xii
17. systems are laid out in the, in the U.S.? Do you know that? Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life They’re laid out, uh, if you, if you know locally where we are here, um, 95 is the main route. Ninety-five goes from the northern tip of Maine down to the southern tip of Florida, which is the entire Eastern Seaboard. If-if the, if the country were a rectangle, which it pretty much is, the, all interstates ending in odd numbers—95, 85, 75, 65, 55, going all the way up to I-5—I-5 runs the northern [ tip of Washington to the southern tip of California . WOMAN: ] San Diego. MAN: All-all the way down the West Coast, so you have the, you know, 95 ’n 5 to 95 and going West Coast, you have, uh, 10, which runs through Texas and all the way across there to the northern tip, which is 100, I think, and that runs through North Dakota, so, uh, a college friend of mine, on our first venture out, decided we were, we live on, sorta in the middle, which happens to be 70, it’s not quite 50 but a little bit farther north and 70 runs all the way across from, you know, Maryland all the way to California, um, and, uh, we decided we were going to do 70 on 70—miles per hour, that is—80 on 80, 90 on 90, and 100 on 100! And we did it. So we-we were cruisin’ across country in that manner and I’ve been th—, I c—, I would say I’ve been through at least half of the states. And if you drive through Kansas, the first five miles is pretty much exactly the same as the next five hundred- plus miles that you have got to travel to get across it. It’s a very long state. 2. WHAT DO YOU LIKE ABOUT AMERICA? WOMAN: It was the most interesting thing to me, the change of the seasons. I think that is just absolutely . . . 2
18. ’cause I guess as I grew up with just one season. In fact, I shouldn’t say one—two seasons: we have the wet season and the rainy season. But it’s summer all year-round. And I just love especially fall. I’m a fall person. I just love, I love to see the colors, the trees when they, oh, turn those Life in America beautiful colors—that’s really, that’s what I like about . . . And what I like, too, television, ooh, I’m a television nut. I look at television all the time. And in Guyana, we don’t see the kind of programs that you have here, so . . . INTERVIEWER: So what do you watch? WOMAN: I like crime stories and, like “Law and Order” and, in fact, I watch all “Criminal Intent,” all of those “Law and Orders.” INTERVIEWER: And what else? WOMAN: I like game shows, too. I love “Jeopardy”; I love “Jeopardy.” Uh, yeah, game shows and “Law and Order,” those are my, crime stories, I like things like that. Well, as I mentioned, the seasons. We don’t have spring, summer, autumn, winter. We have summer all INTERVIEWER: Right. WOMAN: Um, another thing, the traffic here. You just have to contend here with cars and maybe couple bicycles. But in Guyana, you’ve got to contend with not only the cars, pedestrians, bicyclists, we—most people ride a bicycle in Guyana, they-they don’t drive, they ride a bicycle. And there’s also something we call a donkey cart, which is something like a flat-bed truck, but instead of bein’ pulled by a-a car like in front, it’s pulled by a donkey. And they’re also, they also have the right of way, too, on the streets, too. So that’s-that’s something; every time I go home, I keep wondering, “How did I ever drive in Guyana 3
19. before?” because I know for sure I can’t drive there now, Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life so . . . 3. AN ISLAND IN MAINE WOMAN: Taiwanese, both parents are from Taiwan, came to the States for graduate school, uh, and then decided to stay both for political reasons and for career reasons. Um, uh, my parents came through, their Ellis Island was [ ] Kansas, uh, Univer sity of Kansas at Lawrence. INTERVIEWER: Kansas. WOMAN: Middle of, middle of the country, that was, I guess they were pulling a lot of Taiwanese students at that time so they came through there for their graduate school and then a job opportunity opened in Maine so that’s-that’s how the family ended up being the only Tai- wanese family within a hundred-mile radius in Maine. INTERVIEWER: When did your parents come to the U.S.? WOMAN: Um, in the ’60s, the early ’60s. INTERVIEWER: So how was life—have they talked about how life was different there versus life here in the U.S.— have they told you much about that or commented on that or . . . ? WOMAN: I think it wasn’t so much how life, there-there were some aspects of life that were different in the U.S. versus in Taiwan, but I think a lot of the quality of life that we had or a lot of the specifics of, uh, our lifestyle had to do with living on an island in Maine as opposed to so much being in the U.S. I don’t, I wouldn’t, I’m old enough now that I think I didn’t have a typical upbring- ing, I didn’t live in a typical American town. It was just 4
20. so much smaller but at the same time it was inundated every summer by millions of tourists from all over the world, so we-we lived in a sort of interesting balance between being a super-super isolated small town, middle of nowhere, no traffic lights on the entire island exis- Life in America tence, and then having this center of, uh, the spotlight world destination for vacationers, um, which is an inter- esting mix. It was, the island is sort of split into two. I lived on what they called the quiet side of the island, the western side, so that wasn’t developed as a tourist desti- nation until the last decade. Um, the eastern side is where Bar Harbor is, all these sort of big tourist areas so that was, that’s always been a big tourist destination since, you know, from the last century in the 1800s. Um, so we could always in some sense retreat back to our quiet side of the island, and it-it wasn’t crazy the whole summer, thanks to that. But y-you could still feel a palpable dif- ference between the way that life was in the summer and the way that it was in the rest of the year. INTERVIEWER: Did you enjoy living on the quieter side? WOMAN: I did. I’m glad I lived on the quiet side. It’s a little bit crazy with all the tourists. 4. WEST VS. EAST [Note: in this segment, you hear the voice of the inter- viewer asking a question and then the voice of the sign language interpreter, seated on the right, who is inter- preting for the deaf woman, on the left, who is using American Sign Language (ASL).] INTERVIEWER: So, you’ve lived—I mean, you’ve really lived in the West—in California and in Oregon. So how is liv- ing in the East different from living in the West? 5
21. WOMAN: Right, yes, that’s a good question. The West—one Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life thing about the West that’s-that’s really nice is the-the outdoors. It’s, uh, it’s nice to be with people who enjoy going out and doing things in nature like I do. But in the East, uh, there’s so much cultural diversity, I’m able to meet so many different kinds of people. There’s a lot of history here, museums, things of that nature that are really nice. And if I miss the West, I can always just fly over there and spend some time there again. 5. CANADA VS. THE U.S. WOMAN: Well, there’s work. You know, to be totally hon- est, that’s one of the reason I stayed here. . . . INTERVIEWER: Oh really? WOMAN: Is, uh, the market—especially like in the Baltimore-Washington, and the entire like Northeast corridor—there’s just so much work for musicians, for artists, and especially this area here because there are so many like big or middle-sized cities that all want an orchestra, and that they all want arts happening in their town, so, I mean, it’s, basically, one of the-the running gag we have among musician is like, you really have to suck on your instrument to not find work in the Washington-Baltimore area. Really, it’s like, you know. And so basically, that’s, uh, the main difference for me— it’s that I can, like, thrive here and make a living playing the violin, which is something I would have had a very, very, very difficult time doing in Montreal, especially since I left when I was so young and never built up . . . INTERVIEWER: Uh-hmm. WOMAN: . . . contacts and relationships up there. 6
22. MAN: Yeah, it-it makes me think of a funny story. Um, just the American perception of artists and musicians, um. If you go to Europe or even Canada, uh, you know, and-and you tell somebody—random person that you meet on the street—“Oh, I’m a musician,” they say, “Oh, that’s great!” Life in America And in-in the United States oftentimes, you meet some- body on the street and you tell them that you’re a musi- cian and they say, “Oh, well, what’s your day job?” A funny story: I was playing a quintet—a brass quin- tet job, uh, this is back when I lived in Oregon—we were playing at a fund-raiser for the, uh, the Oregon Repub- lican Party and we were playing, you know, patriotic songs and stuff like that, and we had a short break, um, in between our-our performance, and a woman who was sitting near the front, uh, took me aside and said, “Oh, that-that man over there playing the tuba, what-what’s his name?” I said, “Well, his name’s Richard Frazier.” And she says, “Well, what-what does he do?” I said, “Uh, he plays the tuba.” And she said, “Oh, well, can-can you make a living playing the tuba?” And I said, “No, ma’am. I can only make a living playing the French horn.” But that’s-that’s the perception. WOMAN: Yeah, I had a similar story happening to me actu- ally not far from here, in Hagerstown. We were playing, I was playing Maryland Symphony one week and there was a donor reception after the concert and, you know, I’m chatting there with patrons and like, I guess, guild members and, you know, other people that were attend- ing the reception and one lady comes up to me and she’s like, “You know, you look so good on stage and, like, you look like you’re very, very good violinist and wh-where did you go to school, how did you get so good?” And, you know, I tell her, well, you know, my entire, like, musi- cal education: went to Peabody, took, you know, private instruction, did bachelor, master’s degree with a great 7
23. violin teacher, practiced ten hours a day for ten years, Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life and-and, you know, got a bachelor’s and a master’s in music, and she’s like, “Wow, that’s great. So what do you do?” I’m like, “Well, that’s what I do. I got my education in music and I play the violin.” She’s like, “You don’t do maths, you didn’t do science?” Like, “No.” It’s like, “But you can’t do that! What-what-what do you mean, you- you don’t do maths? You have to take maths. What’s your job?” And she just would not understand that my educa- tion, my job was music and that, you know, I didn’t do maths and I could still earn a living without having done maths and science, which was, at the time, very fascinat- ing that somebody would not accept the answer that, “I’m a musician.” Which is something that would never have happened to me in Montreal. 6. LIVING IN WASHINGTON MAN: Uh, well, this is a, is a very urban environment. Um, I’m finding things from my own perspective because the United States is not urban—it’s actually rural, most of it—but my, from my own perspective, this is a very much more built-up area and, um, and in that regard it’s-it’s different to what my-my childhood was. INTERVIEWER: What other places have you visited in the United States or lived in the United States? MAN:Uh, very little. It’s all, it’s all been here, really, in Washington. INTERVIEWER: Oh yeah? MAN: Yeah, it’s all, it’s all been, uh, my interest is-is pol- itics and what shapes the course of countries and why people do what they do and why civilizations behave 8
24. the way that they do. So this is, if you were interested in looking at that, this has got to be an interesting place in that, in that way. Life in America 7. COMING FROM SPAIN WOMAN: Well, I think that, uh, at that time—and this was twenty years ago—um, I think that I, uh, at first I thought that, like, the family structure was very different ’cause, of course, uh, I grew up in a country where family struc- tures are very tight and every-everything centers around the family and that has changed, too, in Spain—but you know, at my time, eh, divorce wasn’t even allowed, so when I came here, that’s one of the things that struck me as different from-from Spain, that the family struc- ture was very different, was more, uh, um, well, most people I-I met had parents who-who were divorced or, and then remarried and had stepbrothers and -sisters or half-brothers and half-sisters and that was—I mean, in Spain, you never. I mean, that was such an abstract con- cept, something that you heard about in movies, right? Of course, now that’s normal in Spain, too. So I think that’s one of the things that struck me. INTERVIEWER: What do you like about life in America? WOMAN: Uh, well, I-I like the academic atmosphere here. Um, uh, since I teach at a university, I think I-I benefit a lot from the academic atmosphere. There’s a lot, there’s a lot of resources, uh, easy access to grants, money, even though, of course, we complain all the time, you know, that there’s not enough money, not enough support, but, of course, if you compare, uh, the situation here to the situation in other countries in-in Europe, there’s a lot more resources here for-for research, and, um, also I like 9
25. the flexibility, the fact that, uh, people are just so free Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life to move around. They get tired of their job, whatever, no problem—they just move to another place, uh, start another job, and I like that kind of flexibility, whereas I think in Europe in general people are more, uh, the men- tality is, “OK, once you buy your house, that’s where you die.” You don’t really move around that much. 8. TIME IN EGYPT AND AMERICA I usually, I go in the morning. Uh, I get a lot of phone calls from the student. Uh, if somebody has a prob- lem with, in any class or has a problem with a profes- sor or has a problem in his own life, he can talk to me about it and I can explain to him what he has to do and I always let him know about the time between here and over there. Over here, the time is very, very valuable. You have to make sure, if you have a class at two o’clock, you have to be there at two o’clock exactly. If you make it five minutes before, it’s OK, but do not late one more minute than the time. And back home, timing is not, no value for the times. If you have a class at two, you show up two- fifteen, at two-thirty, it’s OK. But over here, when you do that, meaning you underestimate the professor and he will get really upset with you. So I always focus about the time because the value here, timing here is money and back home, time is, you know, we have a lot free times. Well, the life in America is the best. America, I con- sider it, uh, one of the best places in the earth. I’ve been traveling a lot before I came to the States. I’ve been in England, I’ve been in France, I’ve been in Switzerland, I’ve been in Greece, I’ve been in Turkey, Czechoslovakia, Yugo-Yugoslavia—I’ve been traveling a lot before I come to the States. And United States one of the best because the economy is very strong and you have a lot of jobs 10
26. everywhere so that is very, very important in America. Back home, unemployment is almost 25 to 50 percent. It’s very hard to get a nice decent job, and if you get a nice decent job, doesn’t pay you enough money to make you live really well, so, but always go back. Home is home. Life in America Always, whatever home it is, it’s the best place for myself and for anybody else, but America is the best. 9. AMERICAN MEMORIES MAN: Well, I-I grew up in England. Uh, I was born down on the south sea coast, so if you know England, right down here, maybe a hundred miles from London, uh, in a little town called Poole, P-o-o-l-e. Uh, and I lived in southern England until I was about twelve years old. My, uh, my father was a-a war hero in World War II in-in India, so my memories are more related to-to that. And, uh, when I was about twelve years old, my father decided that he wanted to experience the American dream, which I called the make a buck myth, because the myth was that we never had much money. So we arrived in New York City, came on a boat, uh, about as old as the Titanic, but more successful, and, uh, lived in the Bronx. So some of my earliest American memories, uh, were hot dogs, uh, the Statue of Liberty, and American kids say- ing, “Hey, Slimy Limey, when are you going to learn to speak English?” So English—and timing is everything because this was few years before the Beatles—and if I had only come to America after the Beatles, I would have been cool. Instead, I was the geek who couldn’t speak English. Uh, well, at that age, you know, you do what your parents want you to do, so we moved to Florida, and I went to high school in Florida. INTERVIEWER: Where in Florida? 11
27. MAN: Uh, Pompano Beach. Home of the Bean Pickers. Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life This is a time when Florida had little tourists—uh, you could literally go right to the beach. Now it’s all condos for miles behind the beaches, uh. So I grew up, kind of grew up there. Kind of important to me is, when I arrived in New York, I was an English kid who had never seen a person of color in his life—1950s England was not a segregated society; there were not people of color living in England. Today it’s very different. So I arrive in New York City and I lived in a boys’ orphanage for a year, and all of the kids in the orphanage were black and Hispanic, Puerto Rican, African-Americans, and—very powerful experience—I mean, coming from England, living in the Bronx. When I went to Florida—racially segregated. The railroad tracks literally divided the town. S-so those, the juxtaposition of those three experiences probably are the most important experiences in my life in terms of what I believe in. 10. COMING FROM INDIA MAN: Uh, now when I go back for vacation to India, I see what’s-what’s the difference-different. I-I find everybody working in a slow motion. You know, you see the slow- motion movie, the hand goes slowly, but, uh, and I-I see my brothers, uh, they take life little easy. They wake up in the morning and, uh, there’s a lot of help around. Some- body comes to do the dishes, somebody comes to do the laundry, and somebody else is doing the ironing, and they don’t have to do anything. My, but, my brother says he’s very busy—I see him doing nothing. He just-just-just goes; he doesn’t even drive his own car, and, uh, his, I mean, his wife doesn’t even iron the clothes. It’s just wait- ing. He just goes for the shower; somebody comes, takes 12
28. out his clothes; he changes, of course; and, uh, he goes to job. There are people who take care of the job. He’s, just says, “Yes” and “No.” People come to him, “Uh, this is OK?” “Yeah, OK.” “Is this fine?” “OK.” Accountant come and says that. He’s not a big businessman—he’s probably Life in America does half of the turnover that I do here—but he-he’s like a king. And, uh, when I come back here, from the time I land U.S. airport, I have to pull my own bag, I have to drive my own car, I have to come home, pull my bags, take it myself in, and empty them myself. I have to do my own laundry, I have to wash, I have to clean the house myself. My, when my father came, he saw me cleaning the house, with the bathrooms. He said, “You, I thought this was America.” I said, “Yeah, this is America. That’s why I do it. You don’t do it in India.” He has never cleaned the bathroom. Somebody else does it for him. So life in India, now when I see, is like a luxury life. They think that I’m-I, since I have a little more money than them, so I’m-I have more luxury life, but unless you come and live here, uh, you realize it’s-it’s like super speed versus slow Doesn’t give you time to think—that’s good thing about, uh, life in America. When you-you grow old, you don’t start, you never think you’re old because you don’t have time to think. And, uh, whatever you have, you have, what you don’t have, you have no time to think, so time, lack of time is a blessing, in a sense. And, uh, of course I like, uh, if you, if you are enthusiastic and if your body allows you to work hard, you can open any kind of busi- ness; you don’t have too much of bureaucracy, not too much of red tape, you can start business pretty quick, and, uh, of course, uh, you have liabilities, you have to work hard to do that but, uh. Yeah, you don’t have to run over a period of one year, uh, like, uh, many other coun- tries, like in India. America is very, very easy. I mean, I can just simply walk into a bank and show my good credit 13
29. and take a loan for anything. I mean, I can buy a house, Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life virtually nothing in my pocket. I can say I’m a home- owner and back home in India, I need to have at least 80 percent, so, uh, I mean, there are a lot of good things. I mean, I like, uh, I like to drive, I like to go for, uh, vaca- tion on-on, the driving. Good roads, I don’t have to worry too much about it, cars are pretty good. Even if I have the best car in India, I can’t drive at the speed I drive here. So there are a lot, a lot of good things. I mean, I, once I get used to, now I think now I am used to here, I cannot go back and, uh, have the slow-motion life anymore. INTERVIEWER: Interesting. 11. CHANGING TIMES Oh, oh, that’s-that’s a loaded question, you know that— seriously loaded. There was a time when-when I was growing up that, uh—and I sound like a geezer here—but there was a time where, you know, you didn’t lock your door, um, I never had a key to my house. Those times, those-those-those ways still are out in the West. Uh, it- it’s less gentle than it used to be and let’s say, I’m not, don’t even get me into why this-this could have happened. 12. SMALL-TOWN LIFE That’s an interesting subject there. I-I remember a time, we never locked our doors, uh, and I lived in a town, little town of Laurel for a while, and I think even back then, we never locked our doors ’cause nobody, you didn’t have to worry about anybody breaking into your house or doing anything. And on the farm we never, we’d go away for a weekend and never lock a door. And you didn’t worry. As 14
30. Life in America a kid, I remember at age six or seven, hitchhiking down the road during World War II. We’d go to Fort Meade to use the swimming pool. And we didn’t think anything about hitchhiking, and you didn’t worry about some dude picking you up and molesting you or anything like that, just, you just didn’t hear about it back then. And then over the years, you just see where they, pretty soon everybody locks their doors, they got three or four locks on their doors, they, their kids can’t go out and play in the yard, uh, like they could back in my day, and, uh, the parents just have to watch them every minute. DEFINITIONS academic atmosphere: The setting or state that contrib- utes to and fosters academia—education, study, teach- ing, learning, research, and the exchange of ideas and American Sign Language (ASL): A form of manual com- munication used by deaf and hard of hearing people in 15
31. the United States. ASL is an autonomous linguistic sys- Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life tem structurally independent from English. It is different from sign languages used in other countries, such as Ital- ian Sign Language or Japanese Sign Language. Bean Pickers: Manual laborers who harvested beans by hand; in this case, the name of the sports team at the school the speaker attended. breaking into (break in): To enter illegally, usually by force. ’cause: Short for because. change of the seasons: The transition of the year from spring to summer to fall (autumn) to winter. cool: A slang expression that means to be desired or desir- able, to be with it, to be in vogue, or to be happening. day job: The primary job by which a person supports himself or herself while attempting to start, pursue, or establish another career. This term is used frequently with reference to musicians, artists, actors, and enter- tainers, who often work at night. dude: A slang term for a man or a boy. Eastern Seaboard: The eastern portion of the United States along the Atlantic Ocean. flat-bed truck: A truck that has a flat and open back area for carrying cargo. geek: An awkward person who doesn’t fit in. It can also mean a person who possesses a lot of specialized knowl- edge in a particular field, such as a “computer geek.” geezer: A slang term for an old person. hitchhiking: Standing or walking along a roadside ask- ing for a ride from people driving by. 16
32. interstates: Refers to the major highway system of the United States. make a buck: To earn money or make a profit. maths (math): The field of study of numbers and Life in America musician: Usually musicians. Northeast corridor: The states in the northeastern por- tion of the United States. one of the reason: Usually “one of the reasons.” person of color: A person not of the Caucasian race; a nonwhite person. racially segregated: Separated on the basis of race. running gag: A joke, funny story, or tale that is told segregated society: A society in which the races live largely separated from one another. slow motion: Moving at less than normal speed. spotlight: In this context, the center of the focus of the student: The speaker probably means students. suck on your instrument (usually, to suck at some- thing): To not be very good or skilled at playing one’s underestimate: The speaker probably means disrespect. upbringing: The guided or directed growth of a child by his or her parents or guardian into adulthood. the West: The western United States. 17
33. QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life 1. List what these speakers like about life in the United States. 2. Which speakers have had experiences in the United States similar to yours and why? 3. Which speakers have had experiences most dif- ferent from yours and why? 4. Describe where you have lived in the United States. 5. What do you like about life in the United States? 6. What is the most difficult thing about living in the United States? 7. Identify three words or phrases in this chapter that are new to you, and write a sentence with each one. 18
35. and said, “Well, you’re not getting any younger, so if we Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life wanna do this, we better go ahead and start working on this.” And so we made a decision to have children, and I have a daughter, Caitlin Cherie, who is four and a half years old, going on fifty. She’s also fluent in American Sign Language. In fact, from day one in the delivery room, I remember signing to her because I wanted to make this imprint on her brain, this language imprint for visual language, and so, uh, we have a special bond not just because she was my first daughter but also through American Sign Language. Um, it’s amazing to me, not coming from a deaf family, to see how language develops in a child who does not use, does not have deafness in the family. But she, uh, uses American Sign Language very, pretty fluently, and we have deaf people in our lives all the time, and so that’s been a big help for her. She came, uh, to a program after moving to this area at Gallaudet Uni- versity called the, um, Child Development Center, and in that program—it’s a day care center where they have, uh, parents with deaf children attending the day care cen- ter, the teachers are occasionally deaf and it’s just a really nice environment. And so she was in that program for about a year and a half. And so that’s my daughter Cait- lin. I-I love my daughter; I’m so in love with her. Uh, I also have a son who’s nine months old; his name is Levi Joseph. And, we are bonding and having fun, and he is at nine months, he’s speaking several words, and he has about four-four or five signs. So at this point, living in the area, it’s, uh, my wife and two children, a girl and a boy. INTERVIEWER: Do you have siblings? MAN: I have, uh, four siblings. I have, uh, an older sister, two younger sisters, and a younger brother. And, uh, they’re all in New Jersey, uh, right now. We’ve recently convinced my mom to move to this area, to the Balti- more, Maryland–D.C. area, so she should be moving 20
36. down shortly, uh, once her house is sold. But my sib- lings, uh, remain in New Jersey with the exception of my brother, who I’ve convinced to go to the University of Maryland, and so he’s, uh, just started there in grad school at the University of Maryland. The Family 2. ITALIAN ROOTS Well, the Sardegna side, my m—, I should say, my moth- er’s side and my father’s side. Let me start with my father’s side, which is also from Sardegna, but my grandfather was a merchant marine traveling the world and had a friend in Detroit and ended his merchant marine tour and stayed in Detroit. So, uh, and, uh, but went back to Italy, married someone, brought her back, and then had three boys. My dad’s the youngest, and they were born, uh, in the States, and my, one of my uncles fought in World War II, my oldest uncle, you know, uh, he actually fought, I think, partially in Italy, which is kind of inter- esting, um, and, and then, you know, they mixed in, one of my aunts is Polish and, you know, kind of indicative of the Detroit area, the sort of mix that’s there. My mom’s side is a much more complicated side, and my mom is also from Sardegna, but part of her family is from Padova and, uh, Vicenza, the Veneto area, and then one of my great-grandfathers was from Rome, and, uh, was a judge who was sent to Sardegna. So, um, which is kind of interesting, given that there’s not a lot of move- ment, um, in or out of, um, Sardegna. So I have second cousins in Padova, I have, uh, great-uncles in Padova, I have family in Sardegna, family in Vicenza, so it’s-it’s in that, it’s, that’s kind of split. And I must have family in Rome, but I don’t know, it’s just, uh, my mother’s never told me, you know, about that. 21
37. I have two sisters and one brother. I’m the oldest. Um, Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life and they’re all in Michigan. Um, they’re also very techni- cal, um. My brother is, has a master’s in fluid dynam- ics—he’s an engineer. And, um, one of my sisters was a math major, and, computer science, did artificial intel- ligence. Uh, another sister was, or is, uh, an engineer. I mean she’s not—she’s at home with the kids now. So, very, um, technical. Although most of us like to read a lot, which, um, is not always—you don’t always see a very technical—and like-liking to read a little bit. So . . . 3. A FAMILY SABBATICAL I had a great experience when I was a kid. Um, my par- ents were university professors as well, and when I was a young boy, my father got a sabbatical leave and so took the whole family to Europe for a year, uh, during his sab- batical leave, and we traveled all around Western Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and in the process, we visited, uh, not only the great cities of Europe but lots of the, uh, ancient sites, and so I was, I was exposed to archaeological sites from ancient Rome, Greece, Egypt, uh, throughout the Mediterranean area. And as a little kid, I was just fascinated by all of this and, uh, just, uh, drew up as much ancient history and-and culture as I possibly could at the time and came back fascinated with the study of antiquities. And so when I was a kid, I started reading, uh, ancient history and the ancient authors in translation and then later on, took up ancient languages. 22
38. 4. CHANGING FAMILIES Gosh, when I first came to the United States: one black- and-white TV about this big, uh. Both my parents worked, so in that sense, I didn’t go through a period where my mother didn’t work and that kind of 1950s, The Family 1960s sort of thing. I’d have to say that parents are a whole lot busier today than my parents. I mean, when work ended, work ended. And today, with e-mail and, uh, electronic communication, work doesn’t really have the kind of boundaries. 5. SIBLINGS So, I’m one of six. Um, in my family, it-it’s three girls and then three boys. And I’m the middle girl. So I have an older sister, and she is a mother of four girls herself, uh, in Minnesota, um, and then I’m here in D.C. And then my younger sister is, uh, back in Minnesota. She is an attorney-editor at West Thompson Publishing, and she has a daughter who will be a year in April. Um, so it’s very, it’s interesting because my older sister is more a stay-at- home mom. She-she does, like, work in a preschool or whatever, but she doesn’t have like a full profession, um, and, but she’s like an experienced mom because she’s the mother of four daughters, but I actually find myself have more in common with my younger sister, who’s just this new mom because she has this other component of working full-time, and so we have a lot more in common in the mothering aspect because of that, I think. Which is, that’s interesting to me. Then, um, so Kathy, myself, Lisa, then Tom is the oldest son and he is, he lives in, uh, Minnesota as well. He works for an, he-he’s a financial accountant in an agricultural company. Um, sort of the 23
39. funny fact about him is he’s on a curling team, which Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life many people don’t know about, but he actually plays it and it’s very fun to watch, but not a lot of people know about it. Uh, then, my, the middle boy Jim is, he lives in Arlington, Virginia, actually, and he works for, uh, Wells Fargo and he does, sort of, he has this hybrid position where he does banking stuff, but he watches the legisla- tive agenda on the Hill, and he sort of does the liaison between the banking aspect of that and the legislation. Um, and then the youngest, Patrick, is in Florida, and he is a wine consultant, um, at a Total Wine—it’s a com- pany—and he, so people come to him and say, “I’m mak- ing whatever for dinner, what kind of wine would you recommend?” And so he does that kind of education, so. He’s in Florida now. I forgot ’cause he moved recently. I had him back in Minnesota still ’cause he just graduated from college. I gotta remember that he’s a full-fledged adult now. 6. FAMILY IN NEW ZEALAND MAN: He was, he was a photographer and had to, uh, travel a lot in his work. And, uh, and, my, I have a sister, and she has a-a large family of-of four children now and, uh, as a matter of fact, every year, I would travel, um, or my family would travel—I have a little family: I-I have a wife and son—we would travel to, uh, to New Zealand just about every year to see them, and, uh, usually it was in the wintertime because summer holidays here is the winter there, you see, it’s the opposite way ’round so we would end up in the kind of bleak season. Um, but, uh, but my sister and I, uh, y-you know, swap each other’s, uh, children’s interests and, um, my fam—, my mother and father now are very elderly, and they’re, my mother is 24
40. now in her mid-eight—, late-late eighties now so, um, it was very quick, but they are. INTERVIEWER: Since your-your sister lives, still lives in New Zealand and you live here, what’s it like when the two families get together, living in vastly, somewhat vastly The Family different cultures? MAN: Yes, although it’s not vastly different. It’s not vastly. There are, um, the interesting thing is that when we come here, the Kiwis come here, they expect the Ameri- cans to be the same. They expect them to have the same ideas and the same goals and the same attitudes to life, and it’s misleadingly not true. So it appears to be more similar than it is. So, somebody coming here would think it was the same, but it isn’t. When we get together, um, and we’ve, I’ve been fortunate enough, every one of her children has visited here and stayed with me, so I’ve been able to introduce to them what it’s like to live and visit, uh, well, at least in Washington, D.C. Yes, well, um, the interesting thing about Gallipoli in the First World War was that most people’s grandfa- ther fought it, you know what I mean. On my mother’s side, all of my-my grandfather’s brothers fought at Gal- lipoli, you know. It was a, it was something that, um, that captured the whole generation that were sent off—and mostly volunteered, by the way—sent off to fight, um, a disastrous invasion, disastrous invasion of Turkey. Win- ston Churchill’s idea, by the way, uh, to do that. And um, the casualties, so—and I recently gave the lecture about Iwo Jima because they’re very similar in terms of campaigns—but, um, to give you an example of things that don’t usually happen in wars or in battles, for the New Zealanders, for example, the-the casualties nearly equaled the numbers deployed, so that is nearly 100 per- cent casualty rate, that, which is almost unheard of in battles but, uh, and my grandfather was-was wounded 25
41. there and he had a lot to say about it. Not to me because Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life the war estranged a lot of families and, uh, and, uh, I didn’t really know I had a grandfather until I was twenty. And-and so I was about his age when he went. And then I met him and then INTERVIEWER: [ we talked about it, so . Why did it estrange families? ] MAN: Because people were changed by it, as they are today in-in wars, all over the world. War changes you. War, uh, alters your understanding, um, with the suffering, the loss, the, uh, the stress. Human relationships alter, people are changed by it, and I’m only speaking in-in a general way. I don’t really know—I mean, relationships break up, OK, as well, but there was such a lot of-of people having difficulties, a lot of young people. And there is a picture I have of my grandfather and he’s there, a very young man from a young country, and he’s dressed in his new uni- form and it’s 1915 and he’s just about to be thrown into the most dreadful, uh, of all experiences and have his friends die and have his, in-in-in terrible circumstances, INTERVIEWER: [ so ] . Was it the trauma of that that took a long time for him to discuss it with you? MAN: Uh, no, no, I don’t think so. Um, some people talk about their war experiences and some do not. Um, I think, I think most do not. But that wasn’t the reason. It was because, it was a small family reason that he had forged another life and he had another family. And so it wasn’t, uh, anyway, he had another life. And so I-I really didn’t know much about him until later. I knew my-my relatives on-on my other side, on my mother’s side of the family, who-who’d fought at Gallipoli, too, but as I said, it was such a common thing, there were so many, uh, so many sent off to fight in that. 26
42. The Family 7. MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS My mother was one of ten children, so already that meant that she just had a lot more, a lot less attention from her parents and a lot more, um, a lot more people that she had to answer to. Uh, she also came from a very traditional Taiwanese household that all the children did what the father told them to do, and they were very, very well versed in what their duties were, what their respon- sibilities were, and they-they did those things, they-they did those duties as they were expected. Um, I grew up in this country. I’d say that I’m American before anything, and I-I think that with that comes a certain attitude about how you define your own destiny—you make your own decisions—and this was always a source of friction growing up, on top of the normal friction that you have between say, adolescents and-and parents. I think we had some extra ones that came along, um, from the cultural aspects of it. But I’ve, the older I get, the more I’m struck by the similarities that we also had. She just had a lot of the same kind of reactions to the world that I’ve had, 27
43. and, uh, I didn’t recognize them when I was younger. But Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life I think that her, the way that she approaches life—that “Well, you know, whatever happens, happens, and you sort of just roll with it and try to make the best of it”— that’s sort of how I’ve approached life, too, and that’s- that’s colored the way that I’ve lived my life, and so when I look at some of the, um, stories that she tells of when she was growing up, I think, “Huh, that’s the same reaction that I would have had,” or, “That’s the same thing that I would have done.” Um, so, despite the big cultural dif- ferences that we had and the-the time differences—you know, she had, she lived fifty years earlier than me—um, there’s actually a surprising amount of parallels between us, probably just because I’m her daughter and she’s my mother. 8. FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS WOMAN: Uh, I was born in Evanston, Illinois, which is a suburb of Chicago, and I grew up in the Chicago area, um, all the way through high school. Um, my mother was from the Chicago area, my father was from the South, but when he married my mother, they moved to Chicago and that’s where my roots are. INTERVIEWER: Where in the South was your WOMAN: [ ] father from ? My father was born in Arkansas, um, in a little town in the north- eastern corner of Arkansas called Rector. It’s hardly a dot on the map but sort of across the river from Memphis, Tennessee. INTERVIEWER: You ever been there or . . . ? 28
44. WOMAN: I have been there, yes. Um, when I was little . . . my father was from a very large family; he was the oldest of nine children, and they all married and had children of their own and on and on and on. And when I was little, um, I think the first time was when I was about six, we went to Arkansas several summers when there was a very The Family large family reunion. Um, my mother had been an only child, and, uh, her mother was an only child, too, so there were very few relatives on my mother’s side, and the first time I went to one of these family reunions in Arkansas with all of these people who were related to me, I was astonished. I had no idea that-that I had these many, that many people that were actually related to me. So it was, it was quite an eye-opening experience. But I must say that, uh, having an actor as a father is a very different sort of family setting from what most children have. I didn’t have a father who went to work five days a week, nine-to-five, was home all the time on the weekends. Um, when you’re an actor, you’re a little bit itinerant, and sometimes you may be working a lot, sometimes you may not be working very much. Uh, of course, these actors frequently are working at night, so my father would be home during the day and rather, and working in the evenings. It makes for a very different sort of life experience and growing up experience. But it was also because of that, uh, unpredictability, I guess, um, for me and also for my brother and sister—there were three of us—um, acting was not the sort of lifestyle or career that any of us wanted to pursue. I think all of us INTERVIEWER: [ grew up ] ... It kind of turned you off from . . . WOMAN: Yeah, kind of had the-the idea that it would be much better to have something that had more security attached to it, compared with the glamour, if you will, of being an actor. But it was a wonderful—as a kid growing 29
45. up—it was a wonderful thing because, um, we met lots Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life of interesting people, acting friends of my father and my mother, um, who were also very down-to-earth people as well but, you know, celebrities and the like, that was kind of fun. But . . . INTERVIEWER: Did you get to see him perform? WOMAN: Yes, I did, and that was the most fun thing of all. Um, it’s-it’s a real unusual experience when one, you have a certain image of your parents, you see them around the house all the time, and then suddenly to see one’s father or mother appearing on the Broadway stage or in a theater, uh, in costume and saying very different sorts of lines and speeches, uh, is-is really an amazing experi- ence. And I was very, very proud of him for everything that he did. DEFINITIONS American Sign Language (ASL): A form of manual com- munication used by deaf and hard of hearing people in the United States. ASL is an autonomous linguistic sys- tem structurally independent from English. It is different from sign languages used in other countries, such as Ital- ian Sign Language or Japanese Sign Language. antiquities: Ancient civilizations and their remnants, ruins, and history. Broadway: A major street in New York City, New York, that is synonymous with live theater and is the major theater district of the city. ’cause: Short for because. curling: A team sport similar to bocce and shuffleboard 30 that is played on ice with large granite stones and brooms
46. in which the object is to get your team’s “stone” as close as possible to the target while preventing your opponent from doing the same. day one: The very first day or beginning of an event or period of time. The Family a dot on the map: A very small town or location. four and a half years old, going on fifty: An expression that means the speaker’s daughter is four and half years old chronologically but exhibits the maturity or mental- ity of a much older person. full-fledged: Complete, total, entitled to all the benefits and responsibilities. gotta: Common verbal utterance of got to, which means the same as have to. grad school (graduate school): The collegiate educa- tional level after the first four years of college (baccalau- reate) during which a person usually pursues an advanced the Hill: An expression that refers to the area around the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., where the members of Congress (Senate and House of Representa- tives) and their staffs work. It is the center of the legisla- tive branch of the U.S. federal government. hybrid: An object or entity that has a mixture or combi- nation of characteristics taken from other things. just roll with it: An expression that means “to accept a situation or circumstance as it arises and deal with it or adjust to it.” Kiwis: A slang term referring to people from New Zea- land, derived from the kiwi bird, which is native to New 31
47. merchant marine: A nation’s publicly or privately owned Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life commercial sailing fleet. nine-to-five: This term refers to the typical hours that most people work during a five-day workweek, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. It is often used to refer to a typical, five-day workweek job. ’round: Short for around. sabbatical leave: At academic institutions, a leave of absence granted to faculty members every seven years, during which they can pursue other interests or activities. wanna: Want to. QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES 1. Describe your family. How are the families of these speakers like your family? 2. What kind of work do/did your parents do? 3. How has your family life changed since coming to America? 4. For which speaker do children play a large role? How does that compare to your family or to when you were growing up? 5. What memories do these speakers have of their families? 6. Identify three words or phrases in this chapter that are new to you, and write a sentence with each one. 32
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