Time to twitter, Speakup in Class

Time to Twitter part II

Level: Basic

Source: Speak Up

British Standar Accent

Every year there is a new internet phenomenon. In the past we have seen e-mail, Google, Messenger, Wikipedia, Youtube, MySpace and Facebook. The latest sensation is called Twitter. It is very popular in the United States, Britain and Japan. Twitter is a "Social networking system" like MySpace and Facebook. The difference is that you write messages with a maximum of 140 characters. In your message you answer one simple question: "What are you doing now?"

A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

Twitter is popular with "normal people," but it also popular with celebrities who use it as a blog. Barack Obama, John McCain, Gordon Brown and Britney Spears all like Twitter. The simple format makes twitter esay to use from a mobile phone. Many guests at Obama's presidential inauguration wrote Twitter messages during the ceremony. People watching on televison complained about this.

A BIRD LANGUAGE

A Twitter message is called a tweet. "Tweet" is literally the sound of a small bird: the symbol on the twitter website is a bird on a tree. The word twitter also refers to the sound of birds singing. Humans can also twitter when they talk quickly and nervously. In British English a twit is a stupid person.  

Twitter may not be an intelligent word, but it is the new digital activity. It is replacing "chat" as the most important form of communication. Other twitter words include follower, a person who "follow" a twitter's old messages: re-twit, which means sending another person's message; a twitterati, which describes the people who use twitter. Twitter is based in Silicon Valley, California. Will Twitter replace Facebook? Who knows. According to the British newspaper The Financial Times, last year Facebook offered to buy Twitter for $ 500 million. Twitter said no.

Speak Up 264, page 10

MODERN LANGUAGE. TIME TO TWITTER

BEFORE YOU READ.

TASK 1. Speaking. With your partner(s) discuss these questions.

a) How often do you use a computer at work? Why?

b) How often do you use a computer at home? Why?

c) Do you think the internet is a positive or a negative thing? Why?

d) What do you use the internet for? Why?

e) How many emails do you send/receive per day?

f)  How many text messages do you send/receive per day? 

TASK 2. Glossary. It is a good idea to familiarise yourself with the vocabulary in the glossary before you do the reading TASKS. Work with your partner(s). Try this idea:

a) Cover the Portuguese words/phrases and look at the English words/expressions only. Do you know any of these words/expressions in English? Write your ideas. Check them with other members of the class.

b) Look at the glossary and check your ideas. How many are correct?

c) Test yourself and/or your partner(s). It is not important to memorise this vocabulary, but to be familiar with it. 

READING

TASK 3. Prediction. You are going to read about “Twitter.” Before you read, discuss these questions with your partner(s). Make some notes.  If you don’t know the answer, guess.

a)    What exactly is “Twitter?”

b)    Is it similar or different to “Google,” “Wikipedia,” “Facebook”?

c)    What kinds of people use “Twitter”?

d)    What does “Tweet” mean?

e)    What does “twit” mean?

f)    Does “Twitter” have a good future?

TASK 4: Reading for Specific Information: Read the all of the text as quickly as possible, without trying to understand every single word. Were your ideas correct? Compare with other students.

TASK 5. Prediction #2. Before you read all of the article again, discuss these questions with a partner and make some notes.

a)    How is “Twitter” similar to “MySpace”?

b)    How is it different?

c)    How is “Twitter” connected with a “blog”?

d)    What is the symbol on the twitter website, and why?

e)    How is “Twitter” connected with “chat”?

f)    Will “Twitter” replace “Facebook”?

TASK 6: Reading for Specific and Detailed Information: Read all of the text and find answers to TASK 5. How many were correct?

AFTER YOU READ

TASK 7. Speaking and/or writing: Discuss these questions with your partner(s). If you like, you can write your opinions for homework and show them to your teacher.

a) Have you ever used Twitter? Why (not)?

b) Do you want to try it? Why (not)?

c) Do you think that Twitter has a promising future? Why (not)?

d) Do you think people are becoming slaves to technology? Why (not)?

e) Can you imagine life without technology? Why (not)?

 

ANSWERS TO TASK 5: a) it is a social networking system b) it only uses text, and each message is limited to 140 characters c) some people use Twitter in the same way as a blog d) A bird, because “tweet” is the sound a bird makes

e) Twitter is replacing “chat” as the most important means of communication on internet  f) We don’t know!

LANGUAGE, QTALK

Source: www.speakup.com.br

Language level: Upper intermediate

Speaker:Rachel Roberts

Standard accent: British

QTALK 

Maurice Hazan is the son of a German mother and an Egyptian father, but he grew up in France. This probably explains his love of languages. 20 years ago he began teaching French in the United States, but he has since opened the Tribeca Language School in New York, where pupils, can also learn Spanish, Italian, German, Greek, Hebrew, Chinese and even Hindi. The minimum age for enrolling on a course at the school is just two years old.

Key to the teaching is a method which Hazan invented called “QTalk”. This revolves around the use of cue cards in the classroom. These are cards with drawings or words which are used to prompt pupils to talk. Hazan maintains that students can become “somewhat functional in a new language after just one hour. When Speak Up went to see Maurice Hazan, we asked him whether it was true that children had a natural advantage over adults when it came to learning a foreign language.

Maurice Hazan

(French accent):

When you are a child, you have the ability to develop what is called “phonetic synapsis.” Phonetic synapsis is a function of your brain to create connections between neurons. In short, you can develop an authentic accent, which becomes more difficult as you get closer to your teen years. Also, children can integrate grammar, or what is known as “semantic memory,” without formal instruction. In other words, they can be exposed to a second language with no particular order, and if they are exposed to this situation, say, in an immersion context, then they have the unique ability to fragment this information, make sense of it and produce sentences that they’ve never heard before. Noam Chomsky, who is the leading psychologist here right now in the States, is the first psychologist to have identified this and he calls this “the language module.” If children are exposed to a second language an hour a week, then they can get some exposure to this language, but they will not become genuinely fluent that way.

There is a big myth that adults are not able to learn a second language: adults who decide to learn a second language are therefore very motivated and they can exceed children’s performance in a one-hour-to-two-lesson-a-week situation.

DUBBING? A DISASTER!

We then asked Maurice Hazan whether some adults were more gifted than others when it came to languages:

Maurice Hazan:

Yes, it’s true. Some people are more gifted than others. Some people have a propensity to lean a second language and others don’t. It’s all about your level of filtering, or your filter resistance to the outside world. The filter resistance is how you are able to embrace or reject the other world. Let’s imagine, if you can come from a family where there is clearly no interest in the world overseas, then your chances of becoming bilingual are limited. Also, you interpret the world outside of yours as inferior, as do most Americans, then you will not be inclined to learn another culture, and the main component of a culture is its language. Dutch people, for instance, are remarkably inclined to learn many languages. It is due to many factors, but one of them, for instance, is the fact that television programmes are never Dubbed, but they’re simply subtitled. This cause the population to be exposed to other sounds very early (on). The programmes are not dubbed and simply sub-titled, not because they are (too) lazy to do that, but because they feel that changing the audio on movies, or documentaries produces a very inauthentic version of these programmes, just as if you were to have somebody sing in Dutch over a song of the Beatles: it would make no sense!

I HAVE A DREAM, ABBA

A song can teach much, a teacher can teach a lot, so much, thankful everyday and respect your teacher, homage to him/her everything you got, for sure your teacher gave some important lessons to you, never forget to thanks him/her and say/call him, her telling how much he/she was important for you. Thank you teacher, you are a hero/heroin. 

Author of this Exercise: Maria Helena Sabadini from Italy

Source: http://www.englishexercises.org/makeagame/viewgame.asp?id=3975

"I Have A Dream" by ABBA

EXERCISE ONE: listen to the song and fill in the blanks with  SOMETHING, ANYTHING, EVERYTHING

I have a dream, a song to sing
To help me cope with 
If you see the wonder of a fairy tale
You can take the future even if you fail
I believe in angels
 good in  I see
I believe in angels
When I know the time is right for me
I'll cross the stream - I have a dream

I have a dream, a fantasy
To help me through reality
And my destination makes it worth the while
Pushing through the darkness still another mile
I believe in angels
 good in  I see
I believe in angels
When I know the time is right for me
I'll cross the stream - I have a dream
I'll cross the stream - I have a dream

MUSIC

I have a dream, a song to sing
To help me cope with 
If you see the wonder of a fairy tale
You can take the future even if you fail
I believe in angels
 good in  I see
I believe in angels
When I know the time is right for me
I'll cross the stream - I have a dream
I'll cross the stream - I have a dream

EXERCISE TWO: listen again, this time you have to choose the correct verb for each blank space  

I amhave a dream, a song to singring

To help me notehelp me cope with anything
If you sawsee the wonder of a fairy tale
You can maketake the future even if you mailfail

I believedbelieve in angels
Something good in everything I seemeet
I believedbelieve in angels
When I knewknow the time is right for me
I'll crossedcross the stream - I amhave a dream
I amhave a dream, a fantasy
To helphop me through reality
And my destination makemakes it worth the while
Pushing through the darkness still another mile
I believedbelieve in angels
Something good in everything I seemeet

I believedbelieve in angels
When I knewknow the time is right for me
I'll crossedcross the stream - I amhave a dream

I'll crossedcross the stream - I amhave a dream

MUSIC

I amhave a dream, a song to singring

To help me notehelp me cope with anything
If you sawsee the wonder of a fairy tale
You can maketake the future even if you mailfail

I believedbelieve in angels
Something good in everything I seemeet
I believedbelieve in angels
When I knewknow the time is right for me
I'll crossedcross the stream - I amhave a dream
I'll crossedcross the stream - I amhave a dream

A beloved city, despite its problems

 Source: MAGANEWS

For more info, get in touch through http://www.maganews.com.br interesting content.

São Paulo

A beloved [1] city, despite its problems

There is no shortage [2] of problems in São Paulocity, but even so two recent surveys have revealed that it is growing in Brazilian’s affections

   

    Flooding [3], chaotic traffic, a lack of security, and a deficient public health service. These and other problems are routine for people living in the capital of São Paulo State.  However, despite these problems, residents of São Paulo are happier with the city today than they were nine years ago. At least, that is what a survey carried out in January 2010 by the Datafolha Institute says.  The same institute had carried out a survey in 2001 which said that over half the paulistanos wanted to leave the city.  As the years have gone by, many of them have changed their minds [4]. Datafolha’s latest survey says that most residents of São Paulo are not thinking of leaving the city. The Institute asked residents what score [5] they would give São Paulo. Over half of interviewees – 51% - gave scores of eight or more out of ten. Despite its problems, São Paulo has much to offer, such as great job and business opportunities, and an excellent range [6] of leisure [7] and service options. The Datafolha survey was published by the newspaper  Folha de SP on January 24^th, on the eve [8] of the city’s anniversary. 

“The best city in Brazil”

In 2009 the magazine Viagem e Turismo (published by Abril) carried out a survey among its readers to find “the best city in Brazil.”  São Paulo came first, thanks to the wealth of options in restaurants, shopping, nightlife and the quality of hotels. The State capital is visited by about 11 million tourists a year. Of this total, 50% go on business, 39% on leisure, and the rest for healthcare, to study, and visit family.

Matéria publicada na edição de número 53 da revista Maganews.

Áudio – David Hatton

Foto (Catedral da Sé) – Jefferson Pancieri (SPTur)

Vocabulary

1 beloved – amada / querida

2 shortage - escassez

3 flooding (or flood) – enchente

4 change (one’s) mind – mudar de idéia

5 score – aqui = nota / conceito

6 range – variedade / abrangência

7 leisure - lazer

8 eve – véspera

Blockbuster Harry Potter - magic turns into a fortune

Genuine Brazilian magazine, maganews has the best English content, specially for students and English teachers, get in touch and take out a subscription, affordable price. All credits for www.maganews.com.br or just click on the title. 

Blockbuster

Harry Potter - magic turns into a fortune

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows [1]: Part 1" grossed [2] more than US$ 330 million worldwide in its first weekend in movie theaters

The Harry Potter saga is coming to an end. In recent years seven books and six movies have been produced.  The seventh - and final- film in the series - "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:Part 1" has been split [3] into two parts. The first premiered [4] in theaters on November 19 and the second is scheduled for release on July 15, 2011. On the first weekend of showing, thenew movie made over US$330 million dollars in theaters in over 50 countries. The six previous [5] Potter films earned US$ 5.4 billion worldwide for Warner Bros. studio.

Another dangerous mission for Potter

In the seventh adventure film for the most famous wizard [6] in the world, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) leaves Hogwarts (the school for young wizards) in search of a challenge: to find and destroy the "horcruxes". The horcruxes are objects in which the villain Voldemort has placed pieces of his soul. These objects carry the secret of power and immortality for the villain.  It is a dangerous challenge, but Harry is not alone: he has the help of his great companions Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson). The film is based on the story by JK Rowling and was directed by David Yates.

A próxima edição de Maganews vai trazer uma matéria especial sobre a história do bruxo mais famoso de todos os tempos, como ele surgiu, como vivia JK Rowling quando ela criou o personagem, os números que comprovam por que a série Potter virou um fenômeno da literatura infanto-juvenil e também no cinema e ainda o último filme da saga - Harry Potter e as Relíquias da Morte - Parte 2.

Matéria publicada na edição de dezembro da revista Maganews.

Áudio – David Hatton

Vocabulary

1 deathly hallows – relíquias da morte

2 to gross – ganhar / faturar

3 to split into – dividir em

4 premiered - estreou

5 previous – anteriores

6 wizard – bruxo

Margaret Bourke-White: A Fearless News Photographer part I

Source: www.manythings.org/voa/people

I'm Barbara Klein. And I'm Steve Ember with PEOPLE IN AMERICA in VOA Special English. Today we tell about photographer Margaret Bourke-White, one of the leading news reporters of the twentieth century.

(MUSIC)

A young woman is sitting on her knees on top of a large metal statue. She is not in a park.  She is outside an office building high above New York City.   The young woman reached the statue by climbing through a window on the sixty-first floor.  She wanted to get a better picture of the city below.

The woman is Margaret Bourke-White. She was one of the leading news reporters of the twentieth century. But she did not write the news. She told her stories with a camera. She was a fearless woman of great energy and skill.  Her work took her from America's Midwest to the Soviet Union. From Europe during World War Two to India, South Africa and Korea. Through her work, she helped create the modern art of photojournalism.

In some ways, Bourke-White was a woman ahead of her time. She often did things long before they became accepted in society. She was divorced.  She worked in a world of influential men, and earned their praise and support. She wore trousers and colored her hair.  Yet, in more important ways, she was a woman of and for her times. She became involved in the world around her and recorded it in pictures for the future.

(MUSIC)

Margaret Bourke-White was born in New York City in nineteen-oh-four. When Margaret was very young, the family moved to New Jersey.   Her mother, Minnie Bourke, worked on publications for the blind. Her father, Joseph White, was an engineer and designer in the printing industry. He also liked to take pictures.  Their home was filled with his photographs. Soon young Margaret was helping him take and develop his photographs.

When she was eight years old, her father took her inside a factory to watch the manufacture of printing presses.  In the foundry, she saw hot liquid iron being poured to make the machines.  She remembered this for years to come.

Margaret attended several universities before completing her studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York in nineteen twenty-seven.  She studied engineering, biology and photography.   She married while she was still a student. But the marriage only lasted one year.

Margaret took the name Bourke-White, the last names of her mother and father. In nineteen twenty-eight, she began working in the midwestern city of Cleveland, Ohio.  It was then one of the centers of American industry. She became an industrial photographer at the Otis Steel Company.  In the hot, noisy factories where steel was made, she saw beauty and a subject for her pictures.

She said: "Industry is alive.  The beauty of industry lies in its truth and simpleness.  Every line has a purpose, and so is beautiful. Whatever art will come out of this industrial age will come from the subjects of industry themselves…which are close to the heart of the people."

Throughout America and Europe, engineers and building designers found beauty in technology.  Their machines and buildings had artistic forms.  In New York, the Museum of Modern Art opened in nineteen twenty-nine.  One of its goals was to study the use of art in industry.  Bourke-White's photographic experiments began with the use of industry in art.

Bourke-White's first pictures inside the steel factory in Cleveland were a failure. The difference between the bright burning metal and the black factory walls was too extreme for her camera.  She could not solve the problem until she got new equipment and discovered new techniques of photography.  Then she was able to capture the sharp difference between light and dark.  The movement and power of machines.  The importance of industry.

Sometimes her pictures made you feel you were looking down from a great height, or up from far below.  Sometimes they led you directly into the heart of the activity.

In New York, a wealthy and influential publisher named Henry Luce saw Bourke-White's pictures.  Luce published a magazine called Time. He wanted to start a new magazine.  It would be called Fortune, and would report about developments in industry. Luce sent a telegram to Bourke-White, asking her to come to New York immediately.  She accepted a job as photographer for Fortune magazine.  She worked there from nineteen twenty-nine to nineteen thirty-three.

(MUSIC)

Margaret Bourke-White told stories in pictures, one image at a time.   She used each small image to tell part of the bigger story. The technique became known as the photographic essay.  Other magazines and photographers used the technique.  But Bourke-White – more than most photographers – had unusual chances to develop it.

In the early nineteen thirties, she traveled to the Soviet Union three times.  Later she wrote:

"Nothing invites me so much as a closed door.  I cannot let my camera rest until I have opened that door. And I wanted to be first. I believed in machines as objects of beauty.  So I felt the story of a nation trying to industrialize – almost overnight – was perfect for me."

On her first trip to the Soviet Union, Bourke-White traveled on the Trans-Siberian Railway.  She carried many cameras and examples of her work. When she arrived in Moscow, a Soviet official gave her a special travel permit, because he liked her industrial photographs. The permit ordered all Soviet citizens to help her while she was in the country.

Bourke-White spoke to groups of Soviet writers and photographers. They asked her about camera techniques, and also about her private life.

After one gathering, several men surrounded her and talked for a long time. They spoke Russian. Not knowing the language, Bourke-White smiled in agreement at each man as he spoke.  Only later did she learn that she had agreed to marry each one of them.  Her assistant explained the mistake and said to the men: "Miss Bourke-White loves nothing but her camera."

By the end of the trip, Margaret Bourke-White had traveled eight thousand kilometers throughout the Soviet Union. She took hundreds of pictures, and published some of them in her first book, "Eyes on Russia." She returned the next year to prepare for a series of stories for the New York Times newspaper. And she went back a third time to make an educational movie for the Kodak film company.

Bourke-White visited Soviet cities, farms and factories.  She took pictures of workers using machines.  She took pictures of peasant women, village children, and even the mother of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. She took pictures of the country's largest bridge, and the world's largest dam.  She used her skill in mixing darkness and light to create works of art. She returned home with more than three thousand photographs – the first western documentary on the Soviet Union.

(MUSIC)

Margaret Bourke-White had seen a great deal for someone not yet thirty years old. But in nineteen thirty-four, she saw something that would change her idea of the world. Fortune magazine sent her on a trip through the central part of the United States.  She was told to photograph farmers – from America's northern border with Canada to its southern border with Mexico.

Some of the farmers were victims of a terrible shortage of rain, and of their own poor farming methods.  The good soil had turned to dust. And the wind blew the dust over everything.  It got into machines and stopped them.  It chased the farmers from their land, although they had nowhere else to go.

Bourke-White had never given much thought to human suffering.  After her trip, she had a difficult time forgetting.  She decided to use her skills to show all parts of life.  She would continue taking industrial pictures of happy, healthy people enjoying their shiny new cars.  But she would tell a different  story in her photographic essays.

Under one picture she wrote: "While machines are making great progress in automobile factories, the workers might be under-paid.  Pictures can be beautiful. But they must tell facts, too."  We will continue the story of photographer Margaret Bourke-White next week.

(MUSIC)

This program was written by Shelley Gollust. It was produced by Lawan Davis.  Our studio engineer was Tom Verba.  I'm Steve Ember. And I'm Barbara Klein.  Join us again next week for PEOPLE IN AMERICA in VOA Special English.