Podcast Listen to English en Listen to English pag. 2

Bootifull!

En el Podcast Listen to English en Idiomas

05:34 min | hace 1 año

Bernard Matthews. Great Witchingham Hall, his first turkey farm, is in the background. This podcast is about turkeys. I don't me an the country Turkey, of course. I mean the big birds that many people eat at Christmas. There is a picture on the website if you want to know what a turkey looks like. A few days ago, the newspapers reported that a man named Bernard Matthews had died. He was 80 years old, and he was the biggest turkey farmer in Britain, and possibly in the world. There is an English expression “a self-made man”. A “self-made man” is someone who starts with nothing and goes on to make a lot of money, or to achieve a lot in some other way, entirely through hard work and enterprise. Bernard Matthews was a “self-made man.” He left school when he was 16 years old, without any formal qualifications. When he was 20, he bought some turkey eggs in a market, and a second-hand incubator. (An incubator is a device for keeping eggs warm, so that the little birds inside them can hatch.) His career in turkey farming had begun. A few years later, his business had grown and he needed a bigger space to keep his turkeys. He bought an old mansion house, Great Witchingham Hall. It was cheap because it was in very bad repair. He and his wife lived in two of the rooms of this enormous house. The turkeys lived in all the other rooms. This is what a turkey looks like! Most families in Britain eat turkey on Christmas day (and cold turkey for about two weeks afterwards!) You may think that this is an old tradition, but it is not. Sixty years ago, turkey was a luxury which only a few people could afford. It was Bernard Matthews who made cheap, frozen turkeys available for ordinary families, and persuaded people to buy them. Then he persuaded them that turkey was not just for Christmas, but for any time of the year. His company started to make other products containing turkey meat, and persuaded people to buy them as well. He became famous by appearing in the TV advertisements for his products. There is a link to one of these advertisements on the website. He told us that his turkey was “bootifull, really bootifull”. (“Bootifull” is how you say “beautiful” in Norfolk, which is where Bernard Matthews lived). People loved his TV adverts, and sales of Bernard Matthews' turkeys went higher and higher. Today, about one third of all the turkeys sold in Britain are Bernard Matthews' “bootifull” turkeys. By the time he died, Bernard Matthews was a very wealthy man; and today his company provides work for several thousand people. Bernard Matthews transformed turkey from a luxury which only a few people could enjoy into a food for everyone. Of course, he had to cut the costs of turkey farming, and find ways of rearing turkeys in huge numbers. He perfected what we call “factory farming” of turkeys in which thousands of birds are kept in huge sheds. He bought several old military airfields, and covered them with turkey sheds. He also perfected ways of turning turkey meat into “convenience foods” for busy people. In recent years, people have begun to criticise “factory farming” methods. They say that the birds are overcrowded and kept in near-darkness; and that they do little except eat and put on weight, until they are about six months old, when they are taken to be slaughtered. The birds require large doses of antibiotics and other medicines, because they are so crowded. Some of these chemicals remain in the turkey meat, and critics say that this is dangerous for human health. Processed turkey products, like other “fast foods”, often contain water, added chemicals and low-grade meat. They may be cheap, critics say, but they have low value as food, and help to make people overweight. So, what do you think? Are Bernard Matthews' turkeys really “bootifull”? Leave your comments on the website. File download (5:31 mins | 3 MB)
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William and Kate are engaged!

En el Podcast Listen to English en Idiomas

06:10 min | hace 1 año

Prince William and Kate Middleton are engaged to be married. Last week, the newspapers and television told us about an engagemen t. An “engagement” is when two people decide to get married. We say that the couple are “engaged to be married”, or simply that they are “engaged”. The engagement which was announced last week was between a helicopter pilot and a buyer for a well-known chain of clothing shops. So why was it on the front pages of the newspapers? You probably know the answer already. The helicopter pilot is Prince William, the grandson of our Queen; and the buyer from the clothes shop is Kate Middleton, who has been his girlfriend for several years. Prince William is second in line to the throne. What does that mean? Well, when our present Queen dies, Prince Charles – William's father – will become king. And when Charles dies, William will become king. He probably has a long time to wait, however, and in the meantime he is making himself useful by flying helicopters for the Royal Air Force. A hundred years ago, a Prince who was likely to become king was expected to find a wife from one of the other European royal families. Thankfully, however, things have changed. Kate Middleton is not a Princess, nor even the daughter of an old aristocratic family. Her parents used to work for British Airways – her mother was an air hostess. Later, they built a successful business which sells things for children's parties. The press have described Kate as “middle class” and “an ordinary girl”, but this isn't really true. She grew up in an expensive house in a nice area, and her parents paid for her to attend an exclusive private school. Kate and the Prince met when they were at University, in St Andrews in Scotland. They were obviously following the great British tradition of going to a University as far from their parents as possible. At the end of their first year at St Andrews, Will wanted to leave University, but Kate persuaded him to stay. And Kate has been the Prince's girlfriend ever since, except for a period a few years ago when they decided that they were “just good friends”. It sounds just like a million other boy/girl relationships all over the world. How do British people feel about the forthcoming royal wedding? Some people say that they don't care. They say that they have more important things to worry about. Others say that they don't like our royal family, and that Britain should become a republic. Yet other people are a bit sceptical. They say that the members of the royal family lead very artificial lives. They are constantly in the public eye, and journalists and photographers give them little peace or privacy. Too many royal marriages nowadays end in divorce. How will Kate cope? Will she find it too stressful? However, I think that most people regard our royal family as a sort of national soap opera. Like any good soap opera, the royal family has weddings, and babies, and divorces, and sometimes even funerals. We want our royal family to entertain us, just as television soap operas do. For years, we have read gossip in the newspapers about Will and Kate. We have never actually met either of them, of course, but we feel that we know them. And we are thrilled that they are now getting married. It is the happiest news we have had for a long time. The wedding will take place on 29 April next year. For the next 5 months, we will read everything that newspaper reporters can discover or invent about Will and Kate. We will discuss what style of wedding dress Kate will wear, who the bridesmaids will be, and where the happy couple will go for their honeymoon. We will buy “Kate and Will” souvenir mugs. Some of us will hang flags out of our bedroom windows. The wedding day will be a public holiday, so we can all sit at home and watch the wedding on television, or get in our cars and sit in traffic jams on the motorways. The people who are not interested in the royal family will secretly turn on their televisions to watch for a few minutes. For a short time we will forget the economic crisis, and our own personal problems. We will be a nation united in front of our television screens. It will be good entertainment, which is what our royal family does best. File download (6:08 mins | 3 MB)
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The Lighthouse Man

En el Podcast Listen to English en Idiomas

04:46 min | hace 1 año

Henry Winstanley's wood and stone lighthouse on the Eddystone Rocks. Britain is an island. We are surrounded by sea. Nowdays, yo u can get here by plane, or by train through the Channel Tunnel. But before planes were invented, and the Channel Tunnel was built, the only way to come to Britain was by sea. The seas around Britain can be very dangerous. The Romans, who conquered England in 43 AD, knew this. They built lighthouses at Dover in England and Boulogne in France to guide ships across the Channel. However, the lighthouses fell into disuse after the Romans left at the beginning of the 5th century. For hundreds of years, the seas around Britain were completely dark at night. There was nothing to help sailors find their way, or to warn them of dangers. Among the most dangerous rocks around our coast are the Eddystone Rocks. They lie about 14 kilometers from the shore of south-west England, in other words at exactly the place where ships crossing the Atlantic reach England. Over the centuries, hundreds of ships have been wrecked on the Eddystone Rocks and thousands of sailors have lost their lives. Now let us meet a man called Henry Winstanley. He was born in 1644, and as a young man he became interested in architecture and engineering. Later he became a merchant, and bought five ships. Within a few years, two of the ships had been wrecked on the Eddystone Rocks. He asked the government why nothing was done to protect ships from the rocks. The government said that the rocks were far too dangerous and too far from land to build a lighthouse there. “Nonsense,” replied Henry Winstanley. “I will build a lighthouse there myself”. And he did. He started work in 1696. However, England and France were at war, and the following year a French ship arrived at the rocks and took Winstanley and his men back to France as prisoners. The French King, Louis XIV, ordered that they should be released immediately. “I am at war with England, not with humanity”, he said. In November 1698, the lighthouse was ready. It was built of stone and wood, and candles provided the light at the top of the lighthouse. During the first winter, it was damaged by a storm, but Winstanley repaired it and made it stronger. Winstanley's lighthouse was the first lighthouse anywhere in the world to be built on a rock far out at sea. During the next five years, its little light sent its warning to passing ships, and not a single ship was wrecked on the Eddystone Rocks. In November 1703, however, a great storm struck southern England. It completely destroyed the lighthouse. Winstanley himself was in the lighthouse at the time, supervising some repairs, and he was killed. There is a lighthouse on the Eddystone Rocks today. It is the fourth lighthouse on the rocks, and it has kept sailors safe since 1882. Until 1982, a lighthouse keeper lived in the lighthouse to maintain and operate the light. It must have been the loneliest job in England. Today the lighthouse runs automatically. A maintenance crew visit occasionally by helicopter. It is very different from Winstanley's wood and stone lighthouse, with candles to warn ships to keep away from Eddystone. File download (4:44 mins | 2 MB)
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Beware

En el Podcast Listen to English en Idiomas

04:04 min | hace 1 año

Beware of the cat! Photo by Enrique Mendez/flickr. Today's podcast is about taking care! I want you to imagine that you are vi siting England. You and some friends decide to go for a walk in the country. The sun is shining, the birds are singing and all is right with the world. You walk through a pretty village, and then through a wood. You climb over a fence into a big field. “This would be a good place for a picnic,” you say. So you sit down on the grass under a tree, and unpack your picnic. Then your friend sees something. “There is a notice on the fence over there,” he says. “can you read what it says?” You look hard at the notice. You can hardly see the writing. “I think it says – beware of the bull!” you say. “What does ‘beware' mean?” You find your English dictionary at the bottom of your rucksack, You have just started to look for ‘beware' when you hear a snorting noise. You look up to see a large bull standing about 10 metres away. Now, some bulls are kind and “hospitable“http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/hospitable. They are pleased when visitors come to their field, and they try to make them welcome. One look at this bull, however, tells you that this is not the kind and hospitable sort of bull. He is, rather, the unkind and inhospitable sort of bull. There is only one thing to do. You and your friend run to the fence and climb over it. The bull runs after you, snorting angrily. He stares at you for a few minutes; then he goes back to the tree where you were sitting and starts to eat your picnic. Now you know what “beware” means. It means “danger! be careful!” “Beware” is actually a shortened form of “be aware”. You can use “beware” as an imperative verb – that means, a verb which gives orders or instructions. You can tell somebody “beware of the bull” or “beware of the dog”. But you cannot say “I beware of the bull” or “you beware of the the dog.” So, “beware” is an incomplete verb – you can only use it to warn someone to be careful. You will often see “beware” on notices that warn people about dangers. Near a railway line, there might be a notice “Beware of the trains”. Beside a river – “beware – deep water”. Or near a road junction – “beware of traffic from the right”. And here are some other words or phrases which you can use to tell somebody that something may be dangerous. danger! warning! caution! be careful! look out! take care! mind out! There is a little quiz on the website about warning notices and the places where you might find them. Take care! Quiz : beware of the dog! :: File download (4:02 mins | 2 MB)
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Canal: Listen to English ... ver+

Getting the hang of it!

En el Podcast Listen to English en Idiomas

04:54 min | hace 1 año

This dog has got the hang of swimming! Photo by rich renomeron/flickr. Today, we meet the English expression “to get the h ang of”. If you “get the hang of” something, it means that you have started to do it properly. You are not an expert yet, but you have understood the basic idea. For example, imagine that you are learning to swim. You have never been swimming before. You are a complete beginner. The other people in your swimming class are complete beginners too. The swimming instructor stands at the side of the swimming pool and shows you what to do. You have to reach forward with your arms, and kick your legs in the water. You try it. You splash wildly with your legs, and the poor swimming instructor gets very wet. A lot of water goes up your nose. But you do not move. You try again, and again. By the end of the swimming lesson, you can swim about 2 meters without your feet touching the bottom of the swimming pool. “Well done,” says the swimming instructor. “You are getting the hang of it.” He means that are beginning to understand how to swim. Kevin is learning to cook. Ever since he was a student, Kevin has lived off food which comes in tins or packets, plus takeaway pizzas, of course. Then he met Joanne, who is a good cook. But she is not willing to do all the cooking. She thinks that Kevin should do his share. So Kevin buys a cookery book, with beautiful pictures of delicious food. He sits in bed and reads it. The first day he cooks some chicken. However, the oven is too hot and the chicken is burnt. The second day, he makes some curry. The recipe said to add “half a teaspoon“ of salt. Kevin misunderstood, and used half a tablespoon of salt. Then the rice stuck to the bottom of the pan, and the meal was inedible. But on the third day, things were better. Kevin made a chocolate cake, and it was really quite good. “This is delicious”, said Joanne as she ate a third slice of cake. “You are getting the hang of cooking. Perhaps you should cook every day.” Joanne has a nephew. His name is Jack and he is three years old. He has learnt to talk, and indeed he talks all the time. But, like most other English three year olds, he does not understand about English irregular verbs. He thinks that you can talk about things in the past by adding “-ed” to the end of a verb – any verb! When Joanne went to visit her sister, her conversation with Jack went like this: “Hello Jack. What did you do today?” “I goed to nursery.” “Oh, you went to nursery. And what did you do at nursery?” “We singed a song. Then we sitted on the mat and the teacher readed a story.” “I see. And what did you do after nursery?” “Me and mummy goed to the shops. We buyed some sweets.” “You bought some sweets. What happened to the sweets, Jack?” “I eated them.” As you can see, Jack has not got the hang of irregular verbs. English would of course be much easier if we all spoke like Jack, but unfortunately English has lots of irregular verbs, and you (and Jack) just have to learn them . Have you got the hang of irregular verbs? There is a quiz on the website where you can test your skills. Quiz about irregular verbs. :: File download (4:51 mins | 2 MB)
Género: Podcasting
Canal: Listen to English ... ver+

Is it a horse or a dog?

En el Podcast Listen to English en Idiomas

05:57 min | hace 1 año

The White Horse of Uffington – or is it a dog? A long time ago, I made a podcast about graffiti, and the graffiti artist c alled Banksy. ‘Graffiti' means pictures or writing painted illegally on a wall or a building, or the side of a train or a bus. Many people think that graffiti are unsightly. We have a very special sort of rural graffiti in England. Over a large part of southern England, the rock underneath the ground is chalk. Chalk is a sort of limestone. It is made of the bodies of tiny sea creatures which lived millions of years ago. If you take away the grass and other plants from a chalk hillside, you will reach the white chalk rock underneath. Someone, a long time ago, discovered that you can remove the grass to make a picture or pattern on the chalk hillside. We call a picture on the side of a chalk hill a “hill figure”. A “figure” here just means the shape of a body of a man or an animal. There is also a scientific term “geoglyph” which means a hill figure. “Geoglyph” is not a word we use every day, but you might like to remember it to impress your English teacher! There are nearly 60 surviving hill figures in England. Many of them are horses, though there are also human figures and military badges. There was also at one time a hill figure in the shape of a map of Australia, but it has now disappeared. Among the human figures are the Long Man of Wilmington, and the Cerne Abbas Giant. There is a picture of the Cerne Abbas giant on the website – he is naked, and .. oh, children, look away now! The Cerne Abbas Giant Some people like to think that the hill figures are very ancient. You will find web sites which say that they were made by the Celts, the people who lived in this country 2000 and more years ago, and that they were part of the Celts' magical religion. However, the truth is that most hill figures are quite recent. Many date from the 19th century, and often we know the name of the person who made them. Some are older, but with one important exception which I will talk about in a minute, experts think that they are not more than about 400 years old. Hill figures need to be maintained. In time, the grass grows over them and they disappear. We know of at least 57 more hill figures which existed at one time but are now lost. Hill figures have survived only because local people have been willing, every few years, to repair the figure and remove the grass which has grown on it. The hill figures are fun and interesting, but they are not generally great works of art. They look as if a horse or a man has laid down on the side of the hill while people cut away the grass around them. They are a bit like children's drawings. The White Horse at Uffington is different. There is a picture of it on the website. It has lines which suggest the shape of the horse – its back, its legs, its head. The horse looks as if it is moving – galloping across the hillside. The person who made it was obviously a talented artist. Perhaps it will not surprise you to know that the Uffington White Horse really is old. We think it was created in the Bronze Age, between 2,500 and 4,000 years ago. Why did the Bronze Age people make the horse? Does it have a religious meaning? Or did the artist just look at the empty hillside and say – like a graffiti artist today – “I want to fill that empty space with a really big horse!” But is it a horse? Recently, a retired vet called Olaf Swarbrick has argued that the figure cannot be a horse, because it is too long and thin. Mr Swarbrick says that it is probably a dog, perhaps a hunting dog. This has caused a fuss in the press. We English have fixed ideas about our history and we do not like it when someone has new ideas. The National Trust, who own the land on which the horse or dog is situated, say it is definitely a horse. But what do you think? Horse or dog? You can vote on the website. web survey Quiz : how well did you understand the podcast? :: File download (5:49 mins | 3 MB)
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Canal: Listen to English ... ver+

Off to University!

En el Podcast Listen to English en Idiomas

05:45 min | hace 1 año

Hi, ho! The seven dwarfs in the Disney film ‘Snow White' are off to work! In English, it is the little words that cause th e problems. Big words – like “misappropriation” or “truthfulness” – are easy. If you do not understand what they mean, you can look them up in a dictionary. But little words – like “up”, “down”, “on” and “off” – are difficult because they have so many possible meanings. We often join these little words to a verb, to make a phrasal verb. There are hundreds of phrasal verbs in English. In spoken English, we use phrasal verbs all the time. Today, we look at the little word “off”. If I say, “I am going off to work “ it means that I am leaving home to go to work. Very often we leave out the verb “go”, and we say simply, “I am off to work“, or “We are off to Paris at the weekend”, or “He is off to visit his mother“. And if I say “I am off work“, it means that I am not at work; perhaps I am ill, or I am taking a day's holiday. “A day off“ means a day when I do not have to go to work. So you see, “off” can have the meaning “going away from somewhere”, or “not being at the place where I normally am”. There is a quiz on the website about sentences and expressions using the word “off”. So now you will understand exactly what I mean when I say that my son is “off to University“. He has left home to go to University. About 40% of young people in England go to University, generally when they are 18 or 19 years old. Some young people stay at home and go to a University in their own town. But most want to be off – they want to leave home and go to a University where they can live independently. If they want to get as far away from their parents as possible, they choose a University like Exeter in the far south-west of England or Aberdeen in Scotland. The University academic year starts at the end of September or the beginning of October. On the motorways, you can see cars loaded with personal possessions, computers, stereos, skateboards and bicycles and other things which a young student needs. In the car are Mum and Dad, and their son or daughter who is off to University in a distant part of the country. When they arrive at the University, they find hundreds of similar families. All the car parks are full, and it takes half an hour to find a parking space. Probably the University has arranged a room for the new student in a Hall of Residence. So Mum and Dad and the new student set off to find the right room, and then to find the key to the room, and finally to carry all the student's possessions from the car to the room. Then comes the difficult bit. Mum and Dad want to stay. They want to help their son or daughter to unpack; they want to meet other parents of new students; they want to explore the University. But the new student has other ideas. He or she wants the parents to go as soon as possible. University life cannot start while Mum and Dad are still there. So Mum and Dad set off for home. The new student starts a new life of making new friends, going to student parties and (from time to time) going to lectures and doing some work. And Mum and Dad worry about whether the new student is all right – will he eat too much junk food? will he phone home sometimes to say that all is well? will he remember to change his socks? (The answers to these three questions are “yes”, “no” and “sometimes”). Going off to University is an important step in a young person's life. It marks the end of childhood and the beginning of adulthood. Mum and Dad know this, and when they return home they do something which they have wanted to do for years. They spend a whole day cleaning and tidying their son or daughter's bedroom! I must be off now. Goodbye! A Quiz about 'off'! :: File download (5:44 mins | 3 MB)
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What is the matter with Mary Jane?

En el Podcast Listen to English en Idiomas

02:21 min | hace 1 año

Tantrum. Photo by Julian King/flickr. The last podcast, about the word “matter”, reminded me of a poem by A A Milne. A A Milne was an author who published books for children in the 1920s and 1930s. He wrote the stories about Pooh Bear, which have been translated into many languages and made into a Disney film. He also wrote poetry for children. It is innocent stuff, from an age before television and computer games. This poem is about a small girl called Mary Jane. She is having a tantrum, because there is rice pudding for dinner and she doesn't like rice pudding. Rice pudding is a dessert made by baking rice with sweetened milk. There is a link to a recipe for rice pudding on the website, if you want to try making it. Personally, I agree with Mary Jane. Here is the poem. What is the matter with Mary Jane? She's crying with all her might and main, And she won't eat her dinner – rice pudding again. What is the matter with Mary Jane? What is the matter with Mary Jane? I've promised her dolls and a daisy-chain, And a book about animals – all in vain. What is the matter with Mary Jane? What is the matter with Mary Jane? She's perfectly well, and she hasn't a pain; But, look at her, now she's beginning again! What is the matter with Mary Jane? What is the matter with Mary Jane? I've promised her sweets and a ride in the train, And I've begged her to stop for a bit and explain. What is the matter with Mary Jane? What is the matter with Mary Jane? She's perfectly well and she hasn't a pain, And it's lovely rice pudding for dinner again! What is the matter with Mary Jane? Some poems by A A Milne :: File download (2:20 mins | 1 MB)
Género: Podcasting
Canal: Listen to English ... ver+

It doesn't matter....

En el Podcast Listen to English en Idiomas

05:15 min | hace 1 año

It doesn't matter! Photo by maddercarmine/flickr You have probably come across the English word “matter”. It is one of those difficult words that seem to mean different things in different contexts. An easy way to learn words like this is to memorise a few common expressions which contain them, and that is what we are going to do with the word “matter”. First, we have the expression “what is the matter?” If we see someone who is angry or upset, and we say to them “What is the matter?” we mean “What is wrong? What is the problem?” Second, if we say that something “matters”, we mean simply that it is important or serious. And now, if you are clear about these explanations, lets go and see how Kevin and Joanne are. The football season has begun. This means that on Saturday afternoons when United are playing at home, Kevin goes to the football ground to watch the match. On Saturdays when United are playing away, however, Kevin watches the match on TV. Today United have gone to London to play against Fulham, and Kevin is slumped on the sofa in front of the television, hoping that this week United will win. In the first half, things go well. United's striker scores a brilliant goal after about 20 minutes. But in the second half, Fulham play much better. They score a lucky goal when one of the United defenders makes a mistake. And they score again in the last minute of the game. Kevin is not happy. “Oh no!” he shouts, and adds some words which I could not possibly repeat on a family podcast show like Listen to English. Joanne, who is doing some work on her computer in the kitchen, runs in. “What's the matter?” she asks. “What has happened?” Kevin tells her that United have lost 2-1. “Is that all?” asks Joanne unsympathetically. “Never mind. Its only a football match. It doesn't matter which side wins.” But Kevin has a different view. “Of course it matters”, he says. “United have lost their last three matches. If this goes on, they will be bottom of the table by Christmas.” At this moment, there is a loud crash in the kitchen. Joanne rushes back to see what has happened. She finds the cat sitting on the kitchen table. The cat has walked over the computer keyboard and added several lines of random letters to the end of the email which Joanne had been writing. The cat has then – somehow – managed to send the email to Joanne's boss. Finally, she (the cat, that is) has knocked over a mug of coffee which Joanna had left on the table beside the computer. The coffee has gone all over the computer keyboard, and the mug is lying broken on the floor. “Oh no”, says Joanne. “What's the matter?” asks Kevin. Joanne explains what has happened. “It doesn't matter,” says Kevin. “We can dry the computer with a cloth”. “Of course it matters, you idiot,” says Joanne. “Liquids ruin computer keyboards. You can't just dry them with a cloth. And what is my boss going to think about the email. She will think I am crazy!” Kevin and Joanne look at each other, and realise how ridiculous the situation is. They start laughing. “You're right,” says Kevin. “It really doesn't matter about the football.” “It doesn't matter about the computer either,” says Joanne. “I know someone at work who can fix it. And my boss never reads her emails anyway.” The cat sits on the table and looks at them. “What is the matter with humans?” she thinks. “First they get upset. Then they start laughing like idiots. They don't understand that food and sleep are the only things that really matter in life.” File download (5:12 mins | 2 MB)
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Canal: Listen to English ... ver+

Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside.

En el Podcast Listen to English en Idiomas

06:04 min | hace 1 año

The beach at Brighton with the pier in the background. It is September. The summer holidays are over. People have gone back to w ork. The children have gone back to school. And, when we meet people, often they ask us, “What sort of summer did you have? Did you go anywhere nice?” How do we reply? Perhaps we say, “Oh, we went to Spain for a fortnight.” Or, “We went climbing in Scotland.” Or, “We didn't go anywhere. We just stayed at home and enjoyed the garden.” Nowdays, many English people go abroad for their holidays. They go to the Mediterranean, or even to America. More adventurous people go walking in the Andes, or sunbathing in Thailand, or travelling across India by train, or photographing the wild animals in South Africa. A generation or two ago, it was quite different. Summer holidays meant a week at an English seaside resort (or, if you were unlucky, two weeks at an English seaside resort). Seaside resorts had cheap hotels and boarding-houses where people could stay. They had pubs and cafes and restaurants. They had a promenade (a “prom”) – a broad road or path beside the sea where you could walk and enjoy the views and the sea air. They had cinemas and theatres, too, to provide amusement in the evenings or when the weather was bad. They had a beach, of course, where you could swim and build sand castles, and there were donkeys on the beach for the children to ride. And many seaside resorts had a pier, which ran out into the sea. The piers had cafes, and amusement arcades, and shops where you could buy postcards and souvenirs, and a place where small boys could fish for crabs. But then things changed. People had more money. And the cost of travelling by air fell dramatically. So English people started to travel further afield for their holidays. They found that they preferred places where it was always hot and sunny in the summer. Instead of eating fish and chips in the cold and rain in England, they decided that it was better to eat fish and chips in the sunshine in Spain. The old English seaside resorts declined. They became seedy and run-down. Many of the hotels and boarding houses closed, or became homes for people on social security benefits. The lidos (the open-air swimming pools) where the children used to swim became filled with empty beer cans and crisp packets. And, worst of all, in several resorts, the piers were destroyed by the sea or by fire. Today there are some signs that things are changing. Because of the economic recession, more people are taking their holidays at home instead of travelling abroad. The newspapers have invented a new word – “staycation” – for staying at home for your holiday, or your “vacation” as they call it in America. Some of the old seaside resorts have tried hard to make themselves more attractive to modern visitors. In the old days, people arrived at a seaside resort by train and stayed for a week. Modern visitors arrive by car, and many of them stay only for a day. However, people still want to sit on the beach and enjoy the sea, and small girls with pink bicycles still want to cycle up and down the promenade. So local authorities have repaired some of the crumbling facilities, and cleared away the litter and cleaned the beaches. New restaurants and cafes have opened. In Weston-super-mare, which is Birmingham's favourite seaside resort, they have even built a new pier. To finish, here is a song about the seaside which was very popular a hundred years ago. It is sung by Florrie Ford, who was a famous music hall singer. She made this recording in 1909. You can find the words on the website, and you will see that the songwriter wanted to use the word “beside” as many times as possible! Oh! I do like to be beside the seaside I do like to be beside the sea! I do like to be upon the Prom, Prom, Prom! Where the brass bands play: “Tiddely-om-pom-pom!” So just let me be beside the seaside I'll be beside myself with glee And there's lots of girls beside, I should like to be beside Beside the seaside! Beside the sea! File download (6:01 mins | 3 MB)
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The woman. the cat and the wheelie bin.

En el Podcast Listen to English en Idiomas

04:42 min | hace 1 año

Welcome back to Listen to English after the summer break. Many British people take their holidays in August. Our politicia ns are on holiday, so there is no political news. Our business and finance people are on holiday too, so there is not much business or financial news. And, worst of all, TV people and minor members of the royal family are on holiday too, so there is no news about celebrities to keep us happy. Newspaper reporters still have to find stories to fill the newspapers, however, and in August they find some strange things to tell us about. For example, in the past week we have all been entertained by the strange story of the cat in the wheelie bin. There is a YouTube video on the Listen to English website, which will show you what happened. In the video, we see a street. There are a few cars parked in the street, but there are no people anywhere. Perhaps they are all on holiday. In the foreground, there is a green object with a lid. It is a rubbish bin. Many British people have bins like this to put their domestic rubbish in. The bins have wheels on the bottom, so that it is easy to move them. We generally call them “wheelie bins”. So, this is a video about an empty street with three parked cars and a wheelie bin. It is just about the most boring video ever. Then a woman appears. She walks along the pavement past the wheelie bin. A cat jumps up on the wall beside her. The woman stops to stroke the cat, and to scratch it behind the ears, which cats love. Then she looks up and down the street. Perhaps she is looking to see if anyone else is around. Then she opens the lid of the wheelie bin, picks up the cat, puts the cat in the wheelie bin, and walks away. And the street is empty again, apart from the parked cars and the wheelie bin. The cat stayed in the wheelie bin for 15 hours before its owners rescued it. They wondered who had put it there. They had a security camera outside their house, and when they checked the recording, they found what you have just seen on the video. They told the newspapers and the TV what had happened, and for a few days we could read and watch all about the strange case of the cat in the wheelie bin. People reacted to the video in one of two days. Some people were outraged. How could someone do such a cruel thing to a little cat? Other people thought that it was one of the funniest things they had ever seen. Yes, alright, it was not good to put the cat in the wheelie bin, but it was also very funny. And we all wondered, why did the woman do this? Was she mad? Did she have a grudge against cats? Did she plan to put a cat in a wheelie bin that morning, or was it something she did on the spur of the moment? Within hours of the video appearing on the internet, people telephoned the police to say that they knew who the woman was. A crowd of cat-loving people gathered outside her house, and the police had to come to tell them to go away. The woman says that she does not really know why she put the cat in the wheelie bin. It just seemed like a good idea at the time. And that is all the news from Listen to English. You always knew that the English were mad. How Sky news reported the story :: CBS report :: the story is big in America too, it seems File download (4:42 mins | 2 MB)
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Dress to Impress

En el Podcast Listen to English en Idiomas

05:56 min | hace 1 año

This peacock knows how to dress to impress. Photo by El_Sol/flickr I think I told you in an earlier podcast that my daughter, wh o is 16 years old, attends a secondary school for girls. She has now completed Year 11, and has finished her GCSE exams. In September she will start at a sixth form college. Most of the other girls in her year at school are in the same position. Naturally, they all want to celebrate the end of their time at secondary school. So, one day last week was “Dress to Impress Day”. All the girls dressed up in party dresses, high heels and too much make-up. First they went to school for a leaving ceremony and to say goodbye to their teachers. Then they left in cars, taxis or (in some cases) pink stretch limos, to go to parties or restaurants. I am sure that they all had a good time, and that many of them found it difficult to get out of bed the next morning. “Dress to Impress Day” has given me the idea for this podcast – the word “impress” – what does it mean and how do we use it? If you want to impress somebody, it means that you want that person to think good things about you. When you sit an exam, you want to impress the examiners. You want them to think that you are a good student with an excellent understanding. If you go for a job interview, you want to impress the people who are interviewing you. You want them to think that you are exactly the right person for the job. And if you go on a date, you want to impress the boy or girl you are with. Kevin has a friend called James. For years, Kevin and his friends have been trying to find James a girlfriend. The trouble is that James is not very good at impressing girls. He has recently been on a date with Sarah. This is what happened. He arrived late. He had been watching football on the television, and the match went to extra time. He forgot to have a shower or to change his clothes. He talked to Sarah all evening about his hobby – computer games. And, when they went to a restaurant, he ordered spaghetti. That was a big mistake. No-one looks good when they are eating spaghetti. James tells Kevin about his date with Sarah. Kevin sighs. “So, she wasn't impressed, then,” he says. “Well, she must have been a bit impressed,” says James. “She is coming with me to the computer games exhibition on Saturday. She is a great fan of Manic Street Racer 2. And she likes spaghetti.” Kevin is amazed. Women can be very strange sometimes. So James, surprisingly, has impressed Sarah. She has never before met a man who shares her passion for Manic Street Racer 2 and spaghetti. She thinks good things about James, even though he was late and forgot to have a shower. James has made a good impression on her. If the date had been a disaster, we could say that James had made a bad impression on Sarah. You will sometimes hear the expression “to have the impression that …” For instance, you might say “I have the impression that James is keen on football”. Why do I have this impression? Why do I think this? Because James stayed to watch the football on TV instead of meeting Sarah. Or I could say, “I have the impression that Sarah likes men who play computer games and eat spaghetti”. This means, simply, that “I think that Sarah likes men of this sort. I am not completely sure. There are a lot of things about Sarah that I do not know. But, from what I have seen so far, I think that she likes men like James.” There is an adjective impressive as well. If something is impressive, it big, or beautiful, or clever – it impresses you. For example, the Eiffel Tower in Paris is very impressive – it is over 300 meters high. The Tate Gallery in London has a very impressive collection of 20th century art. And Sarah's top score in Manic Street Racer 2 is 436,117, and that really is impressive! File download (5:50 mins | 3 MB)
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Unearthing bones!

En el Podcast Listen to English en Idiomas

05:54 min | hace 1 año

Roman gladiators fighting in the arena. Do you know the English word “unearth”? If you “unearth” somethi ng, you dig it out of the ground. Perhaps you remember the podcast about the Staffordshire Hoard, a collection of gold and precious stones which had been discovered in a field. The man who found the hoard dug the gold and precious stones out of the field – he “unearthed” them. Or perhaps you remember the podcast about my hens. The hens scratch the ground. They hope to “unearth” a worm, or something else which is nice to eat. Nice if you are a hen, I mean. We can use the word “unearth” in a figurative way. Imagine that you are a newspaper journalist. You are writing an article about a well-known politician. You talk to people, and you ask questions, and you discover, or “unearth”, some interesting things, for example that the politician has taken bribes from a big chemicals company. You have “unearthed” a scandal. Today, we are going to unearth some bones, and we will learn something about the very bloodthirsty people – the Romans, the Saxons and the Vikings – who lived in England or visited this country over 1000 years ago. For several years, archaeologists have been digging in the gardens of a group of houses in York, in the north of England. They have unearthed lots of bones, old bones, human bones. The bones date from the time, about 2000 years ago, when England was part of the Roman Empire, and York was an important Roman city. The bones are of strong, healthy young men. Many of them show signs of serious injuries. Many had been beheaded. Others had been killed by hammer blows to the head. Scientific tests show that the men came from many different parts of the Roman Empire. The archaeologists think that the young men were professional fighters, called gladiators. The Romans, when there was nothing good on television, loved to watch gladiator fights. These fights often ended with the death of one of the gladiators. Sometimes, instead of fighting each other, gladiators fought with wild animals like lions or tigers, which the Romans brought at great expense from places like north Africa. And one of the skeletons found at York has the marks of the teeth of a large animal! Some of the gladiators at York were buried with goods for them to use in the afterlife and there is evidence that great feasts were held at gladiator funerals. Gladiators were popular heroes in Roman times, like professional footballers are today. Professional footballers have short footballing lives – sometimes they have to retire after a few years because of injury. Gladiators had short lives too, because they often had their heads cut off during fights! We have found some other interesting bones recently. In the south of England, near Weymouth, men who were building a new road found a large collection of bones from over 50 people. Like the bones at York, they were all young men and they had all been beheaded. These bones are later than the bones in York. They come from the time of the Saxons. The Saxons were the people who came to England when the Roman Empire collapsed. Their language is the ancestor of modern English. However, the bones are not Saxon bones. Scientists analysed the chemical composition of the bones and concluded that the men came from Scandinavia. In Saxon times, people from Scandinavia called the Vikings frequently raided England, to kill and steal, and Vikings settled permanently in some parts of the country. The Saxons tried paying the Vikings money to go away and leave them alone, but that simply made the Vikings more greedy. So what happened to the young Vikings at Weymouth? Probably the Saxons captured a group of Viking raiders, stripped them naked and then executed them. However, if you come from Norway or Denmark, do not worry. We give tourists a much warmer welcome nowdays! Guardian newspaper report about the gladiator graveyard at York :: BBC report on the Viking bones found at Weymouth :: Quiz - how well did you understand the podcast? :: File download (5:51 mins | 3 MB)
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Coal to Newcastle

En el Podcast Listen to English en Idiomas

05:41 min | hace 1 año

Coals to Newcastle. A coal train crosses the river Tyne at Newcastle in 1962. Have you come across the English expression &ldquo ;carrying coals to Newcastle”? This is what it means. For several hundred years, from the 16th century until about 50 years ago, the North-east of England was a major coal-producing area. There were literally hundreds of small coal mines in the area. Until the railways were built, most of the coal was taken to the city of Newcastle, which is on the river Tyne, close to the sea. From Newcastle, the coal went by ship to London and many other places in Britain and abroad. Now, imagine that you are a coal merchant in, say, London. You have some coal to sell. Where might you take the coal to sell it? Where would you not take the coal to sell it? I think that you would not take it to Newcastle, because there is lots of coal there already. So, if you say that something is like “carrying coals to Newcastle”, you mean that it is useless, it has no purpose, it is a complete waste of time and money. I am sure that there are equivalent sayings in other languages – “carrying owls to Athens” is an old Greek saying that means the same. You could even invent some of your own – “taking fridges to the North Pole”, for example. Or, “taking wine to Bordeaux”. You may be wondering, why do we talk about “coals to Newcastle” and not “coal to Newcastle”? Surely, “coal” is a collective noun, like “water” or “sugar”. Well, in modern English we would indeed say “coal to Newcastle”, but the expression dates back to the 16th century, and at that time people talked about “coals” instead of “coal”. And let us have a little pronunciation lesson too. If you want to sound like a native English speaker, you need to know how to pronounce the names of places in England correctly. We do not make this easy for you, and lots of English place names are spelled quite differently from the way they are pronounced. Now, you will hear many English people pronounce the name of the city in the north-east of England “NEWcastle”. But the people who live there say NewCAStle. My mother was born and brought up in Newcastle, and she made sure that her children knew how to pronounce the name properly! I am telling you about “coals to Newcastle” because I read an interesting article in the newspaper this morning. As you know, a lot of English people have gone to live in France in the past 20 years or so. They like the climate, they like the wine, they like the food, they like the low prices for houses in rural areas of France. Some of them even learn to speak French! However, the British pound has fallen in value against the Euro, and this has caused problems for many of them. They have found that it is cheaper to buy food and groceries in England than in France. So they order groceries online from one of the big British supermarket companies. The supermarket delivers the groceries to a specialist delivery company, and five times a week the delivery company sends a van full of groceries to English people in south-west France. Most of the things they order are awful English foods that no respectable Frenchman would eat, such as tinned chicken curry. But among the items which they order are French products like wine and croissants. From England to France! Coals to Newcastle! Finally, I should tell you that someone did once send coals to Newcastle. In the eighteenth century, there was an American businessman called Timothy Dexter. His competitors, who wanted to ruin him, told him that it would be an excellent idea to send a ship full of coal to Newcastle. So he did. His ship arrived in Newcastle in the middle of a miners' strike. There was a shortage of coal, and prices were very high, and he sold his coal at a great profit. Sometimes sending coals to Newcastle can be a good idea! File download (5:39 mins | 3 MB)
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The Great British Donkey Race

En el Podcast Listen to English en Idiomas

05:53 min | hace 1 año

The red donkey won again. Photo by hddod/flickr I am sorry that there has not been a podcast for the last two weeks. We have bee n very busy in this country. We have had a General Election and now we have a new government. Many countries have electoral systems that we call, in English, “proportional representation”. In these systems, the number of seats which each political party has in the Parliament reflects the number of votes which they get in the election. So, if the Red Party gets 50% of the votes, it will get 50% of the seats; if the Green Party gets 20% of the votes, it will get 20% of the seats, and so on. But in Britain we think this is too easy. Our arrangements are much more fun. We have a system called “first past the post”. “What is he talking about?” I hear you say. “What is this first past the post?”. Imagine a donkey race. The donkeys run round the race track. Some of them fall over. Some of them decide that donkey races are boring and stop running. But the other donkeys keep going. At the end of the race course, there is a post stuck in the ground. The first donkey that passes the winning post is the winner. All the other donkeys are losers. That is what “first past the post” means. It means that British elections are like donkey races. Or, rather, they are like 650 different donkey races, all on the same day. Britain is divided into 650 constituencies. In each constituency, the candidate who gets most votes becomes the new Member of Parliament. It doesn't matter whether he or she gets 90% of the votes or only 25% of the votes – if they get more votes than anyone else, they have won. This is what happened in the constituency where I live. Several donkeys decided to run. There was a red donkey, who was the Member of Parliament in the old Parliament, a blue donkey, a yellow donkey and a green donkey, and a few other donkeys who knew they couldn't win but thought it might be fun to take part. The yellow donkey was the one who made the most noise. He was sure that he would win. Every day he sent us leaflets or letters to say that he was the only donkey who could beat the red donkey. Voting for the blue donkey was a waste of time, he said. She could not win. And the other donkeys? He ignored them. They did not matter. On election night, the votes were counted. The red donkey had won again. And close behind him was – big surprise! – the green donkey, and a long way behind that was the yellow donkey. The supporters of the red donkey cheered. The supporters of the green donkey were pleased that she had done so well. And people who had bet that the yellow donkey would win had lost their money, and felt cross and foolish. Now, I am sure that you will agree that this way of holding an election is much more fun than proportional representation. Unfortunately, it is also not at all democratic, because the “first past the post” system favours the big political parties. So, for example, in this election the Liberal Democrat party (the yellow donkey party) won 23% of the votes across the country as a whole, but has only 9% of the seats in Parliament. But, say the big parties, the “first past the post” system gives us strong, stable governments with a majority of seats in Parliament. This election was different, however. No party will have a majority in the new Parliament. So, what would happen? The different parties started to negotiate with each other, and this gave us several more days of fun and excitement. The leader of the yellow donkeys (Mr Nick Clegg) talked first to the leader of the blue donkeys (Mr David Cameron) and then to the red donkey party and then to the blue donkey party again. (The blue donkey party and the red donkey party never talk to each another – that is a fundamental rule of British politics). Then the blue donkeys and the yellow donkeys announced that they had reached an agreement, and they would be the next government. Will they be happy together in the same stable? Or will they soon start kicking each other? We shall see! Election Results :: the results of donkey races throughout the country. File download (5:50 mins | 3 MB)
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Canal: Listen to English ... ver+

Are you worth it?

En el Podcast Listen to English en Idiomas

05:34 min | hace 1 año

No, I won't wake up. It isn't worth it! Today, we meet the English word “worth”, and a famous cosmetics company that tells us that we are “worth it”. “Worth” means simply the value that something has. Sometimes we use it in a literal way, to mean “how much money would people pay?” But often we use it figuratively, to mean “how much time and effort and energy would people pay?” Here are some examples: Kevin is, as I am sure you know, a fan of the loudest punk rock group in the world “Futile Vendetta”. He has all their records and CDs. His collection of records and CDs is worth about £300, which means that – if Kevin sold them – he might get £300 for them. But he is not going to sell them. They are worth much more than £300 to him. Kevin's friend George lives in a flat. George owns the flat – he does not rent it from a landlord. George wants to move to another flat, closer to his work. The first thing he does is to ask an estate agent to look at his flat and tell him how much it is worth – that is, how much somebody might pay for it. When he knows this, George can work out how much he can afford to pay for a new flat. Last summer, Kevin and Joanne went for a holiday in the Lake District in the north-west of England. They climbed a mountain called Scafell Pike. Scafell Pike is less than 1,000 metres high, but it is still the highest mountain in England. It was a long climb. After about an hour, their legs were tired and their feet were sore. They were out of breath and it had started to rain. Their clothes were wet, and Kevin had water in his boots. Eventually, they reached the top. Suddenly, the sun broke through the clouds. They could see all the way to the sea, far away to the west and the south. They could see the other mountains around, and the valleys and lakes far below. It was magic. It was worth the aching legs and the wet clothes. Or, as we often say in English, “it was worth it”. If you say that something is “worth it”, you mean that that thing has a bigger value than the money you paid, or the work you did, or the time you spent, or the emotional upset which you had, in order to get that thing. Here are some other things which are “worth it” (or “not worth it”): Kevin's football team, United, has paid £10 million for a new striker. The first time he played for United, he scored twice. He was worth it. Joanne wants to see a new film. But the only cinema which is showing it is on the other side of town. It would take nearly an hour to get there. “Is it worth it?” wonders Joanne. George's Dad grows vegetables in his garden. It is hard work, but George's Dad says that fresh, home-grown vegetables are worth it. Jimmy and Carole, whom we met in an earlier podcast, and who were doing fine the last time we saw them, have had a row. Joanne finds Carole in tears. “Don't get so upset,” says Joanne. “He's not worth it.” And finally, we come to the French cosmetics company L'Oreal. L'Oreal sells industrial chemicals that people put on their bodies to make themselves look younger or smell sweeter. Some of their products are quite expensive. But, as L'Oreal tells us in their advertisements on TV, “You're worth it.” They mean, “You are wonderful and beautiful. You want to stay wonderful and beautiful. So, it is worth spending lots of money on our products, and worth spending time putting them on your face and taking them off afterwards. Trust L'Oreal. You are worth it.” There is a quiz on the website about the word “worth”. And that is the end of today's podcast. I hope you think that it was worth it. File download (5:30 mins | 3 MB)
Género: Podcasting
Canal: Listen to English ... ver+

Stranded

En el Podcast Listen to English en Idiomas

06:50 min | hace 1 año

All flights are cancelled! I am stranded! Today we will learn some words connected with volcanoes; and we will find out that vol canoes are bad for aeroplanes, and why people in west London can now hear the birds sing. Volcanoes are mountains, or other places, where the inside of the earth comes to the surface. Volcanoes sometimes throw a large amount of hot gas and ash high into the atmosphere, or they spill very hot melted rock, called lava, over the land. We call events like these “eruptions” and we can say that a volcano “erupts”. An active volcano is a volcano that erupts from time to time, like Mount Etna in Italy. An extinct volcano is one which does not erupt any more, like Kilimanjaro in Africa. And a dormant volcano is, well, just sleeping and might wake some time and erupt again. There are several active volcanoes in Iceland, and last week one of them erupted. It sent a huge cloud of gas and ash into the air. The ash has drifted south-east-wards towards Britain and the rest of Europe and for the last several days, there has been a cloud of volcanic ash over most of north-west Europe. We cannot see it from the ground, but it is visible on satellite pictures. If an aeroplane flies through a cloud of volcanic ash, the engines may suck the ash in. The ash may then cause corrosion and abrasion. (“Corrosion” is when the ash reacts chemically with the steel and other materials in the engine; “abrasion” is when the ash scratches and wears the surface). Aircraft engines are very hot, and they may melt the volcanic ash into a material like glass. So, altogether, volcanic ash is bad news for aircraft engines. In the 1980s there were some frightening cases where an aeroplane flew through a cloud of volcanic ash, and all the engines stopped working. At the end of last week, therefore, the air-traffic control authorities in Britain and other European countries decided that it was not safe to let aeroplanes fly through the volcanic ash. The airlines which normally fly businessmen to meetings in New York or Hong Kong, or holidaymakers to sunny places in the Mediterranean, have stopped flying. They have cancelled all their flights. To cancel something means to decide that it will not happen. An airline might cancel a flight; a railway company might cancel a train. Recently the lead singer in Kevin's favourite group, Futile Vendetta, had a sore throat – poor man! – and the band had to cancel two concerts. Because all flights in and out of Britain have been cancelled, people who were visiting Britain as tourists or on business are stranded. And many British people who are away from home are stranded as well. If you are “stranded” it means that you cannot leave somewhere. If you miss the last bus home, you may be stranded until the next morning. If you run out of money while you are on holiday, you may be stranded. Other words which mean almost the same as “stranded” are “stuck”, “trapped” and “marooned”. There are no flights and I am stuck in Berlin. I have lost my money and my passport and I am trapped in Greece. I arrived at the airport too late and now I am marooned in Spain. The volcano in Iceland is still erupting, and the cloud of volcanic ash shows no signs of clearing. No-one knows when it will be safe to fly aeroplanes again. Life without air travel is a bigger problem for Britain than for other countries because Britain is an island and you cannot simply drive your car over the border into a neighbouring country. All the ferries and the Eurostar train service are fully booked with people trying to get home. Our government has decided to help British people who are stuck abroad by flying them to Spain (where the airports are still open) and bringing them home by coach or by ship. But it is not all bad news. In Britain, we have a General Election at the beginning of May. Normally, the newspapers and television would be full of politicians telling us why we should vote for them, but for the moment the volcano is the big news. And people who live near airports have been able to do something very unusual – they have been able to sit in their gardens in the sunshine and listen to the birds singing. If you have been stranded, by the volcano or for some other reason, why not tell us about it by leaving a comment on the website. File download (6:41 mins | 3 MB)
Género: Podcasting
Canal: Listen to English ... ver+

All's Well That Ends Well

En el Podcast Listen to English en Idiomas

06:12 min | hace 1 año

Disappointed. Fed up. Let down. Stood up. Photo by teapic/flickr. There is a well-known line in Shakespeare's play “A Mids ummer Night's Dream” which goes, “The course of true love never did run smooth”. It means that when you fall in love, there are always complications, and accidents and difficulties. That is the theme of today's podcast. And there are plenty of phrasal verbs as well, and there is a separate Grammar and Vocabulary note to explain some of them. Kevin and Joanne invite about 20 friends to a party. Among the guests are Jimmy and Carole. They have never met before. Kevin introduces them to each other, and they get talking. And they keep talking all evening, except when Kevin plays music by his favourite punk band “Futile Vendetta” so loudly that no-one can make themselves heard. It is obvious that Jimmy and Carole get on well with each other. Before they leave at the end of the evening, Jimmy asks Carole if she would like to go to the cinema with him the next weekend, and Carole says yes. Isn't that romantic! Now Jimmy is outside the cinema. It is 7.30. Carole agreed to meet him at 7 o'clock. But perhaps he did not hear her properly (Futile Vendetta were singing their all-time hit “I Loathe the World” at the time). Perhaps Carole actually meant 7.30 or even 8 o'clock. So Jimmy waits and waits. But still no Carole. Perhaps she has forgotten. or perhaps she has decided not to come. It seems that Carole has let him down. She promised to go to the cinema with him, and now she has not turned up. Meanwhile, outside a different cinema, Carole is looking at her watch. She agreed to meet Jimmy at 7 o'clock. So where is he? Has Jimmy stood her up? She too feels disappointed. She rather liked Jimmy and was looking forward to seeing him again. Then Jimmy has a bright idea. The modern world contains things called mobile phones. Perhaps Carole has a mobile phone. Unfortunately, Jimmy does not know her number. He tried to ask her at the party, but Futile Vendetta prevented effective communication. But Kevin and Joanne will know, so Jimmy rings them to find out. Kevin answers the phone. Yes, he can help. He looks at the list of phone numbers on the wall beside the telephone, and reads out Carole's number. “Thanks”, says Jimmy, and rings off. Unfortunately, Kevin has given him the phone number of Joanne's Aunt Carole, who is a large lady in her 50s with three dogs and six cats. Jimmy has an interesting telephone conversation with Aunt Carole, in which he asks her what she is doing, and she says that she is watching television and eating a box of chocolates, and – no – she does not remember agreeing to go to the cinema with him. Meanwhile, Carole also thinks about telephoning, and she too rings Kevin and Joanne. This time Joanne answers, and tells her Jimmy's number. Except that it is the number of Jimmy the hairdresser, and not of Jimmy who is standing in the rain outside the cinema wondering where Carole is. Jimmy the hairdresser tells Carole that she would look simply divine, darling, if he could cut her hair and dye it green. Jimmy and Carole are now both very fed up. Jimmy thinks that Carole has let him down. Carole thinks that Jimmy has stood her up. Jimmy decides to get a bus back home. Carole starts to look for a taxi. Then Jimmy turns a corner and sees Carole on the other side of the road, getting into a taxi. He shouts and waves but Carole does not hear. So Jimmy jumps into another taxi and says to the driver, “Follow that cab!” The taxi driver, who watches bad spy movies in his spare time, has always wanted someone to jump into his taxi and shout “Follow that cab!” He rises to the occasion, drives through three red traffic lights and pulls up behind Carole's taxi just as Carole is getting out. So Jimmy and Carole finally meet up. They have a “where were you – no. I was there, where were you” sort of conversation. And they laugh, and go to the pub round the corner for a drink, and agree to go to the theatre next week to see a play by Shakespeare called, very appropriately, “All's Well That Ends Well”. And Kevin says to Joanne, “I still don't understand why Jimmy the hairdresser is going out with your Aunt Carole.” Grammar and Vocabulary Note :: File download (6:10 mins | 3 MB)
Género: Podcasting
Canal: Listen to English ... ver+

Changing the time

En el Podcast Listen to English en Idiomas

06:26 min | hace 1 año

A summer evening. Will we enjoy them more if we change our time? Photo by WhiteGoldWielder/flickr Last Sunday, in the early hour s of the morning, a whole hour disappeared. It was the beginning of summer time. Every year, at the end of March, we change the time on our clocks and watches. We move the time forward by one hour, so that, for example, 1.00 am becomes 2.00 am. It is light for longer in the summer than in the winter. However, extra daylight early in the morning is not much use to us, because we are still in bed. We want the extra daylight in the evening, when we can go outside and dig the garden or take a picnic to the park. By changing the clocks, we move an hour of summer daylight from the morning to the evening, when we can enjoy it more. In winter, therefore, we have winter time, or Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). In summer we have summer time, or British Summer Time (BST) as it is officially called. Instead, we could of course all get up earlier in the morning during the summer. We could all start work, or school, or college, an hour earlier. And then we could go home an hour earlier as well. But we English do not like getting up early in the morning. In Germany, many people arrive at work at 7am or even earlier. We English are more sensible. We stay in bed. And it would be difficult to get everyone to agree to start work an hour earlier. So we change the time on our clocks instead. During the Second World War, we had a sort of double summer time – we moved the clocks forward by one hour in the winter and by two hours in the summer. We did this to save energy and increase productivity in the factories. But at the end of the war, we went back to the old winter and summer times. Every few years, for the last 50 or 60 years, we have had a national debate in the press and in Parliament about permanently changing our time, in the same way that we did during the war. A new campaign to change our time has just started. It is called “Lighter Later” and you can read about it on its website. “Lighter Later” says that if we move our time forward by an hour, it will solve almost all the problems of the world: it will save energy, because we will not need to use so much electricity for lighting in the evenings. our carbon dioxide emissions will fall. there will be fewer road accidents. it will be good for tourism, and help to create jobs in the leisure and tourism industries. it will be easier for us to play sport or go jogging in the evenings, so we will all be fit and lose weight. it will reduce crime. it will make everyone happy, rich and famous. OK, I invented the last one about “happy, rich and famous”. But it is clear that there are some very strong arguments for changing our time by moving the clocks forward by another hour for the whole year. In particular, it would be a cheap and easy way of reducing our carbon dioxide emissions. In the past, two groups of people have argued against changing our time. The first group is people who have jobs where they have to start work very early in the morning. Farmers, for example, may need to milk their cows very early. If we changed the time, the farmers say, they would have to start work in the dark all year round, even in the middle of summer. The second group is people who live in Scotland. Scotland is further north than England, and this means that there is less daylight in the winter than in England. The Scots argue that changing the time would mean that Scottish schoolchildren would have to go to school in the dark for several months during the winter. What will happen this time? Will we finally change our time? Or will the old objections win? There are some signs that the campaign for a change in our time may succeed. There is an urgent need to find ways of reducing our carbon dioxide emissions. The organisation which represents British farmers now says that it is “neutral” about making the change. And the Scots? Well, British politics has changed in recent years. Scotland now has its own Parliament and its own government. Many people in England now say that the Scots can sort out their own problems, but they cannot block changes which are good for England. To finish, I should tell you that no-one has told the British weather that the clocks have gone forward and it is now officially summer time. The weather forecast for tomorrow is for snow in many places. The "Lighter Later" website. :: Quiz : how well did you understand the podcast? :: File download (6:24 mins | 3 MB)
Género: Podcasting
Canal: Listen to English ... ver+

Tumbling!

En el Podcast Listen to English en Idiomas

05:46 min | hace 1 año

Tumbling down Coopers Hill in pursuit of a cheese! Photo by Nicoze/flickr Have you ever thought that the English are mad? Of cou rse you have. And after today's podcast, you will know that it is true. But first we must meet the English verb “to tumble”. “Tumble” means, simply, to fall down. For example, if you are coming down some stairs and you trip, you might tumble to the bottom. You would fall, perhaps you would roll over, and two seconds later you would be on the ground at the bottom of the stairs, wondering whether you had broken any bones. We can use “tumble” in a figurative way too. We can talk about a stream tumbling down the side of a mountain. Or if a supermarket reduces its prices, it might put notices in the window saying “Prices tumble throughout this store!” Now for the story in today's podcast. Last week, we read in the newspaper that an important sporting event will not take place this year. It is not a football match or a horse-race. It is much more important than that; it is the great Cooper's Hill Cheese Rolling event. Cooper's Hill is not far from the town of Gloucester. It is a very steep hill, covered in grass and trees. Every year at the end of May there is a cheese rolling at Cooper's Hill. About 15 competitors stand in a line at the top of the hill. Many of them wear batman suits or other fancy dress. A man with a big hat, called the Cheese Master, throws a 3 or 4 kilo cheese down the hill. The competitors run after the cheese. The rules say that if one of the competitors catches the cheese, he or she can keep it. In practice, no-one ever catches the cheese, because it goes too fast. And the competitors do not run after the cheese, because the hill is too steep. Instead, they fall, they roll, they slide on their bottoms – they tumble, in fact. At the bottom of the hill, there is a line of stewards. They catch the competitors before they can tumble all the way to the M5 motorway. And there is a line of ambulances too, for those competitors who break their ankles on the way down. There are several races, some for men and some for women, and for the really crazy there are some uphill races too (though, obviously, the cheese cannot go uphill). After the races, those competitors who are not actually in hospital gather at a local pub to drink beer and tell stories of the heroic events of the day. Obviously, for an important event like the Cooper's Hill Cheese Rolling, you could not use just any sort of cheese. The cheese is of a type called Double Gloucester. It is made locally by a lady called Diana Smart. She is 83 years old. The cheese rolling is an important part of her business. She is fed up that it has been cancelled this year. So, why has it been cancelled? For hundreds of years, the only people who came to watch the cheese rolling were local people. But the event is now internationally famous, and lots of people want to come. Last year there were 15,000 spectators, from many different countries. The police and organisers of the event are worried about the safety of the spectators, and about car-parking, and about the fact that there are no toilets, and other problems of having so many people. The organisers think that they can solve the problems for next year, so the Cheese Rolling should take place again in 2011. My own proposal is that cheese rolling should become an Olympic Sport. Then it could be included in the London Olympic Games in 2012. We could build a super stadium on Coopers Hill, with room for 50,000 spectators, lots of toilets and a car park for thousands of cars. The stadium could have a roof in case it rains. But this year you will have to find a hill in your own country, and throw a cheese down it, and tumble after the cheese. Happy cheese rolling! BBC News Report. :: More news about cheese rolling. :: The official cheese rolling website. :: File download (5:41 mins | 3 MB)
Género: Podcasting
Canal: Listen to English ... ver+

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