ESL: Wednesday 16 September 2009: Kanye West's Swift Outburt

The VMA Awards

Since Wednesday's class is only one hour and there isn't much time to prepare anyway, just view this short video and let's engage in a general classroom discussion about it. You might wish to discuss issues such as rudeness, what your own personal response was, etc. A vocabulary list is below.

phenom: shortened form of "phenomenon." Something or someone is a phenomenon when it is exceptional, unusual, etc. "Elvis Presley was a phenomenon of the 1950s." "Michael Jackson was a phenomenon."

big big night: English has an unusual form of making adjectives by doubling the adjective! Children do that a lot, but it's also acceptable in idiomatic usage. Elvis Presley's song, "Blue Christmas," doubles the adjective, in fact quadruples it: "I'll have a blue, blue, blue, blue Christmas." Essentially a double adjective means "very." So a big, big night means a very big night.

huge deal: The word "deal" comes from cards, where the dealer can give you a good card or a bad card. So a "bad deal" is bad luck. A "big deal" means making too much of something that isn't that important. A "huge deal" is like a big deal. "Big deal" can also be used sarcastically to mean something opposite: "My girlfriend left me." "Big deal! Is that all you're worried about?"

shocked: "Shocked" comes from electricity. One is shocked when one touches a live wire. From that it comes to mean something that really impacts or affects a person like a live wire.

stunned: To be "stunned" can be physical or psychological (emotional). A man is stunned when his girfriend says she wants to break up with him. A prize fighter is stunned by a left hook to the jaw.

a shot: "shot" here means "chance" or opportunity. A shot is also a small glass of hard liquor ("a shot of Scotch") or a bullet from a gun: "He fired three shots and one killed her."

have a moment: "moment" here means special moment or occasion, one's moment in the sun. "This is her moment and I don't want to spoil it for her by appearing with her on stage."

a sweetheart: "sweetheart" means one's girlfriend in ordinary usage. But here it means a gentle or sweet person that everyone loves.

twittering: a twitter is a tweet, a short message of only a few dozen words that people can read on the Internet. That's different from a blog which usually uses long messages. A tweet (or to twitter) means just to get something off one's chest, to express one's raw feelings in a few words. "My maid just quit without notice, so I'm stuck with a dirty house!"

"blank you": "blank" is a common euphemism (nice word) for a curse word, which often cannot be spoken on television. Here the word is obviously "fu-k," which is the usual word in this collocation (string of words).

"piece of blank on earth": same as above, but here the word is "sh-t."

premeditated: planned (in advance). Premeditated murder is a common phrase and is a more serious crime than impulse murder, because the person is considered more evil to have planned a murder than to have murdered on impulse, say catching her husband with another woman. Judges sentence murderers to longer sentences when a premeditated murder is proved.

prone to these outbursts: "prone" here means tending to. "She's prone to depression during the winter months." "He's prone to get angry when someone looks at his girlfriend."


edit himself: to "edit" means to revise. But it also means to control what is written. So to "edit" here means to omit words that might offend.

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