segunda-feira, 27 de dezembro de 2010

How the world celebrates New Year



 Source: www.maganews.com.br for more information keep in touch with the site
New Year
How the world celebrates New Year


The New Year is not only celebrated withfireworks [1] and champagne. Countries have different ways to see the New Year in


In Portugal people go to the windows of their houses and beat saucepans [2]. In Spain it is traditional to eat 12 green grapes [3] at midnight to make sure the next twelve months are prosperous. In Japan it is common to carry out a house-cleaning ceremony. In Islamic countries, and in China and in Israel, New Year is celebrated on other dates. InBrazil one of the most traditional ways to see in the New Year is the São Silvestre footrace, held every year in São Paulo on the last day of the year. Another tradition is the fabulous New Year’s Eve [4] on Copacabana beach - Rio de Janeiro (see photo), considered to be one of the most beautiful events of its kind in the world. There are, however, some common ways countries celebrate New Year:  fireworks and champagne toasts [5]. The tradition of people making end-of-year resolutions [6], such as stopping smoking or drinking, or going on a diet, is also common in Braziland other countries.

Traditional songs
Music is part of the New Year traditions. In Brazil almost everyone knows the song “Fim de Ano,” better known as “Adeus Ano Velho, Feliz Ano Novo!” It was written in 1951 by  David Nasser and  Francisco Alves. English-speaking countries also have their New Year’s  song.  It was written in 1788 by Robert Burns as a poem and is called “Auld Lang Syne.” In England and the USA this song is known as ‘the song that nobody knows’. 


Matéria publicada na edição de dezembro (número 52) da Revista Maganews.
Áudio – Andy Shepherd (sotaque britânico)
Foto - Riotur


Vocabulary

1 fireworks – queima de fogos
2 saucepan -  panela
3 green grape – uva verde
4 New Year’s Eve – véspera de Ano Novo / Réveillon
5 champagne toast – brinde com champanhe
6 end-of-year resolution – promessa (s) de Ano Novo

Hugh Laurie: Dr. House


Source: Speak Up
Language Level: Basic
Standard: American accent


DR HOUSE

Dr. House has a dry, cynical smile and no time to waste on his patients’ feelings. He is a very unconventional doctor who tells his patients they are dying. Is this simply cruel, or necessary to save their lives?

ARROGANCE

Hugh Laurie stars as Dr. Georgy House in the successful US series House. Each episode focuses on a patient who is dying from a rare disease; Dr. House and his team of experts must discover the cause and find a solution. He’s arrogant and cruel. He’s a grumpy, middle-aged man, who is crippled and walks with the aid of a walking stick. This is not the recipe for a successful American TV show: so why is House a worldwide success? It’s the eccentricity and genius of Dr. House, a man who is ready for risk his career for his patients. He refuses to accept the obvious, ignores orders to stop investigations, and eventually reveals the truth. Executive producer Paul Attanasio inspired by the New York Times Diagnosis Column, wanted to create a medical version of the American hit series CSI. The show’s principal writer David Shore decided, however, to focus on the characters of the medical team. House, an infectious disease specialist, bullies and argues with his group of young colleagues, especially Dr. Eric Foreman (who regularly questions House’s ability), House also ignores hospital administrator Dr. Lisa Cuddy’s frequent reprimands. He has just one friend who he confides in, Dr. James Wilson.

ELEMENTARY…

The creator of the series, David Shore, modeled the doctor’s character on Sherlock Holmes (even the name “House” is a synonym of Ho ( L )mes. Both men have supreme deductive powers, are addicted to drugs, and play musical instruments. Arthur Conan Doyle in fact based the character of Holmes on the famous medical diagnostician Joseph Bell.

Hugh Laurie won the starring role in the hit series when producer Bryan Singer saw his audition: “This is what the show needs,” he declared, “ a real American actor!” Hugh Laurie, an Englishman who does an excellent American accent, isn’t embarrassed, but he feels guilty because he now earns far more than his father, a real doctor.

Who is Hugh Laurie? (no audio)

Laurie says he’s best known as a pair of ankles in the Stuart Little movies he was adopted mouse’s father.

The truth is that Laurie has been as success comedian in Britain for over 20 years: he starred with Stephen Fry in the British comedy shows A Bit of Fry and Laurie and Jeeves and Wooster, he also appeared in Rowan Atkinson’s BBC series Blackadder.

The Boat Race

Laurie was born in Oxford on June 11th 1959. He went to the exclusive public school Eton and studied Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge. He was a successful rower at school and university; his crew narrowly lost the 1980 Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race.

The Footlights

Glandular fever forced him to give up rowing, so he joined the university’s Footlight Revue –an annual show which has produced many stars such as Monty Python’s John Cleese and the actress Emma Thompson produced in the 1980 Footlight Revue called The Cellar Tapes with Stephen Fry.

Laurie has also written a novel, The Gun Seller, a light-hearted thriller.


Where's Amelia Earhart? Listening

Source: www.englishexercises.org
Author: ArgTeacher

Watch the video and answer the following questions:

1) What date is it mentioned in the video? 
2) What was the name of her navigator? 
3) What was the US navy conclusion? 
4) Is there any evidence to prove that she ran out of gas? 
5) How many years have investigators been trying to solve the enigma? 
6) How did Amelia return to the USA?
7) Which are the hypothesis mentioned in the video for Amelia´s disappearance? 

domingo, 26 de dezembro de 2010

Get more words!


TEACHER’S CORNER

Source: SpeakUp
Language Level: Basic
Standard: American accent


This month we continue our analysis of one of the most confusing words in the English language: get. There’s no way to get around (or avoid) it: this word has dozen of meanings. English students may feel that they are getting nowhere, that they are making no progress. Hopefully, they’ll get over it – that is, recover from the trauma.

LIKE A ROLLING STONE

Let’s try a different angle and look at how “get” is used in pop songs. Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones famously complained: “I can’t get no satisfaction.” Here the meaning is simply “obtain.” That double negative isn’t correct (it should be “I can’t get any satisfaction”), but the Stones get away with it because it sounds right. The Stones were also to have a hit with the song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Here again the meaning of “get” is to obtain.

WITH THE BEATLES

In the 1960s the Rolling Stones, who were from London, were the rivals of the Beatles, who were from Liverpool. Ringo Starr was perhaps the least talented member of the group, so it was no surprise to hear him sing “I get by with a little help from my friends.” This means he manages to survive because his friends help him. This was a hit, as was another Beatles song, Get Back, in which two characters, Jojo and Sweet Loretta Martin, are told: “Get Back to where you once belonged.” Here get back means to “go back” or “return”.

AND MARVIN…

We may get into hot water (that means trouble) with our next song, but you don’t get ahead (that is succeed) without taking risks. Right? So, when Marvin Gaye sang, “Let’s get it on” he was suggesting his girlfriend join him in bed. Yet if you get into bed with someone, it isn’t always for sex. Figuratively, we may say that rock stars “get into bed with” the establishment when they accept enormous amounts of money for their music. They sang their protest songs, but then joined the “enemy.” We can see clearly now: we’ve got their number, i.e. we know what they’re really like.


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Family Album, part XVII



Source: Family Album




Flannery O’Connor, 1925-1964: She Told Stories About People Living in the American South

Source: http://www.voanews.com/learningenglish/home/Flannery-OConnor-1925-1964-She-Told-Stories-About-People-Living-in-the-American-South-112425984.html


A best way to improve your English is listen, repeat, listen again and study English through VOA Special English, for those access my blog, please share this post for friends. Have a blessed Sunday



Life in a small town in the American South was what O’Connor knew best.
Photo: AP

 

Or download MP3 (Right-click or option-click and save link) 


SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: I'm Shirley Griffith.
RAY FREEMAN: And I'm Ray Freeman with the VOA Special English program, People in America. Today, we tell about writer Flannery O’Connor.
(MUSIC)
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Late in her life someone asked the American writer Flannery O’Connor why she wrote. She said, "Because I am good at it."
She was good. Yet, she was not always as good a writer as she became. She improved because she listened to others. She changed her stories. She re-wrote them, then re-wrote them again, always working to improve what she was creating.
Flannery had always wanted to be a writer. After she graduated from Georgia State College for women, she asked to be accepted at a writing program at the State University of Iowa. The head of the school found it difficult to understand her southern speech. He asked her to write what she wanted. Then he asked to see some examples of her work.
He saw immediately that the writing was full of imagination and bright with knowledge, like Flannery O’Connor herself.
RAY FREEMAN: Mary Flannery O’Connor was born March twenty-fifth, nineteen twenty-five, in the southern city of Savannah, Georgia.
Flannery O'Connor grew up in the small southern town of Milledgeville, Georgia.
andalusiafarm.org

Flannery O'Connor grew up in the small southern town of Milledgeville, Georgia.
The year she was born, her father developed a rare disease called lupus. He died of the disease in nineteen forty-one. By that time the family was living in the small southern town of Milledgeville, Georgia, in a house owned by Flannery's mother.
Life in a small town in the American South was what O’Connor knew best. Yet she said, "If you know who you are, you can go anywhere."
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Many people in the town of Milledgeville thought she was different from other girls. She was kind to everyone, but she seemed to stand to one side of what was happening, as if she wanted to see it better. Her mother was her example. Her mother said, "I was brought up to be nice to everyone and not to tell my business to anyone."
Flannery also did not talk about herself. But in her writing a silent and distant anger explodes from the quiet surface of her stories. Some see her as a Roman Catholic religious writer. They see her anger as the search to save her moral being through her belief in Jesus Christ. Others do not deny her Roman Catholic religious beliefs. Yet they see her not writing about things, but presenting the things themselves.
RAY FREEMAN: When she left the writing program at Iowa State University she was invited to join a group of writers at the Yaddo writers' colony. Yaddo is at Saratoga Springs in New York state. It provides a small group of writers with a home and a place to work for a short time.
The following year, nineteen forty-nine, she moved to New York City. She soon left the city and lived with her friend Robert Fitzgerald and his family in the northeastern state of Connecticut. Fitzgerald says O’Connor needed to be alone to work during the day. And she needed her friends to talk to when her work was done.
(MUSIC)
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: While writing her first novel, “Wise Blood”, she was stricken with the disease lupus that had killed her father. The treatment for lupus weakened her. She moved back to Georgia and lived the rest of her life with her mother on a farm outside Milledgeville. O’Connor was still able to write, travel, and give speeches.
“Wise Blood” appeared in nineteen fifty-two. Both it and O’Connor's second novel, “The Violent Bear it Away,” are about a young man growing up. In both books the young men are unwilling to accept the work they were most fit to do.
Like all of Flannery O’Connor's writing, the book is filled with humor, even when her meaning is serious. It shows the mix of a traditional world with a modern world. It also shows a battle of ideas expressed in the simple, country talk that O’Connor knew very well.
RAY FREEMAN: In “Wise Blood”, a young man, Hazel Motes, leaves the Army but finds his home town empty. He flees to a city, looking for "a place to be.” On the train, he announces that he does not believe in Jesus Christ. He says, "I wouldn't even if he existed. Even if he was on this train."
Many people in the town of Milledgeville thought she was different from other girls.
andalusiafarm.org

Many people in the town of Milledgeville thought she was different from other girls.
His moving to the city is an attempt to move away from the natural world and become a thing, a machine. He decides that all he can know is what he can touch and see.
In the end, however, he destroys his physical sight so that he may truly see, because he says that when he had eyes he was blind. Critics say his action seems to show that he is no longer willing to deny the existence of Jesus but now is willing to follow him into the dark.
The novel received high praise from critics. It did not become popular with the public, however.
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: O’Connor's second novel, “The Violent Bear it Away,” was published in nineteen sixty. Like “Wise Blood,” it is a story about a young man learning to deal with life.
The book opens with the young man, Francis Marion Tarwater, refusing to do the two things his grandfather had ordered him to do. These are to bury the old man deep in the ground, and to bring religion to his uncle's mentally sick child.
Instead, Tarwater burns the house where his grandfather died and lets the mentally sick child drown during a religious ceremony.
RAY FREEMAN: Critics say Tarwater's violence comes from his attempt to find truth by denying religion. In the end, however, he accepts that he has been touched by a deeper force, the force of the word of God, and he must accept that word.
Both of O’Connor's novels explore the long moment of fear when a young man must choose between the difficulties of growing up and the safe world of a child.
(MUSIC)
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Flannery O’Connor is at least as well known for her stories as for her novels. Her first book of stories, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” appeared in nineteen fifty-five. In it she deals with many of the ideas she wrote about in “Wise Blood,” such as the search for Jesus Christ.
In many of the stories there is a conflict between the world of the spirit and the world of the body. In the story, "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," a traveling workman with only one arm comes to a farm. He claims to be more concerned with things of the spirit than with objects.
RAY FREEMAN: The woman who owns the farm offers to let him marry her deaf daughter. He finally agrees when the mother gives him the farm, her car, and seventeen dollars for the wedding trip. He says, "Lady, a man is divided into two parts, body and spirit. . .  The body, lady, is like a house: it don't go anywhere; but the spirit, lady, is like a automobile, always on the move. . . "
He marries the daughter and drives off with her. When they stop to eat, the man leaves her and drives off toward the city. On the way he stops and gives a ride to a wandering boy.
We learn that when the one-armed man was a child, his mother left him. Critics say that when he helps the boy, he is helping himself.
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: In nineteen sixty-four, O’Connor was operated on for a stomach disease. One result of this operation was the return of lupus, the disease that killed her father. On August third, nineteen sixty-four, Flannery O’Connor died. She was thirty-nine years old.
Near the end of her life she said, "I'm a born Catholic, and death has always been brother to my imagination."
RAY FREEMAN: The next year, in nineteen sixty-five, her final collection of stories, “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” appeared. In it she speaks of the cruelty of disease and the deeper cruelty that exists between parents and children. In these stories, grown children are in a struggle with parents they neither love nor leave. Many of the children feel guilty about hating the mothers who, the children feel, have destroyed them through love. The children want to rebel violently, but they fear losing their mothers' protection.
In nineteen seventy-one, O’Connor's “Collected Stories” was published. The book contains most of what she wrote. It has all the stories of her earlier collections. It also has early versions of both novels that were first published as stories. And it has parts of an uncompleted novel and an unpublished story.
In nineteen seventy-two this last book won the American book industry's highest prize, The National Book Award. As one critic noted, Flannery O’Connor did not live long, but she lived deeply, and wrote beautifully.
(MUSIC)
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: This Special English program was written by Richard Thorman. I'm Shirley Griffith.
RAY FREEMAN: And I'm Ray Freeman. Join us again next week for another People in America program on the Voice of America.

SHAKE IT UP, BY TRAIN

 
«  SHAKE UP CHRISTMAS » by TRAIN

Author:  Faufarb, she is an ESL teacher in a small town in France.
Ho-ho-ho
the happiness
 the happiness
Shake up the happiness
It's   time.

There's a   that I was told
And I wanna tell the  before I get too 
And don't  it so let's  it
And reassemble it, oh yeah

Once upon a time in a   like this
A little   made a great big 
To fill the world full of happiness
And be on   's magic list.

Chorus

 it up
 up the happiness
 it up
 up the happiness
Come on y'all
It's  time

Chorus

Ho-ho-ho Ho-ho-ho
At the   time miles away
A little   made a wish that 
That's the world would be 
And   would   him say :
I got   and I got 
I got my   on the ground
And  above
Can you   some happiness
With my  to the rest of the 
Of the  and the  and
Maybe every once in a while
Give my  a reason to 
In the season of smile
It's  but we'll be freezing in style
Let me  a girl one day
That wants to spread some  this way
We can let our souls run  and
She can  some happiness with me

Chorus (bis)

I know you're out there
I hear your 
I see the  where
Your  have been
I'm gonna show them
So they will know then
Their love will 
When they  again

Chorus ( a few times)