English Recordings

PART 1: Geography and tourism
Hollywood, also called Tinseltown, (tinsel meaning a sparkly Christmas garland) is a district within the city of Los Angeles, California, U.S.A, whose name is synonymous with the American film industry. Since the early 1900s, moviemaking pioneers found in southern California an ideal mix of mild climate, sunshine, varied landscape, and a cheap workforce. Since then, the image of Hollywood as the fabricator of tinseled dreams has been engraved worldwide.
The most visible symbol of the district is the white-lettered Hollywood sign which is located on the hills and overlooks the entire area. First built in 1923, the sign originally said “Hollywoodland” but the sign fell into disrepair, and the “land” section was removed in the 1940s when the sign was repaired.
The Hollywood Walk of Fame is a street which comprises more than 2,690 five-pointed stars embedded in the sidewalks along 15 blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California.
The stars are permanent public monuments to achievement in the entertainment industry, bearing the names of a mix of singers and musicians like Michael Jackson, actors like Marylin Monroe, directors like Steven Spielberg, producers, and even fictional characters like Mickey Mouse, probably the most universally recognized icon of the 20th century.

PART 2: The Origins of Hollywood

In 1908 one of the first movies, The Count of Monte Cristo, was completed in Hollywood. Hollywood had become the centre of the American film industry by 1915 as more independent filmmakers relocated there from the East Coast. Cinema went from silent films like Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin to the talking pictures, also called “talkies”, in the late 1920s. This “Golden Age of Hollywood Cinema” started with the release of the first long talkie film The Jazz Singer in 1927.
Jewish immigrants such as D.W. Griffith, Samuel Goldwyn, Adolph Zukor, William Fox, Louis B. Mayer, Darryl F. Zanuck, and Harry Cohn became great film producers in Hollywood and the lords of the biggest film studios, called the big Six, —Twentieth Century-Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Warner Brothers, and now Disney Studios.
All film studios continued to develop even during the Great Depression, a big economic crisis from 1929 to 1939. More and more people were looking for entertainment on big screens, and the adventures of their favorite film stars, especially the very first child star: Shirley Temple.
After World War II, film studios began to move outside Hollywood because they were expensive, and the practice of filming “on location” developed. In 1949, the Golden Age of Hollywood was over and the post-WW2 consumers and the rise of Television forced Hollywood to reinvent itself.

PART 3: Famous Hollywood Movies
Hollywood is considered to be the oldest film industry. It is also the birthplace of various genres of cinema—among them comedy, drama, action, musical, romance, horror, science fiction, and the war epic—and has set the example for other national film industries.
A very successful movie is called a “blockbuster”. The movie Gone with the Wind—first released in 1939— set in the American South in the context of the American Civil War, is generally considered to be the most successful film of all times. Guinness World Records in 2014 estimated its global revenue at $3.4 billion. Guinness World records had Avatar, released in 2009 in second place with $3 billion, immediately followed by Titanic, released in 1997.
During the 20th century several trends emerged. During the silent era, films with about war were the most popular with audiences. With the advent of sound in 1927, the musical became the most popular type of film with audiences.
Throughout the 1950s began a trend of very expensive historical dramas set during Ancient Rome or biblical times such as Spartacus for example.
Then came a strong interest in the superhero genre, with many blockbusters in the Marvel comic books universe. The 1980s have been marked by very successful sagas such as Star Wars directed by George Lucas or Indiana Jones by Steven Spielberg.

PART 4 : The Dream Factory

The media business, with filmmaking as its heart, generates tens of billions of dollars into the Los Angeles economy per year and directly employs several hundred thousand people. Hollywood produces about half of all the films shot in the United States.
Hollywood is not only a town and an industry but also a creator of dreams and fantasies that have tremendous cultural impact. The “dream factory”, the other name for Hollywood, is among the most global of industries, with huge overseas markets and an impact on people in practically every corner of the globe. For decades movies made in Hollywood dominated the world's screens.
As we sit in the darkened theater, watching movies, we may easily enter into a dreamlike state. We feel a sense of power and identification with the heroes and heroines, who are beautiful people showing the extremes of wealth and glamour, of violence and action. The movies’ fictional plots allow emotionally satisfying resolutions and make us happy.
The Academy Award ceremony of the Oscars broadcast from Los Angeles is said to have a TV audience exceeding one billion people each year. The industry also attracts many tourists into southern California for a visit of one of the famous studios like Universal Studios or Warner Bros Harry Potter Studio Tour.

PART 5 : Hollywood’s Star System

Many stars live in Hollywood neighboring communities such as Beverly Hills and Bel Air. One of the first stars of Hollywood was Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin was already a pretty big star by the start of the 1920s. Among his most famous movies were Modern Times in 1936 and The Great Dictator in 1940.
Hollywood’s star system was the method of creating, promoting and exploiting stars in Hollywood films. Movie studios would select promising young actors, glamorise them and create public characters for them, often inventing new names or new backgrounds.
These actors were repeatedly given leading roles, which inspired a massive fan base that perpetuated the system. If an actor was introduced to the “star system”, it literally changed his/ her career. Examples are actors like Audrey Hepburn or Cary Grant.
Women were expected to behave like ladies, and were never to leave the house without makeup and stylish clothes. Men were expected to be seen in public as gentlemen. Morality clauses were a common part of actors' studio contracts.
The restrictive aspect of the star system, manipulating images and reality, finally began to fail. By 1970 the star system which started in the 1920s, had disappeared.
Today the phenomenon of stardom has remained essential to Hollywood’s attractiveness but actors are more free to choose their own careers.

Hello, I’m Tom Sheldon and I’m from Birmingham. I know you have to start thinking about your future career and that’s why your school has invited me today to talk about my job, which I love: I’m an architect and I’d really like to share my passion with you guys. Now, since I didn’t know any architects, I didn’t really know much about the job, but at school I discovered that I had a talent for design, that I was patient, meticulous and inventive. So that’s why I started studying it. I was really interested in using computers to create artistic objects, and so I was really glad when I found out that most of an architect’s work is done on computers. My latest project is an indoor bridge in Milan library! I had a lot of fun creating it. But remember: it also takes a lot of hours of work and sometimes I’ve felt a bit lonely during the creative phase! I often have to go far away from home and I don’t get to see my family then. But there are upsides to the job: traveling can be fun, I meet lots of people and the pay is not bad either, I have to say!

lopsided lopsided lopsided lopsided lopsided lopsided

-" How would u like your eggs sir?"
" Lopsided, please."
-" Machudi Padi"

As a student, I have to attend my classes.
I have to do homework.
I must hand in all my tasks before Friday.
and I shouldn't be late for class.

This is a great website to practice your reading and build your vocabulary. The
basic premise of Readlang is to allow you to read any foreign language text
providing an immediate translation of a word or phrase you don’t know. When
you click an unknown word it magically appears in the language you set as
your native one. Upon clicking it again, it reverts to the original.

There are so many things I want to do today! I don't know where to start. Mmm, let me think... I think I'd like to go downtown first to have a walk in Chinatown and also to visit the 9/11 Memorial. I think it's going to be a very interesting and moving experience. Then, I'd like to take photos of the Brooklyn Bridge and take a cab to the Empire State Building. It's always been a dream of mine! I really want to go up the Empire State Building and admire the view, it's supposed to be amazing!
After that, I want to eat a big slice of pizza. I'm really fond of them and New-York has the best pizza in the world.
Finally, we could meet with my friend Scott and hang out in Central Park. The weather is so nice in spring! I'd like to relax in the sun and maybe try and play baseball with him. After that long day, I want to take the subway to the hotel: I'll probably be too tired to walk back there. It's south of the Museum of Modern Art.

You are at the Rockfeller Center.
Go straight on to 5th Avenue.
Turn right.
Keep going straight on 5th Avenue and stop on the corner of 5th Avenue and W 44th Street.
Turn right onto W 44th Street.
Now, let's take the second street on the left.
Finally, take the third street on the right.
You've reached your destination! Have you found it?

Food in the U.K.
Popular food in the UK :
- Fish and Chips : fish fingers with French fries
- Black Pudding : sausage of pig's blood and fat that is mixed with spices and cooked or fried
- Baked Beans on Toast : baked beans in tomato sauce are especially popular among children
- Welsh Rarebit : baked toast with Cheddar cheese
- Chicken Tikka : small pieces of chicken cooked using Indian spices and yogurt
And as many of you might have guessed already : the British are big tea drinkers and are among the world's biggest tea consumers. Afternoon tea is taken around 4pm and 5pm in many families when children come home from school... Tea time !

Wildlife :
The largest mammal in the U.K. is the red deer. Various species of deer and rabbits are common in the UK. Badgers, foxes, hedgehogs live in the woodlands and forests of the isles.

Sport :
Curling : Curling is played by two teams of four players. Curling is a winter sport that is very popular in Scotland. Players on two teams slide large stones toward a circular goal at the opposite end of an ice field. The object of the game is for each team to get its stones closest to the center.
Golf: Golf is an outdoor sport played with clubs and a small ball. It is played on a large, grassy area called a course. Golfers hit the ball into a series of holes on the course. The goal is to finish playing the course with as few hits as possible.
Netball : Netball is a sport played by two teams of seven. It is like basketball except that bouncing the ball is not allowed. The player cannot step with the ball either, nor hold it for more than three seconds. The game proceeds by players throwing (or passing) the ball to each other until one attempts to throw it through the hoop, known as a "shot".

Last year, my bed was blue and now it is purple.
Last year, my chair was black and now it is yellow.
Last year, my door was green and now it is orange.
Last year, my table was white and now it is brown.

There is a blue spider in the bin.
There are two black spiders under the bed.
There is a green spider on the skateboard.
There are two red spiders between the chair and the bed.
There is a black spider above the bed.
There is a red spider in front of the schoolbag.
There are two blue spiders next to the box.