NEW YORK: A CONEY ISLAND OF THE MIND

NEW YORK: A CONEY ISLAND OF THE MIND

Source:  www.speakup.com.br

Before do the exercise, listen to the podcast first about http://englishtips-self-taught.blogspot.com/2011/09/julianne-moore_19.html 

BEFORE You READ.

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

a) Do you look forward to time off, like weekends, holidays, etc? Why (not)?

b) What do you do to relax? Why?

c) Do you prefer active holidays or just relaxing? Why?

d) Have you ever been to an amusement park? Why (not)?

e) If so, describe it to your partner.

f) Do you think amusement parks are a good idea? Why (not)?

Task 2. Vocabulary. Match the English words/expressions on the left with their Portuguese translations on the right. If you don’t know, guess!

1	Playground		ele martela pregos na cabeça
2	amusement park		ele pendura bolas de boliche nas orelhas e as faz girar
3	Birthplace		engolidora de espadas
4	to seem		uma garotinha
5	Undergoing		números, apresentações
6	Boroughs		o show do bizarro
7	enclosing a fence …to go in		sentimentos contrastantes
8	Rollercoaster		desfile de sereias
9	having no manners		cinemas
10	frozen custard		lâmpada
11	proper ways of behavior		convidar para um encontro
12	wandering around ... in a bathing suit		passear pela praia em  trajes de banho
13	asking for a date		modos apropriados de se comportar
14	Light bulb		sorvete cremoso
15	movie theaters		sem bons modos
16	Mermaid Parade		montanha russa
17	mixed feelings		parque de diversões
18	“The Freak Show”		colocar uma cerca em torno de uma série de brinquedos (atrações) e cobrar um só ingresso de entrada
19	Acts		regiões, distritos
20	a Young Gal		lugar de nascimento
21	juggles a chainsaw		passar por
22	he hammers nails into his head		costumes, hábitos
23	fire eater		Faz malabarismos com uma motosserra
24	he hangs bowling balls ... around		parecer

Now check your ideas in the glossary. How many did you get right?

READING

TASK 3. Prediction. You are going to read a text about "Coney Island: the world's playground". Before you

read, decide which of these facts about "Coney Island" are true and why (not). Work with your partner(s).

Coney Island is famous because:

a) The rollercoaster was invented there

b) The hot dog was invented there

c) Soft ice cream was invented there

d) The light bulb was introduced to the world there

e) Movie theaters were introduced there

TASK 4. Reading for Specific information. Read the first paragraph as quickly as possible and find the answers to TASK 3. Were you correct? Check your answers with your partner(s)

TASK 5. Discussion: Which of the facts from tasks 3 and 4 surprise you the most / least? Why? Do you believe in all of it? Why (not)? Discuss these questions with your partner(s)

TASK 6. Prediction. You are going to read some more information about Coney Island. Before you read, decide how to correct these incorrect facts about "Coney Island." Work with your partner(s).

a) Coney Island has been in decline since 1958

b) Coney Island has the smallest art parade in the USA, the "Mermaid Parade," and it was started in 1980.

c) There has been some discussion on how to revive Coney Island but nothing definitive yet.

d) Coney Island has appeared in a few minor movies.

TASK 7. Reading for Specific information. Read the rest of the text as quickly as possible and find the answers to TASK6. Were you correct? Check your answers with your partner(s)

AFTER YOU READ

TASK 8. Speaking and writing.

a) Would you like to go to Coney Island? Why (not)?

b) What do you think about the "Freak Show"? Why?

c) Do you think shows with animals, children and people with physical disabilities should be banned? Why

(not)?

d) Do you think zoos and circuses should be banned? Why (not)?

e) What about amusement parks? Should they be banned? Why (not)?

Clara Barton,1821-1912: A Life of Caring for Others

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

source of the picture laportecounty.redcross.org







I'm Ray Freeman. And I'm Shirley Griffith with the Special English program, PEOPLE IN AMERICA. Every week we tell about a person who was important in the history of the United States. Today we tell about a woman who spent her life caring for others, Clara Barton. (MUSIC)

 

Clara Barton was a small woman. Yet she made a big difference in many lives. Today her work continues to be important to thousands of people in trouble. Clara Barton was an unusual woman for her time. She was born on Christmas day, December twenty-fifth, eighteen twenty-one. In those days, most women were expected to marry, have children and stay home to take care of them. Barton, however, became deeply involved in the world. By the time of her death in nineteen twelve, she had begun a revolution that led to the right of women to do responsible work for society. As a nurse, she cared for thousands of Wounded soldiers. She began the American Red Cross. And, she successfully urged the American government to accept the Geneva Convention. That treaty established standards for conditions for soldiers injured or captured during wartime.

 

Clara Barton really began her life of caring for the sick when she was only eleven years old. She lived with her family on a farm in the northeastern state of Massachusetts. One of herbrothers, David, was seriously injured while helping build a barn. For two years, Clara Barton took care of David until he was healed. Most eleven-year-old girls would have found the job impossible. But Clara felt a great need to help. And she was very good at it. She also seemed to feel most safe when she was at home with her mother and father, or riding a horse on her family's land. 

As a young child, Clara had great difficulty studying and making friends at school. Her four brothers and sisters were much older than she. Several of them were teachers. For most of Clara's early years, she was taught at home. She finished school at age fifteen. Then she went to work in her brother David's clothing factory. The factory soon burned, leaving her without a job.

Clara Barton decided to teach school. In eighteen thirty-six, she passed the teacher's test and began teaching near her home in North Oxford, Massachusetts. She became an extremely popular and respected teacher. After sixteen years of teaching, she realized she did not know all she wanted to know. She wanted more education. Very few universities accepted women in those days. So Clara went to a special school for girls in Massachusetts. While in that school, she became interested in public education.

 

After she graduated, a friend suggested she try to establish the first public school in the state of New Jersey. Officials there seemed to think that education was only for children whose parents had enough money to pay for private schools. The officials did not want Barton to start a school for poor people. But she offered to teach without pay for three months. She told the officials that they could decide after that if shehad been successful. They gave her an old building with poor equipment. And they gave her six very active little boys to teach. At the end of five weeks, the school was too small for the number of children who wanted to attend. By the end of the year, the town built her a bigger, better school. They had to give her more space. She then had six hundred students in the school. (MUSIC)

 

Within a year, Clara Barton had lost her voice. She had to give up teaching. She moved to Washington, D.C. to begin a new job writing documents for the United States government. Clara Barton started her life as a nurse during the early days of the Civil War in eighteen sixty-one. One day, she went to the train center in Washington to meet a group of soldiers from Massachusetts. Many of them had been her friends. She began taking care of their wounds. Not long after, she left her office job. She became a full-time nurse for the wounded on their way from the fields of battle to the hospital. Soon, Barton recognized that many more lives could be saved if the men had medical help immediately after they were hurt. Army rules would not permit anyone except male soldiers to be on the battlefield. But Barton took her plans for helping the wounded to a high army official. He approved her plans.

 

Barton and a few other women worked in the battle areas around Washington. She heard about the second fierce battle at Bull Run in the nearby state of Virginia. She got into a railroad car and traveled there. Bull Run must have been a fearful sight. Northern forces were losing a major battle there. Everywhere Barton looked lay wounded and dying men. Day and night she worked to help the suffering. When the last soldier had been placed on a train, Barton finally left. She was just in time to escape the southern army. She escaped by riding a horse, a skill she gained as a young girl. (MUSIC)

 

For four years, Clara Barton was at the front lines of the bloodiest battles in the war between the North and the South. She was there at Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Charleston. Shewas there at Spotsylvania, Petersburg, and Richmond. She cleaned the wounds of badly injured soldiers. She eased the pain of the dying. And she fed those who survived. When she returned to Washington, Clara Barton found she was a hero. She had proved that women could work in terrible conditions. She made people understand that women could provide good medical care. She also showed that nursing was an honorableprofession. After the war ended, Barton's doctor sent her to Europe to rest. Instead of resting, she met with representatives of the International Red Cross. The organization had been establishedin eighteen sixty-three to offer better treatment for people wounded or captured during wars. She was told that the United States was the only major nation that refused to join.

 

Barton began planning a campaign to create an American Red Cross. Before she could go home, though, the war between France and Prussia began in eighteen seventy. Again, Clara Barton went to the fields of battle to nurse the wounded. After a while her eyes became infected. The woman of action was ordered to remain quiet for months in a dark room, or become blind. When she returned to the United States she again suffered a serious sickness. She used the time in a hospital to write letters in support of an American Red Cross organization. (MUSIC)

 

In eighteen eighty-one, Barton's campaign proved successful. The United States Congress signed the World's Treaty of the International Red Cross. This established the American Chapter of the Red Cross. Clara Barton had reached one of her major goals in life. The next year she successfully urged Congress to accept the Geneva Convention. This treaty set the international rules for treatment of soldiers wounded or captured in war. For twenty-five years, Clara Barton continued as the president of the American Red Cross. Under her guidance, the organization helped people in all kinds of trouble. She directed the aid efforts for victims of floods in Johnstown, Pennsylvania and Galveston, Texas. She led Red Cross workers in Florida during an outbreak of the disease yellow fever. And she helped during periods when people were starving in Russia and Armenia.

 

Clara Barton retired when she was in her middle eighties. For her last home, she chose a huge old building near Washington, D.C. The building had been used for keeping Red Cross equipment and then as her office. It was made with material saved from aid centers built after the flood in Johnstown. In that house on the Potomac River, Clara Barton lived her remaining days. She died after a life of service to others in April, nineteen twelve, at age ninety. She often said: "You must never so much as think if you like it or not, if it is bearable or not. You must never think of anything except the need --- and how to meet it." (MUSIC)

 

This Special English program was written by Jeri Watson. I'm Ray Freeman. 

And I'm Shirley Griffith. Join us again next week for another PEOPLE IN AMERICAprogram on the Voice of America.

Ivete Sangalo, a famous Brazilian Singer shines in New York

Ivete Sangalo shines in New York

Source: www.maganews.com.br recomendo a professores e alunos excelente revista para mais informações visite o site.

I really recommend maganews for teachers and students to get an excellent magazine for more information visit the website.

The Brazilian singer plays a historic show inMadison Square Garden, the most famousstage [1] in the world, and grabs [2] the attention of the US press [3]

Ivete Sangalo is more than just an excellent singer. She infects the audience with her energy, joy and sense of humor, whether on a stage or on a truck [4] in Salvador’s carnival.

She is having one of the best times of her life. In October 2009 the singer fromBahia celebrated the birth of her first child. In February this year she shared [5] the stage with no less than Beyoncé, in a show in Salvador, and recently she played big shows in theUSA and Canada. Ivete is beginning to get known on the international scene. On September 4^th she played a historic show in New York, in Madison Square Garden, the most famous arena in the world. Ivete was the first Brazilian singer to play there. The show was a hit – 15,000 people went to see it. About 1,000 people were involved in the production. According to an article in the newspaper O Globo, the total cost of putting [6] the show on was US$ 5 million.

Brazil’s Beyoncé

Ivete’s performance echoed round the US press. Several journalists praised [7] her talent and charisma. Some of them called her Brazil’s Beyoncé. However, for The New York Times’ music critic, Jon Pareles,  Ivete will find it difficult to become a big international star because of the style of her music (axé) and also because she sings in Portuguese. Ivete couldn’t impress him, but she has already shared the stage with big pop stars, such as Shakira and Alejandro Sanz, and she has sung in English and Spanish. There is a big chance that Shakira and Ivete will play shows together in Brazil in 2011, according to an article published in the newspaper O Estado de SP.

Primeira parte da matéria publicada na edição de número 57 da Revista Maganews.

Áudio – Aasita Muralikrishna

Fotos de Ivete Sangalo – Cia de Foto

Vocabulary

1 stage – palco

2 to grab (agarrar) – aqui = atrair

3 press – imprensa

4 truck – aqui = trio elétrico

5 to share – dividir

6 to put on – realizar

7 to praise - elogiar

Remembering Three Interesting Americans VOA SPECIAL ENGLISH

Source: http://www.voanews.com/learningenglish/home/american-life/Remembering-Three-Interesting-Americans-130230353.html
Explore the VOA's website, listen to the podcasts and practise a Real English with Native Speakers. 

Photo: nasm.si.edu

Betty Skelton poses with her airplane "Little Stinker."

BARBARA KLEIN: I’m Barbara Klein. 

MARIO RITTER: And I’m Mario Ritter with EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English. Today, we learn about three Americans who died recently. Eugene Nida had a big influence in making Christianity’s holy book, the Bible, available in hundreds of languages. Betty Skelton set height and speed records as a pilot and racecar driver. And Michael Hart helped invent the electronic book and the online library called Project Gutenberg.

(MUSIC)

BARBARA KLEIN: Eugene Nida was a language expert, a Baptist religious worker, and a Bible historian. He worked for the American Bible Society for fifty years. Mr. Nida is widely considered the father of modern Bible translation. He helped translate the world’s most popular book, the Bible, into two hundred languages.

Eugene Nida was born in Oklahoma City in nineteen fourteen. He studied two ancient languages, Greek and Latin, in college, then completed a master’s degree program in New Testament Greek. He later received a doctorate degree from the University of Michigan in linguistics. Mister Nida began working for the American Bible Society in nineteen forty-three. That same year, he also became a Baptist clergyman.

American Bible Society

Eugene Nida sits at center in this photograph from the American Bible Society.

MARIO RITTER: Eugene Nida was known for developing a new method of Bible translation, called “functional equivalence.” He believed that language in Bible translations had to be understandable and culturally meaningful to the people reading them. Before Mr. Nida, different language versions of the Bible were mainly the product of western religious workers. The workers often had limited knowledge of other languages. So their translations were often based on an exact word-by-word translation.

Mr. Nida developed Bible translations that honored the original Greek and Hebrew writings. But they also sounded natural and made use of a culture’s own linguistic expressions.

BARBARA KLEIN: Mr. Nida traveled all over the world, teaching native translators about his method. He believed that translation was impossible without cultural understanding. One of his most difficult projects involved producing an Inukitut version of the Bible. Inukitut is the language of the Inuit people who live in the Arctic area. This project lasted twenty-four years.

The Bible is filled with stories that take place in warm places, often with deserts. Biblical stories involve animals like camels, donkeys and sheep. Yet the Inuit Bible had to be understood by a people who live in a climate of snow and ice. The animals they knew were walruses and seals.

Mr. Nida also learned that, in parts of Africa, sheep are considered damaging and problematic animals. So, Bible stories about sheep and shepherds had a very different meaning there than in the west.

MARIO RITTER: Mr. Nida also worked on creating the Good News Bible. This English language Bible was written in simple, modern English. It was aimed at non-native English speakers, but also became hugely successful with native English speakers.

Eugene Nida died on August twenty-fifth at the age of ninety-six. In all, he wrote more than forty books about languages, translations, and Biblical studies. He once said that it did not matter in what language a person reads the Bible. He said the goal was to “read it, understand it, and be transformed by its message.”

(MUSIC)

BARBARA KLEIN: Betty Skelton was often called “The First Lady of Firsts” because of the many records she set. She grew up in Pensacola, Florida, watching airplanes flying to and from a nearby navy base. As a child, she persuaded her parents to let her take flying lessons. By twelve, Betty made her first flight alone, although she was not legally permitted to do so until she turned sixteen. By sixteen she earned a permit to fly a plane and, two years later, received a commercial license.

MARIO RITTER: During the nineteen forties, female pilots were mostly barred from commercial and military flying. So Betty Skelton decided to use her flight skills in aerobatics, performing difficult turns, drops, and other exercises. She began performing and competing around the country.

She won the International Feminine Aerobatic Championship for three years in a row, starting in nineteen forty-eight. She and her little Pitts Special plane the “Little Stinker” became famous.

nasm.si.edu

The Pitts Special S-1C known as "Little Stinker."

BARBARA KLEIN: Dorothy Cochrane is an aviation expert at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. She has studied and worked with Betty Skelton.

DOROTHY COCHRANE: “Betty was such a wonderful aerobatic pilot that she really set the bar high for other women to follow behind her and she was a great role model for them. She really was as good as some of the men.”

BARBARA KLEIN: Ms. Cochrane says Betty Skelton flew during a period when men and women aerobatic pilots competed separately. And she set the example when later women did compete and win against men.

DOROTHY COCHRANE: “She also became the first woman to perform the inverted ribbon cut. And that’s a very tricky thing to do.”

BARBARA KLEIN: This flying trick involved using her plane’s propeller to cut a ribbon held between two tall sticks. Betty Skelton did this while flying about three meters off the ground—upside down.

MARIO RITTER: Once Ms. Skelton had made her mark flying, she moved on to racecars. She became the first female test driver in the racecar industry. She set several land speed records. She also set a cross-country record, driving from New York to California in under fifty-seven hours. And, she became one of the top women advertising experts working with General Motors in support of the company’s Corvette car.

DOROTHY COCHRANE: “She loved speed, that’s part of who she was and that was part of her attraction to aviation. And then when she did all she could in aviation, she moved on to automobiles. She still had a beautiful red corvette that she was driving around the retirement community that she lived in, passing some of the golf carts that other people were driving.”

MARIO RITTER: Ms. Skelton died in August at the age of eighty-five. Visitors to the Washington area can see her “Little Stinker” plane at the Smithsonian Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. The small red and white plane hangs high in the air above the entrance to the museum. And as its former owner would have liked, the plane is hanging upside down.

(MUSIC)

BARBARA KLEIN: Michael Hart is widely credited as the inventor of the first electronic book, or e-book. He also helped create Project Gutenberg, the first and largest free library on the Internet.

Mr. Hart was born in nineteen forty-seven in Tacoma, Washington, but grew up in Illinois. His father was a professor of Shakespearian literature and his mother was a mathematician.

MARIO RITTER: Michael Hart first became interested in the idea of information sharing while studying at the University of Illinois in the early nineteen seventies. He had permission to use the university’s mainframe computer.  This huge machine was connected to a network of other computers. He later estimated that the time given to him on the computer network was worth about one hundred million dollars. So, he wanted to come up with a project that was valuable enough to justify the cost of the technology.

BARBARA KLEIN: After attending an Independence Day celebration, Mr. Hart received a free copy of the Declaration of Independence. He decided to type the words of the document on the computer and share this text with the computer network. He decided that this was worth a hundred million dollars, because in the future hundreds of millions of people could use his copy of the Declaration of Independence.

This event marked the beginning of Project Gutenberg. Over the next ten years, Mr. Hart added the Bible, William Shakespeare’s plays and other texts to the project’s storage system.

MARIO RITTER: Mr. Hart said the goal of Project Gutenberg was to support the creation and spreading of e-books free of cost to computer users. He said this effort aimed to “break down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy.

Greg Newby is the head of the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. He says Mr. Hart’s philosophy behind the project was about helping people.

GREG NEWBY: “He had this idea that through literacy, through access to literature really, people could become literate. And then through literacy people could become educated, and through education people could empower themselves to have more successful lives and eventually participate in making the world a better place.”

MARIO RITTER: Today, Project Gutenberg contains more than thirty six thousand books. Most are no longer protected by copyright laws. Others are still protected by such laws, but were donated with the permission of the copyright owner. Project Gutenberg depends on volunteers to enter new books into its collection.

BARBARA KLEIN: Michael Hart once said that the Gutenberg Project represented a complete system change. It lets a person share his or her favorite book with millions of people.

GREG NEWBY: “Michael really was someone that sacrificed the ability to have what probably would have been a successful and, if he desired traditional career, to electronic books and to these principles of literacy and freedom of access to information.”

BARBARA KLEIN: Mr. Hart died earlier this month at the age of sixty-four. He once told a newspaper that there were only two things in the world that were truly free and in endless supply. He said these were the air we breathe and the texts on Project Gutenberg.

(MUSIC)

MARIO RITTER: This program was written and produced by Dana Demange. I’m Mario Ritter.

BARBARA KLEIN: And I’m Barbara Klein. Join us again next week for EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English.  

Learning with songs, by A-ha, Take on me

Source:http://www.englishexercises.org/makeagame/viewgame.asp?id=4430







All credits of this exercise for teacher Irina, she is an English teacher from Latvia. 


TalkingTakingTracing away 
I don't know what I'm to say
I'll say it awayagainanyway
today's a differentanothera nice day to find you
Shying away
I'll be coming for yourthea love O.K.


Take on me
Take me on
I'll be gone
in a day or tootwonight


So needless to tellsaysee I'm odds and ends
But that's me, stumbling againonce moreaway
Slowly learningunderstandingrealizing that life is O.K.
Say after me
It's no better to be safe than sorryworrythreatened.


Take on me
Take me on
I'll be gone
in a day or tootwonight.


The things that you seethinksay
Is it livelovetrue or just to play
My worries away
You're all the thingsthoughtswishes I've got to remember
You shying away
I'll be becominglookingcoming for you anyway


Take on me
Take me on
I'll be gone
in a day or tootwonight

English Speak, very interesting website.

Today I’m going to talk about ENGLSIH SPEAK website  http://www.englishspeak.com/. I saw it one of the Facebook communities about English and I think it’s really powerful, useful tool for us, English learners. Easy comprehension for beginners and there are useful quizzes, games, expressions among others.  On English tips’ blog look up for LEARN ENGLISH and you’ll find out this and a lot useful websites and blogs.

In conclusion for those interested to learn English we also on Facebook on https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000146638960 By the way, I want to thank you all members of this awesome group for the kind support. Telling for friends on FB or twitter, Google +.