English Recordings

This is a test...

I would like to ask a question to foreigners who are living in Japan:

"Is it easy to make Japanese friends?"

I have a few close foreign friends, who have been living in my city for several years. It is strange that people here say that making foreign friends is very difficult. I am talking about friendships, not romantic relationships because it seems much easier to build that kind of relationships...(^v^)

Japanese English learners often ask me

"How do you make foreign friends?"

The answer is easy,

" I just treat them like people, since they are not aliens".

When I am hanging out with foreigners, especially white people, I feel that some Japanese people treat them as a special kind of human. Maybe people in big cities don't behave like that though, I am not comfortable on behalf of them. Their feelings of tension aren't conductive to an atomosphere of becoming friends. This is just my thought.

So, I would like to ask you what kind of Japanese people are comfortable to be with?

I was with some Japanese English learners today, and strangely none of them have friends from other countries.

My question came out of the fact that there are people who have eager to have foreign friends, but don't have any.

Dear Jarda,
I found a note on the noticeboard at UWE saying that you're looking for someone to help you with your English Language. May I know what your proposition is? Given the right circumstances, I'd be happy to teach you.
I am a native speaker of the English Language. I am a trained national public speaker for 9 years, so you could say that my written and spoken English is good. I am not British however, I am an international student like yourself. I'm currently in my final year studying English Law.
As an international student myself, most of my close friends are European International students whose first language is not English. Occasionally I help them translate things for their university work that they do not understand. I have not taught anyone formally though, but I have limited experience.
The fees would depend on what kind of lessons you want and how you wish for the classes to be conducted. May I please know more about how you would like the class to be done i.e number of hours per week, what kind of work materials you would like me to go through with you?
Let me know what you think.
Hope you have a good weekend,
Marcus

I think it is very important that you accept yourself, including your weaknesses and downside. Then if you can do that, you will not feel fear to let others see who you are. You will be able to be more comfortable when you are with others than you were before.

People are quite sensitive in the area of human relationships. They can tell if you are relaxed or not when you are with them. I think knowing yourself is the first step to building a good relationship with people.

I used to be a person who had a strong guard so as not to let others see me. I was an arm-clad chicken. I am glad that I have been disarming myself gradually, and I have tried to accept myself including my weak parts.

I am not good at cleaning.

Well, is it one of my bad parts? I don't know~ ( ^v^ ) /

Have you ever seen a rafflesia? It is the largest flower on earth. A rafflesia can be one meter across. There are more than fourteen different kinds of rafflesia, and they are all very rare. They grow only in Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia.

The rafflessia plant has no roots. It takes the food and water it needs from other plants. Rafflesia flowers do not smell good. They smell like bad meat. This strange smell is very important because it brings insects that help it to flower.

The flower stays open for one week. After that it dies and all you see is a small pool of black liquid.

Years ago, people sold rafflessia flowers in the market. People wanted to but them to make medicine. Now there are so few rafflessia plant that you will be very lucky if you ever see one.

The Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake is an annual event held on the Spring Bank Holiday at Cooper's Hill, near Gloucester in the Cotswolds region of England. It is traditionally by and for the people who live in Brockworth - the local village, but now people from all over the world take part. The event takes its name from the hill on which it occurs.

From the top of the hill a round of Double Gloucester cheese is rolled, and competitors race down the hill after it. The first person over the finish line at the bottom of the hill wins the cheese. In theory, competitors are aiming to catch the cheese, however it has about a one second head start and can reach speeds up to 70mph (112 km/h), enough to knock over and injure a spectator; this is unlikely.
Accurate information is hard to come by, but the tradition is at least 200 years old. Each year the event becomes more and more popular with contestants coming from all across the world to compete or even simply to spectate.
"The Cheese Rollers" is also the name of the nearby pub in Shurdington, about 3 miles from Cooper's Hill, but the nearest are The Cross Hands and The Victoria (both of which are in Brockworth). Competitors will frequent these venues for some pre-event Dutch courage or discussion of tactics, and after the event for some convalescence.
Cooper's Hill is also a stop on the Cotswold Way.

The cheese used in the event is Double Gloucester, a hard cheese typically manufactured in cylindrical blocks. The current supplier is local cheesemaker Diana Smart, who has supplied the cheese since 1988.
During the Second World War rationing was introduced, preventing the use of a cheese in the event. Consequently, from 1941 to 1954 a wooden "cheese" was used instead with a piece of cheese in a hollow space in the centre of the wooden replica.

Due to the steepness and uneven surface of the hill there are usually a number of injuries, ranging from sprained ankles to broken bones and concussion. A first aid service is provided by the local St John Ambulance (Gloucester, Cheltenham and Stroud Divisions) at the bottom of the hill, with a volunteer rescue group on hand to carry down to them any casualties who do not end up at the bottom through gravity. A number of ambulance vehicles will attend the event, since there is invariably at least one and often several more injuries requiring hospital treatment. Cooper's Hill Cheese Rolling has been summarised as "twenty young men chase a cheese off a cliff and tumble 200 yards to the bottom, where they are scraped up by paramedics and packed off to hospital". The race of 2005 was delayed while the ambulances returned from the hospital, all of them having been required to transport casualties from previous races. Nevertheless, it was one of the most popular events in recent years, with many more participants than were able to run in the four races.

Salt

Bread is a major source of salt
Campaigners say it is important for people to cut the amount of salt they eat in their diet.
Too much salt is linked to high blood pressure, which is turn can increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

The government watchdog the Food Standards Agency announced targets for reducing salt in a range of food products in 2006.

Why do we need salt?

Salt is a commonly occuring mineral, the technical name of which is sodium chloride. It is the sodium part of salt that is important. The body needs a certain amount of sodium to function properly.

Sodium helps to maintain the concentration of body fluids at correct levels. It also plays a central role in the transmission of electrical impulses in the nerves, and helps cells to take up nutrients.

Why is too much salt bad?

In adults, when levels of sodium are too high, the body retains too much water and the volume of bodily fluids increases.

Many scientists, although not all, believe this process is linked to high blood pressure, or hypertension, which in turn is linked to a greater risk of coronary heart disease and stroke.

With high levels of fluid circulating through the brain there is a greater chance that weaknesses in the brain's blood vessels are exposed, and that they may burst, causing a stroke.

Similarly, a greater volume of fluid passing through the heart can place additional strain on the organ, increasing the possibility of coronary disease.

However, there are many potential causes of hypertension and coronary heart disease, and some scientists deny that salt plays any significant role at all.

An adult will be able to remove salt from the body through the kidneys into the urine.

However, very young babies do not have the capacity to process large quantities of salt as the kidneys are not yet developed.

If they are given adult food with a higher salt content before they are at least four months old, excess sodium can accumulate in the body, causing kidney, liver and brain damage, and in very occasional cases, death.

It is recommended that babies are given only milk, whether breast or formula, for the first four months of life.

Baby foods are supposed to contain lower levels of salt, and it is recommended that if adult foods are to be given, unprocessed foods should be used, and no salt added.

How much salt should we eat?

The government recommends that adults should eat 6g of salt a day. However, the average intake of salt is between 9g and 10g a day.

Experts estimate that if average consumption was cut to 6g a day it would prevent 70,000 heart attacks and strokes a year.

The main sources of salt in the diet are processed foods and salt added during cooking or at the table. Meat and meat products, and bread can also be high in salt.

Processed foods are thought to account for around 75% of the average person's salt intake.

However, research published in The Lancet medical journal suggested that most people could not tell the difference between loaves with markedly different salt content.

Salt is added to processed foods to aid preservation and to improve taste. Sodium is present in additives such as monosodium glutamate and sodium bicarbonate.

Small amounts of sodium can be found naturally in some foods such as eggs and fish.

The salt we sprinkle on our food from cellar accounts for only 10%-15% of our intake.

What action has the Food Standards Agency taken?

It drew up targets for the food industry to cut the salt content of a range of 85 products.

The aim was that if the targets were enforced, the average daily intake of salt would fall to the recommended level of 6g.

However, the targets were voluntary, and campaigners said they were not set at a sufficiently tough level. They argued that even if followed by the food industry they would result in an average daily intake of 8g, rather than 6g.

Professor Graham MacGregor, of Cash (Consensus Action on Salt and Health), said that would mean an extra 30,000 more strokes and heart attacks a year in the UK - 15,000 of which would be fatal.

What should we do?

Dr Wynnie Chan, a nutrition scientist for the British Nurtrition Foundation, says that everybody should look to reduce the amount of salt in their diet.

"It would have a significant effect on those people who need to reduce their salt levels because they are susceptible to hypertension, but it would also do no harm for the whole population to reduce its salt intake," she said.

Dr Chan said there were four main ways to reduce salt intake:

Stop adding table salt to food once it is served
Choose items with a reduced sodium content
Carefully monitor the salt content of processed food
Eat more fruit and vegetables - they contain potassium which balances the effect of salt on the body
Reading food labels can be confusing as they often give the sodium, rather than the salt content of food. To calculate the amount of salt in a product, multiply the sodium content by two-and-a-half times.

2010 looks like it's going to be a great year for music festivals. The big festivals such as Glastonbury, Leeds and Reading festival and V festival have announced some huge artists and continue to add some of the world's best bands to their line up. However, with over 400 organised UK music festivals to choose from, smaller festivals such as Cropredy, Download, Cambridge Folk Festival and festivals specifically for genres such as blues, country, metal, world music and folk festivals there’s a lot to choose from. There are also some very interesting eclectic events occurring such as the Mighty Boosh Festival, Hop Farm and Green Man or the beautifully located Hydro Connect Festival. This looks set to continue as younger generations are brought into the festival atmosphere with family orientated, better managed and more diverse festivals to choose from, including underage festivals. To help you find the best festivals in your area, budget and to your tastes, you can compare our unbiased reviews of music festivals and see what other music lovers had to say about festivals they've attended. If you're a little more adventurous you can also read reviews of musical festivals in Europe and the USA such as South By South West, Benicassim and Roskilde.
With so much choice, which one to go to, or in many cases, which ones, writing a review of your festival experience can really help others choose the best one. Make sure you include factors such as, atmosphere, toilet facilities (always a cause for concern) and what you got out of the festival, be it seeing some of your favourites bands, laughing at great comedy, finding the odd hidden gem, or just soaking up the atmosphere.

Hi Jarda,

I saw your notices up at the BNE building at UWE and thought I'd get in touch. I'm a full-time postgraduate student there, but I'm also a qualified TEFL teacher and have a fair bit of experience teaching English and tutoring one-to-one. If you're still looking for a tutor then get in touch and we can arrange to meet sometime.
Usually I would charge £15 for an hour's lesson, once a week, but if you wanted to arrange more lessons than that then obviously we could settle a lower price. At the moment I only have classes at Frenchay campus every Tuesday, maybe the best thing would be to meet up and discuss things. However I have university and other work to fit in, 3 times a week may be difficult to manage. The only other days I can really be free at the moment are Monday and Thursday, and we could do a lesson after classes on Tuesday. I would usually just do lessons of one hour, because people often get tired and stop concentrating but if we find that's too short we could make the lessons longer! If we were doing 3 hours a week I would probably say £40.
I think we should meet either tomorrow or on Tuesday at UWE, when are you free?
Regards,
Harry

10 Things Your Language School Doesn’t Want You to Know

1. You don’t need a teacher or school to learn a foreign language

There is an important distinction to be made between learning and schooling. Those who believe they need formal training in a language are making the false assumption that the two are one and the same. To reach fluency in a language, you need to acquire a great deal of tacit knowledge, that special kind of internalized, experience-based information that you may not be conscious of. The sad truth is that most teachers focus on explicit knowledge (e.g. facts about the language such as grammar rules), which has very little to do with one’s ability to speak a language. Explicit knowledge is easier to teach and test, however, which probably explains why it makes up the bulk of school curricula.

2. You don’t need to learn grammar rules

At some point in history, the education establishment convinced society that they needed to be “taught” languages. This was quite an amazing feat considering that all human beings are endowed by evolution (or God if you prefer) with the ability to automatically acquire any language they hear in adequate quantities. The problem for most learners (and the reason they buy into the “I need more schooling!” mentality) is that they never get an “adequate quantity” of language input. The irony is that this input deficiency is often caused by the very classes that are supposed to provide it. With a focus on memorizing grammar rules, most learners end up spending the vast majority of their time learning about a language instead of the language itself.

3. Tests and grades do more harm than good

Ideally, formalized testing and grading systems motivate students by providing competition and objective feedback. In reality, however, most grading is far from objective (teachers tend to reward students they like and penalize those they don’t), and tests do little more than demonstrate one’s ability to memorize facts. Feedback is important, but it needn’t be in the form of traditional testing or grades. Ask your teachers to evaluate your performance by giving specific examples of things you said right or wrong, not with multiple choice tests.

4. Classes go as fast as the slowest person

The bigger the class, the wider the range of abilities, and the slower the class will have to go. Schools know that students are more likely to stick with something too easy but will quickly throw in the towel if something is too difficult. And despite placement tests and numerous class levels, it can be very difficult to appropriately group students by their actual skill in the language. With finite time slots mutually convenient for all students in a given group, some students will inevitably be placed in classes that are above or below their actual ability level. Also, placement tests come with the same problems mentioned in # 3: they test one’s memory and knowledge (especially of the written word).

5. Reading out loud does not improve your pronunciation or speaking ability

Teachers often have students read out loud to allegedly “practice pronunciation.” The truth is that your pronunciation improves only from massive amounts of listening input and then massive amounts of speaking when you’re ready. Reading aloud does little more than show what words you are unfamiliar with and often reinforces mispronunciations instead of fixing them. While some teachers genuinely believe in the read aloud method, others just use it as a zero prep activity to count down the clock.

6. Oral drills do not help you learn how to speak; they only demonstrate your ability to do so

Just as reading aloud does not improve your pronunciation or reading skills, oral drills do little for your speaking fluency. We improve our speaking ability through increasing the quantity and quality of listening input (e.g. podcasts about your favorite topics), and then applying what we have heard in natural, contextualized conversations.

7. You will be encouraged to move up to the next level even if you aren’t ready

This is all about business. Schools make more money when you buy new books, take level tests and re-enroll in more classes.

8. Your progress reports are meaningless

Teachers hate writing progress reports. They are usually an exercise in creative writing, not meaningful feedback on your actual performance and progress in the language. Not knowing what to say (and not wanting to waste time on a task they don’t get paid for!), many teachers will just cut and paste canned comments, or come up with general, vague statements and overly technical descriptions of your grammar and pronunciation problems.

9. You should be the one who chooses the material

Despite being widely used, standardized textbooks are bad tools for a number of reasons. They build on the myth that schooling equals learning, as discussed in # 1 above. They lull students into a false sense of accomplishment, where completion of chapters is confused with actual internalization of the content. And with content written not to entertain but to avoid offending anyone, they are typically boring and sterile. Interest in the material is essential for effective language learning, so make sure to choose schools or teachers that allow you to choose materials that float your boat.

10. It doesn’t take years to learn a foreign language well if you do it right

If you like the language you are learning, believe you can learn it, and get as much listening and reading input as possible, you will learn the language well enough to communicate in a matter of 6 months to a year. Most students, however, end up paying tuition for years and years despite a lack of progress. Students blame themselves (backed up by the bogus comments found in their progress reports), not realizing that the problem lies not in them, but with their school’s materials and methodologies.