Are you Nitpicking?

 လူအမျိုးမျိုး စိတ်အဖုံဖုံဆိုတဲ့ အတိုင်း တချို့သူတွေက အကောင်းမြင်ကြတယ်၊ 

တချို့ကကျတော့ အရေးမပါတာကို ရေးကြီးခွင်ကျယ်လုပ်ပြီး အပြစ်မရှိ အပြစ်ရှာတာမျိုးလည်းရှိတယ်။ 

အဲ့လိုမျိုး အရေးမပါတာတွေကို ရေးကြီးခွင်ကျယ်လုပ်ပြီး လိုက်ပြောနေတာမျိုးကို 

အင်္ဂလိပ်စာမှာ Nitpick လို့ခေါ်ပါတယ်။ 

Meaning ~ to find faults in details that are not important 

Nitpick ကတော့ verb ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ သူရဲ့ noun တွေကတော့ Nitpicking နဲ့ Nitpicker တို့ပဲဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ 

Nitpick  ~ ရေးကြီးခွင်ကျယ်လုပ်ပြီး အပြစ်မရှိ အပြစ်ရှာခြင်း 

Nitcicker ~ ရေးကြီးခွင်ကျယ်လုပ်ပြီး အပြစ်မရှိ အပြစ်ရှာသူ 

ပိုပြီး နားလည်သွားအောင် အောက်မှာ example sentence လေးတွေနဲ့ လေ့လာကြည့်ပါမယ်။ 

• You're always nitpicking - it's so annoying!

နင်က အမြဲဆိုသလို အရေးမပါတာကို အပြစ်မရှိ အပြစ်ရှာနေတော့တာပဲ။ အဲ့လိုမျိုးကို သိပ်စိတ်ပျက်တာပဲ။  

• He was getting impatient with his daughter's constant nitpicking.

သူကတော့ သူ့သမီးတောက်လျှောက်အပြစ်မရှိအပြစ်ရှာပြောနေတာကို စိတ်မရှည်ဖြစ်နေပြီ။ 

• If you spent less time nitpicking, you'd get more work done.

မရေးမပါတာတွေကို အပြစ်ရှာပြောနေတာကို လျှော့မှ အလုပ်တွင်လိမ့်မယ်။ 

• Nitpicking is not welcome in this office.

ဒီရုံးမှာတော့ အပြစ်မရှိအပြစ်ရှာ လိုက်ပြောနေတာမျိုးကို အားမပေးဘူး။ 

Ref: www.cambridge.org / sentencedict.com

Have you known what CEFR & A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2 mean?

 သင့်ရဲ့ အင်္ဂလိပ်စာ Level ဘယ်လောက်ရှိသလဲ သိပြီးပြီလား။

အင်္ဂလိပ်စာ စာအုပ်တွေမှာ ရေးထားလေ့ရှိတဲ့ A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2 ဆိုတာတွေကရော 

ဘာတွေလဲ ဆိုတာ သိပြီးပြီလား။ 

အင်္ဂလိပ်စာနဲ့ ပတ်သတ်ပြီး သူများတွေ ပြောပြောနေကြတဲ့ CEFR ဆိုတာကိုရော သိပြီးပြီလား။ 

မသိသေးဘူးဆိုရင်တော့ ဒီ post လေးမှာ ဖတ်ရှုလေ့လာနိုင်ပါတယ်။ 

အရင်ဆုံး CERF ဆိုတာကို စပြောပြပါမယ်။ 

CEFR ဆိုတာကတော့ Common European Framework of Reference for Languages ရဲ့

 Initialism (ရှေ့ဆုံး စာလုံးတွေကိုပဲ ယူထားတဲ့ အတိုကောက်) ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ 

CEFR ဟာ ဘာသာစကားကျွမ်းကျင်မှုစွမ်းရည်ကို ဖော်ပြတဲ့ နိုင်ငံတကာ စံသတ်မှတ်ချက်တစ်ခုပဲ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ 

CEFR ဟာ ဘာသာစကားကျွမ်းကျင်မှုစွမ်းရည်ကို အဆင့် (၆) ဆင့်နဲ့ ဖော်ပြပါတယ်။ 

အဲ့ဒိ အဆင့် (၆)ဆင့်ကတော့ 

(1)A1  

(2)A2 

(3) B1 

(4) B2 

(5) C1 

(6) C2  တို့ပဲ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ 

 

ပုံမှာတွေ့ရတဲ့အတိုင်း 

• A1 & A2 ကတော့ Basic User ပဲ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ 

Cambridge English Qualifications Exam အရ A1 Level ဟာ Starters နဲ့ Movers Exams တွေကို 

ဝင်ရောက်ဖြေဆိုရမှာဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ 

A2 Level ဆိုရင်တော့ Flyers နဲ့ KET (KEY English Test) စာမေးပွဲတွေကို ဖြေဆိုရမှာ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ 

• B1 & B2 ကိုတော့ Independent User လို့ သတ်မှတ်ပါတယ်။ 

B1 Level အင်္ဂလိပ်စာ ကျွမ်းကျင်မှုဟာ IELTS အမှတ်နဲ့ ပြောရမယ်ဆိုရင် 4.0 - 5.0 လောက်ရှိပါတယ်။ 

B1 Level အတွက် Cambridge English Qualifications Exam ကို ဝင်ရောက်ဖြေဆိုမယ်ဆိုရင်တော့ 

PET (Preliminary English Test) စာမေးပွဲကို လေ့လာဖြေဆိုရမှာ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။  

 

B2 Level အင်္ဂလိပ်စာ ကျွမ်းကျင်မှုက IELTS အမှတ်နဲ့ ပြောရမယ်ဆိုရင် 5.5 - 6.5 လောက်ရှိပါတယ်။ 

B2 Level အတွက် Cambridge English Qualifications Exam ကို ဝင်ရောက်ဖြေဆိုမယ်ဆိုရင်တော့ 

FCE (First Certificate in English) စာမေးပွဲကို လေ့လာဖြေဆိုရမှာ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ 

 

• C1 & C2 Level ကိုတော့ Proficient User လို့ သတ်မှတ်ပါတယ်။ 

C1 Level အင်္ဂလိပ်စာ ကျွမ်းကျင်မှုဟာ IELTS အမှတ်နဲ့ ပြောရမယ်ဆိုရင် 7.0 - 7.5 လောက်ရှိပါတယ်။

 C1 Level အတွက် Cambridge English Qualifications Exam ကို ဝင်ရောက်ဖြေဆိုမယ်ဆိုရင်တော့

 CAE (Certificate in Advanced English) စာမေးပွဲကို လေ့လာဖြေဆိုရမှာ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ 

C2 Level အင်္ဂလိပ်စာ ကျွမ်းကျင်မှုက IELTS အမှတ်နဲ့ ပြောရမယ်ဆိုရင် 8.0 - 8.5 လောက်အထိရှိပါတယ်။ 

C2 Level အတွက် Cambridge English Qualifications Exam ကို ဝင်ရောက်ဖြေဆိုမယ်ဆိုရင်တော့ 

CPE (Certificate of Proficiency in English) စာမေးပွဲကို လေ့လာဖြေဆိုရမှာ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ 

အခုဆိုရင် CERF နဲ့ သူရဲ့ အဆင့် (၆)ဆင့်ဖြစ်တဲ့ A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2 ဆိုတာ

 ဘာတွေလဲ သိသွားပြီလို့ မျှော်လင့်ပါတယ်။ 

အဲ့တော့ ကိုယ်ကရော ဘယ် အဆင့်မှာပါလဲ သိဖို့အတွက် Cambridge University ရဲ့ official website မှာ 

အောက်ပါ link ကနေ Online Level Test ကို အခမဲ့ ဝင်ရောက်ဖြေဆိုလို့ရပါတယ်နော်။ 

ဖြေပြီးပြီးချင်း ကိုယ့် Level ကို ချက်ချင်းသိရမှာဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ 

https://www.cambridgeenglish.org/test-your-english/general-english/

Cambridge English Qualifications Exam တွေဖြစ်တဲ့ Starters, Movers, Flyers, KET, PET, FCE, 

CAE, CPEတို့ကို ဖြေဆိုချင်ရင်တော့ British Council မှာ register လုပ် စာမေးပွဲကြေးသွင်းပြီး ဖြေဆိုရမှာဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ 

Ref: www.cambridgeenglish.org 

Michelle Obama’s Journey: Humble Beginnings to Significant Breakthroughs

Do you think it would be possible for someone from a disadvantaged background and an underrepresented community to make significant breakthroughs, and become influential worldwide? It is definitely possible regardless of your social status, gender, race, or skin colour. There were a number of people throughout history who had proved the notion that anyone from any background can reach their fullest potential and achieve their goals - Oprah Winfrey, J.K. Rowling, Abraham Lincoln, Stephen King, to name but a few. Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, one of the world’s powerful women, is also a solid example of becoming an inspiring woman icon despite being born as an underprivileged little girl.  

Humble Beginnings to Significant Breakthroughs 

 Michelle’s journey started with humble beginnings: she was born and raised by her working-class parents, Fraser Robinson III (a pump operator for the Chicago Water Department) and Marian Shields (a stay-at-home mom) - who are not college graduates. The Robinsons lived in a brick bungalow on the South Side of Chicago. Michelle went to Chicago public schools. She had to take out student loans to fund her education. Obviously, she was a first-generation college student who had to go through a great deal of struggles to pursue her education. However, being brought up in such an underprivileged community could not hamper Michelle from making significant breakthroughs happen. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Princeton University in 1985 and a juris doctor degree from Harvard Law School in 1988. She became the executive director of the Chicago chapter of Public Allies, an AmeriCorps program that prepares young people for public service, in 1993. In 1996, she joined the University of Chicago as associate dean of student services, where she developed the university’s first community service program. In 2005, she became the vice president of community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Medical Center. She was the first African-American First Lady of the United States (2009 - 2017). As a first lady, Michelle initiated “Let’s Move!” in 2010 - a public health campaign dedicated to solving the problem of childhood obesity within a generation. Furthermore, she initiated the “Reach Higher” campaign in 2014, inspiring every student in America to take charge of their future by completing their education . Later in 2015, Michelle - together with former President Barack Obama - launched “Let Girls Learn”, a U.S. government initiative committed to helping young girls receive the education they deserve worldwide. Michelle has been admired worldwide for her intelligence and dedication to public services: in 2019, she was also named the “most admired woman” in the world in a major new US survey.  

What it takes Michelle to become who she is today? 

Firstly, it can be said that who she is today is the result of her growth mindset and positive attitude towards challenges. Taking account of her words "You should never view your challenges as a disadvantage. Instead, it's important for you to understand that your experience facing and overcoming adversity is actually one of your biggest advantages," which she said during her 2016 City College of New York commencement speech and "Instead of letting your hardships and failures discourage or exhaust you, let them inspire you. Let them make you even hungrier to succeed.” said during the King College Prep High School commencement speech in 2015, it is obvious that Michelle - unfazed by the hurdles life threw at her and seeing the bright side of seemingly unpleasant things - embraced obstacles as a stepping stone to reach her fullest potential. 

 Secondly, Michelle’s pursuit of education has a role to play in getting her where she is now. Michelle, as a student back then, was ambitious, industrious, and committed to excellence. “I worked hard to get the best grades I could in all of my classes. I stayed up late, got up early, and worked on my essays and personal statements. I finally got into Princeton which was the proudest day of my life” Michelle recounted in her speech on the power of education. Undeniably, her hard work and perseverance paid off in the end - in spite of the fact that her teachers told her she was setting her sights too high, and was never going to school like Princeton, the Ivy League University. Michelle also claimed in the speech, “Education was truly everything for me. I was willing to do whatever it took for me to go to college. Getting my degree changed the course of my life.” 

 Thirdly, it would not be complete to miss out the good upbringing she had received from her parents: love and unwavering support, faith in her, as well as encouragement to speak out - which shapes her to become who she is now. In her memoir “Becoming”, Michelle penned how her parents talked to her and her brother Craig like they were adults and never grew tired of asking them questions and provoking conversations on all kinds of topics. “As parents, they are not raising babies but raising adults”. said Michelle in an interview about her memoir “Becoming”, explaining how the real value she felt for her voice in the family inspired her to become such a powerful woman with a powerful voice today. 

The fourth factor which attributed to Michelle’s becoming an influential leader while being a mom (she called herself “Mom-in-chief”) is having a mentor (role model) - which Michelle stressed as a relationship that can make all the difference . "We are living, breathing role models, not just in what we say, but what we do." said Michelle Obama on her podcast called “The Michelle Obama Podcast”. For Michelle, Valerie Jarrett, her former boss, who worked as the head of planning and economic development at the Chicago Mayor's office, had a profound impact on her. Michelle also revealed in the podcast that Valerie helped her realize the kind of leader and mother she wanted to be in the workplace. Michelle, upon witnessing Valeria stopped a meeting to take a call from her daughter, said “She was like the head of economic development one second and Laura's mommy the next”. Michelle also remarked "That made us all more productive and feel like not just our work had value, but our lives had value."  

Leaving a Legacy behind 

 Michelle’s steadfast commitments to shaping a more healthier and educated nation sets her legacy as a distinguished First Lady, whose life story and strong-willed persona inspire individuals from all walks of life across the globe. The way she pushed the boundaries and created her own identity in the face of a myriad of struggles makes Michelle an iconic role model for women of all ages, young girls in particular.

Photo Source: www.forbes.com

Kyal Sin Phu

11 September, 2020