Family album USA, 69

Source: FAMILY ALBUM USA

I was Born to Love you

A song definitely can teach much, so this is the best way to improve your English listening and grammar. 
Author: Teacher Vanessa
Source: http://www.englishexercises.org/makeagame/viewgame.asp?id=2094

 

                                  QUEEN

                    I was born to love you
Put these phrases in order.

chorusWith every single beat of my heart

I was born to love you Every single day of my life

Yes, I was born to take care of you

 

Put these verbs in the correct tense and the yellow words in order.

You   (be PRESENT SIMPLE) the one for me
I (be PRESENT SIMPLE)the man for you
You were made for me
You're my 
If I was given every 
I'd for your love                                             chance    kill      opportunity       dream
                                                                           amazing         romance         ecstasy  
So take a  with me
Let me  with you
I'm caught in a 
And my dream's come true
It's so hard to believe
This  (happen PRESENT CONTINUOUS) to me
An  feeling
Comin' through

chorus

I wanna love you
I love every little thinkthingthin about you
I wanna love you, love you, love you
Born - to love you
Born - to love you
Yes I was born to love you
Born - to love you
Born - to love you
Every doublesingle day - of my life

AAn amazing feeling
Coming through

chorus                  

Jesse Owens, 1913- 1980: He Was Once the World's Fastest Runne

Source: Voice of America Special English www.manythings.org/voa/people 

This is Gwen Outen. And this is Steve Ember with PEOPLE IN AMERICA in VOA Special English. Every week we tell about a person who was important in the history of the United States. Today we tell the story of athlete Jesse Owens. He once was the fastest runner in the world.

(MUSIC)

In the summer of nineteen thirty-six, people all over the world heard the name of Jesse Owens. That summer, Owens joined the best athletes from fifty nations to compete in the Olympic games. They met in Berlin, Germany. There was special interest in the Olympic games that year.

Adolf Hitler was the leader of Germany. Hitler and his Nazi party believed that white people -- especially German people – were the best race of people on Earth. They believed that other races of people -- especially those with dark skin -- were almost less than human.

In the summer of nineteen thirty-six, Hitler wanted to prove his beliefs to the world. He wanted to show that German athletes could win every important competition. After all, only a few weeks before the Olympics, German boxer Max Schmeling had defeated the great American heavyweight Joe Louis, a black man.

Jesse Owens was black, too. Until nineteen thirty-six, very few black athletes had competed in the Olympics for the United States. Owens was proud to be on the team. He was very sure of his ability.

Owens spent one week competing in four different Olympic track and field events in Berlin. During that time, he did not think much about the color of his skin, or about Adolf Hitler.

Owens said later: "I was looking only at the finish line. I thought of all the years of practice and competition, and of all who believed in me."

We do not know what Hitler thought of Jesse Owens. No one recorded what he said about this black man who ran faster and jumped farther than any man of any color at the Olympic games. But we can still see Jesse Owens as Hitler saw him. For at Hitler's request, motion pictures were made of the Berlin Olympic games.

The films show Jesse Owens as a thin, but powerfully-built young man with smooth brown skin and short hair. When he ran, he seemed to move without effort. When he jumped, as one observer said, he seemed to jump clear out of Germany.

Jesse Owens won the highest award -- the Gold Medal -- in all four of the Olympic competitions he entered. In the one-hundred meter run, he equaled the fastest time ever run in that Olympic event. In the long jump and the two-hundred meter run, he set new Olympic records. And as part of a four-man team, he helped set a new world record for the four-hundred meter relay race. He was the first American in the history of Olympic track and field events to win four Gold Medals in a single Olympics.

Owens's Olympic victories made him a hero. He returned home to parades in New York City and Columbus, Ohio, where he attended the state university. Businessmen paid him for the right to use his name on their stores. No one, however, offered him a permanent job.

For many years after the nineteen thirty-six Olympic games, Jesse Owens survived as best he could. He worked at small jobs. He even used his athletic abilities, but in a sad way. He earned money by running races against people, motorcycles and horses. He and his wife and three daughters saw both good times and bad times.

(MUSIC)

Poverty was not new to James Cleveland Owens. He was born in nineteen thirteen on a farm in the southern state of Alabama. He was the youngest of thirteen children. His parents did not own the farm, and earned little money. Jesse remembered that there was rarely enough food to eat. And there was not enough fuel to heat the house in winter.

Some of Jesse's brothers and sisters died while still young. Jesse was a sickly child. Partly because of this, and partly because of the racial hatred they saw around them, Jesse's parents decided to leave the South. They moved north, to Cleveland, Ohio, when Jesse was eight years old. The large family lived in a few small rooms in a part of the city that was neither friendly nor pleasant to look at.

Jesse's father was no longer young or strong. He was unable to find a good job. Most of the time, no one would give him any work at all. But Jesse's older brothers were able to get jobs in factories. So life was a little better than it had been in the South.

Jesse, especially, was lucky. He entered a school where one white teacher, Charles Riley, took a special interest in him. Jesse looked thin and unhealthy, and Riley wanted to make him stronger. Through the years that Jesse was in school, Riley brought him food in the morning. Riley often invited the boy to eat with his family in the evening. And every day before school, he taught Owens how to run like an athlete.

At first, the idea was only to make the boy stronger. But soon Riley saw that Jesse was a champion. By the time Jesse had completed high school, his name was known across the nation. Ohio State University wanted him to attend college there. While at Ohio State, he set new world records in several track and field events. And he was accepted as a member of the United States Olympic team.

(MUSIC)

Owens always remembered the white man who helped change his life. Charles Riley did not seem to care what color a person's skin was. Owens learned to think the same way.

Later in life, Owens put all his energy into working with young people. He wanted to tell them some of the things he had

learned about life, work and success: That it is important to choose a goal and always work toward it. That there are good people in the world who will help you to reach your goal. That if you try again and again, you will succeed.

People who heard Owens's speeches said he spoke almost as well as he ran. Owens received awards for his work with boys and girls. The United States government sent him around the world as a kind of sports ambassador. The International Olympic Committee asked for his advice.

In about nineteen seventy, Jesse Owens wrote a book in which he told about his life. It was called "Blackthink." In the book, Owens denounced young black militants who blamed society for their troubles. He said young black people had the same chance to succeed in the United States as white people. Many black civil rights activists reacted angrily to these statements. They said what Owens had written was not true for everyone.

Owens later admitted that he had been wrong. He saw that not all blacks were given the same chances and help that he had been given. In a second book, Owens tried to explain what he had meant in his first book. He called it "I Have Changed." Owens said that, in his earlier book, he did not write about life as it was for everyone, but about life as it was for him.

He said he truly wanted to believe that if you think you can succeed--- and you really try -- then you have a chance. If you do not think you have a chance, then you probably will fail. He said these beliefs had worked for him. And he wanted all young people to believe them, too.

These were the same beliefs he tried to express when he spoke around the world about being an Olympic athlete. "The road to the Olympics," he said, "leads to no city, no country. It goes far beyond New York or Moscow, ancient Greece or Nazi Germany. The road to the Olympics leads -- in the end -- to the best within us."

In nineteen seventy-six, President Gerald Ford awarded Jesse Owens the Medal of Freedom. This is the highest honor an American civilian can receive. Jesse Owens died of cancer in nineteen eighty. His family members operate the Jesse Owens Foundation. It provides financial aid and support for young people to help them reach their goals in life.

(MUSIC)

This program was written by Barbara Dash. It was produced by Lawan Davis. This is Steve Ember.

And this is Gwen Outen. Listen again next week for PEOPLE IN AMERICA in VOA Special English.

Family Album, 68

Source: FAMILY ALBUM

Carl Sagan (1934-1996) Helped People Understand Our Planet and the Universe

Liked English tips? Please promote it for friends, and have a wonderful day/night everyone.

source: www.manythings.org/voa/people

This is Shirley Griffith. And this is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program EXPLORATIONS.

Today we tell about American scientist Carl Sagan. He spent much of his life helping make space travel possible far out in the universe. He also helped people understand science.

(MUSIC)

The year is nineteen forty-seven. Twelve-year-old Carl Sagan is standing outside a small house in the eastern city of Brooklyn, New York. It is dark. He is looking up at the sky. After a few minutes, he finds the spot for which he has been searching. It is a light red color in the night sky. Carl is looking at the planet Mars.

Carl has just finished reading a book by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs. It is the story of a man who travels from Earth to the planet Mars. He meets many strange and interesting creatures there. Some of them are very human. The name of the book is "The Princess of Mars." It is just one of many books that Mr. Burroughs wrote about travels to Mars.

In "The Princess of Mars," the man who travels to Mars can make the trip by looking at the planet for several minutes. He then is transported there by a strange force.

Carl Sagan stands watching the red planet. He wishes he could travel across the dark, cold distance of space to the planet Mars. After a while, young Carl realizes this will not happen. He turns to enter his home. But in his mind he says, "Some day. . . Some day it will be possible to travel to Mars. "

Carl Sagan never had the chance to go to Mars. He died in December, nineteen ninety-six. However, much of the work he did during his life helped make it possible for the American Pathfinder vehicle to land on Mars. It landed on July fourth, nineteen ninety-seven. It soon began sending back to Earth lots of information and thousands of pictures about the red planet.

Carl Sagan's friends and family say he would have been extremely happy about the new information from Mars. They say he would have told as many people as possible about what Pathfinder helped us learn.

Carl Sagan was a scientist. He was also a great teacher. He helped explain extremely difficult scientific ideas to millions of people in a way that made it easy to understand. He made difficult science sound like fun.

(MUSIC)

Carl Sagan was born in Brooklyn, New York in nineteen thirty-four. Even as a child he wanted to be a scientist. He said it was a child's science book about stars that helped him decide to be a scientist.

Mr. Sagan said he read a book that told how our sun is a star that is very close to Earth. The book also said that the stars in the night sky were also suns but very far away. Mr. Sagan said that suddenly, this simple idea made the universe become much larger than just Brooklyn, New York.

It should be no surprise to learn that Carl Sagan studied the stars and planets when he grew older. He did this at the University of Chicago. Later he taught astronomy at Harvard University and Cornell University.

In the nineteen fifties, Mr. Sagan helped design mechanical devices for use on some of the first space flights.

He also published two important scientific theories that were later confirmed by space flights. One theory was that Venus is extremely hot. The other was that Mars did not have a season when plants grew as scientists had believed. He said that the dark areas on Mars that were thought to be plants were really giant dust storms in the Martian atmosphere.

Mr. Sagan was deeply involved in American efforts to explore the planets in our solar system. He was a member of the team that worked on the voyage of Mariner Nine to Mars. It was launched in nineteen seventy-one. Mariner Nine was the first space vehicle to orbit another planet.

Mr. Sagan helped choose the landing area for Viking One and Viking Two, the first space vehicles to successfully land on Mars. He also worked on Pioneer Two, the first space vehicle to investigate the planet Jupiter. And he worked on Pioneer Eleven, which flew past Jupiter and Saturn.

Carl Sagan was a member of the scientific team that sent the Voyager One and Voyager Two space vehicles out of our solar system. He proposed the idea to put a message on the Voyager, on the chance that other beings will find the space vehicles in the distant future.

Mr. Sagan worked for many months on what to say in the message. It was an extremely difficult task. When the Voyager space vehicles left our solar system they carried messages that included greetings from people in many languages. They carried the sound of huge whales in our oceans. And they carried the sound of ninety minutes of many different kinds of music from people around the world. Carl Sagan had created a greeting from the planet Earth.

(MUSIC)

Carl Sagan was an extremely successful scientist and university professor. He was also a successful writer. He wrote more than six hundred scientific and popular papers during his life. And he wrote more than twelve books. In nineteen seventy-eight, he won the Pulitzer Prize for one of them. It is called "The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence." He even helped write a work of science fiction in the nineteen eighties. The book is called "Contact." It is about the first meeting between beings from another world and the people of Earth. It was made into a popular movie.

Perhaps Carl Sagan may best be remembered for his many appearances on television. He used television very effectively in his efforts to make science popular. He first became famous in nineteen eighty when he appeared on a thirteen-part television series about science. The show was called "Cosmos." It explored many scientific subjects -- from the atom to the universe. It was seen by four hundred million people in sixty countries. Mr. Sagan wrote a popular book based on his television show.

Millions of people saw Carl Sagan on television in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties. He especially liked to talk about science and scientific discoveries on the late night television program "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson." Mr. Sagan said he always tried to accept invitations to "The Tonight Show" because about ten million people watched it, people who were not usually interested in science.

On television, Mr. Sagan was a good storyteller.  He was able to explain complex scientific ideas in simple ways. He believed that increasing public excitement about science is a good way to get more public supporters. He said much of the money for science and scientific studies comes from the public, and people should know how their money is being spent.

Some scientists criticized Carl Sagan because of his many appearances on television. They said he was not being serious enough about science. They said he was spending too much time appearing on television trying to make science popular.

Other scientists valued his efforts to explain science. They said he communicated his message with joy and meaning.

One of Carl Sagan's last books is called "The Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human in Space." Mr. Sagan said he got the idea for the book from a picture taken by the Voyager One space vehicle. As it passed the planet Neptune, Voyager turned its cameras back toward the distant Earth and took a picture of the Earth as a pale blue dot. Mr. Sagan described the Earth this way:

CARL SAGAN: "Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there -- on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam...

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

Carl Sagan died December twentieth, nineteen ninety-six in Seattle, Washington. He was being treated at a medical center there for a bone marrow disease. Carl Sagan was sixty-two years old.

(MUSIC)

This Special English program was written by Paul Thompson and Nancy Steinbach. It was produced by Paul Thompson and Mario Ritter.

This is Shirley Griffith.

And this is Steve Ember. You can learn more about Carl Sagan on our Web site, voaspecialenglish.com.

Join us again next week for EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English.

150 Years Later, US Still Debates Issues That Fueled Civil War

Source: http://www.voanews.com/learningenglish/home/us-history/150-Years-Later-US-Still-Debate-Issues-That-Fueled-Civil-War-119505304.html

Photo: AP

Dave Chaltas is dressed as Confederate General Robert E. Lee during a re-enactment of the Battle of Aiken in South Carolina

This is IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.

This Tuesday is the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the opening shots of the American Civil War. On April twelfth, eighteen sixty-one, Confederate soldiers fired on Union troops at Fort Sumter in South Carolina.

A total of eleven southern states left the Union. They formed the Confederate States of America. They wanted to continue their economic system based on agriculture and slavery.

The War Between the States continued for four years until the Confederates surrendered. Six hundred twenty thousand Americans died during the war. President Abraham Lincoln was killed shortly after it ended.

One of the first battles took place at what is now Manassas National Battlefield Park in Virginia. Ray Brown from the National Park Service says two percent of the American population died in the Civil War.

AP/Library of Congress

President Abraham Lincoln, center, in Maryland after the Battle of Antietam in 1862

RAY BROWN: "You can imagine the impact that this would have on whole communities throughout the country and why there would be such passions that have been passed on from generation to generation even at the remove of one hundred fifty years."

Marianne Lee brought her children to the historic battlefield for a history class.

MARIANNE LEE: "I think it is important to look back at this particular war, because it is what made our Union. We separated and yet managed to come back together."

David Blight is a historian at Yale University in Connecticut and an expert on the Civil War. He says observances of the fiftieth anniversary centered on the sacrifices of the two sides.

DAVID BLIGHT: "What we did in this country is we suppressed having to talk about what caused that war or what its results or legacies were, focusing largely on honoring the soldier."

Kevin Levin is a history teacher in Charlottesville, Virginia, who writes the blog Civil War Memory. He says Americans continued to ignore the issues at the one hundredth anniversary of the war.

KEVIN LEVIN: "Americans, I think, were more interested in remembering a war that united Americans rather than divided Americans."

But in recent years, historians like David Blight at Yale have started to take a new look.

DAVID BLIGHT: "We do not want to sacrifice the military history story. That needs to be understood. But this time, we need to put the story of emancipation at the center of this narrative, because what really transformed the United States, were not those battles. What really transformed the United States was the process by which four million slaves were freed that necessitated a recrafting of our Constitution."

The addition of the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment gave citizenship to anyone born in the United States and guaranteed equal protection to all people. And the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed all citizens the right to vote.

But it took the civil rights movement of the nineteen fifties and sixties to enforce many of those promises.

Historian David Blight says Americans are still debating many of the same issues as they were a century and a half ago.

DAVID BLIGHT: "Every time Americans debate the problem of states' rights, the relationship of federal power to state power -- which we are indeed having a roiling debate again -- and every time we debate not only race relations, but the very idea of what it means to be an American, multi-racial, greatly diverse society, we are debating the direct legacies of the Civil War."

And that's IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. You can learn more about American history at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Christopher Cruise.

A Mother's History

Recognisably I've been struggled against any kind of violence, racism, Zionists, anything who expresses discrimination. In particular I've been posted since next month a sad history about Ann-Oak who lost her son brutally assassinated, check it out this History and help to promote http://www.knifecrimes.org