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Watch Harsh Weather, Knee Injuries Doesn't Stop Filmmaker From Chasing Ice on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

요컨대, 영자신문을 읽음으로써 전세계와 미국이 어떻게 움직이고 있는지에 관한 다양한 주제들을 배움과 동시에 폭넓은 영어어휘들을 익힐 수 있는 이점이 있다.

사실, 진정한 영어실력은 단순한 내용의 회화를 영어로 미국인이나 기타 외국인과 앵무새처럼 일상적으로 주고 받는 것이 아니라, 오히려 그 사람과 마주앉아 아주 진지하게 세계적인 현안문제를 놓고 장시간에 걸쳐 심도있게 영어로 대화를 나누는 것이 아닐까?

Watch Tuesday, November 27, 2012 on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

What issue is dominating meetings this week in Washington, D.C.? How does Mexico's incoming president plan to address the country's drug war? Why is an astronaut planning to spend a year in space? Discover the answers in Thursday's program. Plus, we consider the potential benefits of bug cuisine, and we examine the reaction to some Rhode Island police meting out push-up punishment.

Step aside Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. A new first lady could be heading for fame on the global stage — one who's not just a singing superstar and AIDS ambassador, but also a major general in China's People's Liberation Army.

Nicknamed "The Peony Fairy," Peng Liyuan, 50, has been in the public eye for decades, best known for her annual appearances on the most watched television program in the world, the Chinese New Year gala.

She is married to Xi Jinping, who recently ascended to the country's top leadership post. But will China's new first lady be allowed to shine?

 
Peng's husband, Xi Jinping, assumed the top leadership post in China's Communist Party earlier this month and is expected to become the country's president next year. The two met in 1986, when she was already a star and he was a deputy mayor.
In an unguarded moment, the glamorous singer told a state-run magazine that when she first met her future husband in 1986, she found him "rustic" and "old-looking." Now 59, Xi was then a deputy mayor of Xiamen in Fujian province, while she was already a star. She said she tested him by turning up in "big army trousers" to see how much he cared about appearances.

Not much, apparently. He's reported as saying it took him just 40 minutes to know that Peng was the woman he wanted to marry. At that point, she could hardly have known her husband would end up as Communist Party general secretary and China's next president.

'Very Plain-Living'

"My impressions of her are great," says Yan Chang, who met Peng in 2003, after the singer commissioned two songs from Yan's husband, composer Josef Fung. "She's very plain-living. She wears casual, embroidered clothes and likes traditional stuff. She used to come to my house to listen to music and talk about art."

At the time, Peng was at the height of her fame, a household name across China. But she told Fung this was to be her last album.

"She was quite candid about that. She said the leaders were saying, 'You should reduce your public performances now. In the future, you shouldn't really appear at all,' " the composer says. "I couldn't understand why at the time. She said, 'Well, I wouldn't really like to do that. For a certain reason, maybe, yeah, I have to do it.' "

YouTube
In this song, "Swallow," Peng combines a Kazakh folk song with electronic music.
When it came to the album, she had clear demands for him: For one song, called "Swallow" in English, she asked him to meld a Kazakh folk song with electronic music to produce an avant-garde sound. He says she was keen to push musical boundaries inside China.

"After the CD, she was regretting that she didn't take more risks," Fung says. "She would like to have gone a bit further.

"She has, in a way, a double personality," he says, describing her as a "diva with Chinese characteristics."

"In her private self, she was quite humble. She was very considerate to the people working with her," he says. "On the other hand, you can see a certain power in her. She's sometimes quite critical on other people. But she's a nice person."

The singer is Xi Jinping's second wife, following a divorce. They have one daughter, who studies at Harvard under an assumed name.

Earlier this year, Sarah Lande from Muscatine, Iowa, sat next to Peng Liyuan at an official banquet. She says her impressions were extremely positive.

"She seemed to be alive and beautiful. Eager to talk, you know, eager to discuss things," Lande says. "She spoke some English, and she seemed very interesting. She was saying she doesn't perform much any more, but she works with a fine arts academy."

Bringing Star Power To AIDS Fight

YouTube
Peng was already a famous folk singer in China when she met her husband, Xi Jinping. Here, she performs "In the Field of Hope."
Peng's other high-profile role has been as an AIDS ambassador.

"Being asked to do this was the best new year's present I could get," she said in a recorded message about AIDS awareness. She began in 2006, when there was great stigma surrounding HIV in China.

"Definitely from a political standpoint, it was risky," says Johanna Hood at the Australian National University, who has studied Peng's role as one of the first Chinese celebrities to become the public face of an AIDS campaign. "She handled it, I think, very well, in that she never engages with the politics of HIV."

Peng focuses on her role as a mother and her desire to work with children, Hood says.

"I think it's been managed quite well, in what could have been a very risky situation," she says.

In a rare interview, Peng described her motivation as wanting to use her fame to help children who have been affected by HIV and AIDS: "I believe that as a public figure I should use my compassion to open the eyes of other loving people to care for them, to help them, and allow them to escape from that unhappiness and hardship," she said.

In June 2011, she stepped up her role, becoming a World Health Organization ambassador for tuberculosis and AIDS — even as her husband was heading for the top. Hood says it would be a loss of face for her to step down now. But China's first ladies have traditionally played a supporting role not much seen in public. So could China be paving the way for a new kind of first lady?

"I really do hope so," Hood says. "[Peng] is an incredibly talented woman. She's very well-educated, she speaks well, she's knowledgeable, she's powerful. And she's one of the perfect people to pave the way for a new role model."

But there is official nervousness about Peng already. Her name has become a forbidden search term on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, and several online stories about her have been deleted recently.

Given China's recent history, Peng's cultural and artistic background doesn't necessarily work in her favor. The last high-profile spouse in recent memory was Madame Mao — or Jiang Qing — the wife of Chairman Mao Zedong who dictated the country's cultural life for a decade, limiting cultural fare to a series of "revolutionary operas" and "revolutionary songs."

Jiang was subsequently blamed for the decade-long Cultural Revolution, and sentenced to a suspended death sentence as a member of the "Gang of Four." She committed suicide in prison in 1991, but her legacy is one that hangs over all subsequent first ladies, consigning them to the background.

It's also clear that China's image-makers have already been at work. Gone are Peng's fabulously froufrou and brightly colored outfits. Most of her recent appearances have been in military uniform.

Her most recent high-profile engagement was at a military gala in January, singing about the importance of ordinary people to the Communist Party. It's notable that Peng hasn't yet had any major joint engagements with her husband; given her popularity among those ordinary people, perhaps there's a fear she could outshine her husband, who formally became the Communist Party leader earlier this month.

미국에 들어와서 필자가 주로 한 일은 많은 양의 영문 Text, 즉 대학원 석.박사과정 교재, 신문, 잡지, 소설 등을 폭넓게 읽으면서

그 내용을 1개나 2개의 paragraph로 요약한 일이었다. 이같은 summarization 을 통해 얻게 된 유익은 다음과 같다.

첫째, Text 의 내용을 일목요연하게 이해하는 습관이 길러지면서 보다 빠른 속도로 영문Text들을 이해하는 실력을 쌓게 되었다.

이 때문에 예전에는 상당한 시간이 걸리던 책들도 보다 빠른 시간 내에 읽고서 그 핵심내용을 정확하게 이해하는 기술을 터득하게 되었다.

둘째, 이들 Text 속에 등장하는 전형적인 Academic Vocabulary들을 자주 접하게 되면서 아카데믹한 영작문 기술이 대폭 향상시킬 수 있게 되었다.  특히, 미국의 고급잡지들 속에 등장하는 단어들은 그대로 미국대학의 석.박사 과정에서도 그대로 원용할 수 있기 때문에 이점이 대단히  도움이 되었다.

셋째, 다양한 주제들을 신문, 잡지기사들을 통해 접하면서 이들이 결코 미국대학에서의 석.박사과정과 무관하지 않다는 것을 알 수 있었다. 즉, 이들 신문이나 잡지에서 다룬 내용들이 그대로 대학원 수업시간에 토론이 되고 또 학기말의 시험과제로도 등장한다는 것을 알게 되었다. 따라서, 꾸준하게 미국의 신문, 잡지들을 읽은 것이 공부에 큰 도움이 되었다.

넷째, 다양한 Text를 읽고 요약하면서 주류 미국백인들의 세계관을 배울 수 있고 또 그들의 사회적인 기대를 이해할 수 있게 되었다. 즉, 미국사회에서 어떠한 일이 발생하면 그것에 대해 반응하는 백인들의 전형적인 대응패턴을 알게 됨으로써 미국사회를 보다 더 잘 이해할 수 있는 계기가 되었다. 아울러, 미국사회의 밖에서 일어나는 일에 대한 미국인들의 전형적인 반응들도 꾸준하게 Text를 통해 접하면서 이를 통해 미국인들의 세계관도 더욱 자세하게 알게 되었다.

요컨대, 영어공부를 하는 학생으로서 필자는 미국에서 출간되는 다양한 Text를 꾸준하게 읽을 것을 적극 권하고 싶다. 이렇게 하면 영어공부와 함께 미국인과 미국사회에 대해 심층적으로 공부하는 셈이 된다.

http://cafe.daum.net/englishhouseusa/GUUt/16

This morning I had breakfast with my wife and daughter.

My wife's niece got up after we finished our meals.

Today it was not as cold as yesterday.

Yesterday I read some comic books when I was back home.

I really enjoy reading comic books.

On weekends I usually read a lot of them from the Internet.

In the office it's not cold as the heater is always on.

There are so many English learning materials on the Internet.

How time flies!

How I wish I just had enough time to learn all of them!

As for the presidential race, I am very very disappointed with Ahn's withrawal.

At first I was so very excited about his decision to run for the presidency.

Actually all the nation was excited about that.

But now he's dropped out of the race and only the two old guards are running.

I'm not sure whether I will ever vote.

I am sure Ahn would surely have won the race if he had become the sole opposition candidate.

I just hope he will run again five years from now.

아래 3가지 용어는 꼭 외워둡시다^^

1) 지지도 : approval rating

2) 대통령선거전에서 사퇴하다 : withdraw from the presidential race

                                               drop out of the presidential race

3) 무소속후보 : independent candidate

Watch Monday, November 26, 2012 on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.