English Recordings

However! I couldn’t exist like that. Reality is wonderful.
I thought of the money my grandmother had left me – just enough. The place was too big, too expensive, for one person. I had to look for another apartment. There was no way around it. I thumbed through the listings, but when I saw so many places all the same lined up like that, it made my head swim. Moving takes a lot of time and trouble. It takes energy.
I had no strength; my joints ached from sleeping in the kitchen day and night. When I realized how much effort moving would require – I’d have to pull myself together and go look at places. Move my stuff. Get a phone installed – I lay around instead, sleeping, in despair. It was then that a miracle, a godsend, came calling one afternoon. I remember it well.

Dingdong. Suddenly the doorbell rand.
It was a somewhat cloudy spring afternoon, I was intently involved in tying up old magazines with string while glancing at the apartment listing s with half an eye but no interest, wondering how I was going to move.
Flustered, looking like I’d just gotten out of bed, I ran out and without thinking undid the latch and opened the door. Thank god it wasn’t a robber. There stood Yuichi Tanabe.
“Thank you for your help the other day,” I said. He was a nice young man, a year younger than me, who had helped out a lot at the funeral. I think he’d said he went to the same university I did. I was taking time off.
“Not at all,” he said. “Did you decide on a place to live yet?”
“Not even close.” I smiled.
“I see.”
“Would you like to come in for some tea?”
“No. I’m on my way somewhere and I’m kind of in a hurry.” He grinned. “I just stopped by to ask you something. I was talking to my mother, and we were thinking you ought to come to our house for a while.”
“Huh?” I said.
“In any case, why don’t you come over tonight around seven? Here’s the directions.”
“Okay…” I said vacantly, taking the slip of paper.
“All right, then, good. Mom and I are both looking forward to your coming.” His smile was so bright as he stood in my doorway that I zoomed in for a closeup on his pupils. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I think I heard a spirit call my name.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be there.”
But as it sounds, it was like I was possessed. His attitude was so totally “cool,” though, I felt I could trust him. In the black gloom before my eyes (as it always is in cases of bewitchment), I saw a straight road leading from me to him. He seemed to glow with white light. That was the effect he had on me.
“Okay, see you later,” he said, smiling, and left.

Before my grandmother’s funeral I had barely known him. On the day itself, when Yuichi Tanabe showed up all of a sudden, I actually wondered if he had been her lover. His hands trembled as he lit the incense; his eyes were swollen from crying. When he saw my grandmother’s picture on the altar, again his tears fell like rain. My first thought when I saw that was that my love for my won grandmother was nothing compared to this boy’s, whoever he was. He looked that sad.
Then, mopping his face with a handkerchief, he said, “Let me help with something.” After that, he helped me a lot.

The place I like the best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it’s a kitchen, if it’s a place where they make food, it’s fine with me. Ideally it should be well broken in. Lots of tea towels, dry and immaculate. White tile catching the light (ting! ting!).
I love even incredibly dirty kitchens to distraction – vegetable droppings all over the floor, so dirty your slippers turn black on the bottom. Strangely, it’s better if this kind of kitchen is large. I lean up against the silver door of a towering, giant refrigerator stocked with enough food to get through a winter. When I raise my eyes from the oil-spattered gas burner and the rusty kitchen knife, outside the window stars are glittering, lonely.
Now only the kitchen and I are left. It’s just a little nicer than being all alone.
When I’m dead worn out, in a reverie, I often think that when it comes time to die, I want to breathe my last in a kitchen. Whether it’s cold and I’m all alone, or somebody’s there and it’s warm, I’ll stare death fearlessly in the eye. If it’s a kitchen, I’ll think, “How good.”

Before the Tanabe family took me in, I spent every night in the kitchen. After my grandmother died, I couldn’t sleep. One morning at dawn I trundled out of my room in search of comfort and found that the one place I could sleep was beside the refrigerator.
My parents – my name is Mikage Sakurai – both died when they were young. After that my grandparents brought me up. I was going into junior high when my grandfather died. From then on, it was just my grandmother and me.
When my grandmother died the other day, I was taken by surprise. My family had steadily decreased one by one as the years went by, but when it suddenly dawned on me that I was all alone, everything before my eyes seemed false. The fact that time continued to pass in the usual way in this apartment where I grew up, even though now I was here all alone, amazed me. It was total science fiction. The blackness of the cosmos.

Three days after the funeral I was still in a daze. Steeped in a sadness so great I could barely cry, shuffling softly in gentle drowsiness, I pulled my futon into the deathly silent, gleaming kitchen. Wrapped in a blanket, like Linus, I slept.
The hum of the refrigerator kept me from thinking of my loneliness. There, the long night came on in perfect peace, and morning came.
But …I just wanted to sleep under the stars.
I wanted to wake up in the morning light.
Aside from that, I just drifted, listless.

1. In contrast with candidate B's idea, your ideas are slightly better.

2.I hold firm to my belief that...

3.Considering the time now is running short, we should discuss about...

An elderly carpenter was ready to retire. He told his employer-contractor of his plans to leave the house-building business to live a more leisurely life with his wife and enjoy his extended family. He would miss the paycheck each week, but he wanted to retire. They could get by.

The contractor was sorry to see his good worker go & asked if he could build just one more house as a personal favor. The carpenter said yes, but over time it was easy to see that his heart was not in his work. He resorted to shoddy workmanship and used inferior materials. It was an unfortunate way to end a dedicated career.

When the carpenter finished his work, his employer came to inspect the house. Then he handed the front-door key to the carpenter and said, "This is your house... my gift to you."

The carpenter was shocked!

What a shame! If he had only known he was building his own house, he would have done it all so differently.

So it is with us. We build our lives, a day at a time, often putting less than our best into the building. Then, with a shock, we realize we have to live in the house we have built. If we could do it over, we would do it much differently.

But, you cannot go back. You are the carpenter, and every day you hammer a nail, place a board, or erect a wall. Someone once said, "Life is a do-it-yourself project." Your attitude, and the choices you make today, help build the "house" you will live in tomorrow. Therefore, Build wisely!

Charlie Sheen will plead guilty to a misdemeanor offense and get 30 days jail time, says a source close to the negotiations in the star's ongoing domestic violence case.

"Charlie intends to go to court on June 7 [to] plead to a misdemeanor and immediately begin serving his 30 days in jail," says the source. "With good behavior, he could end up doing 15 or so days."

While Sheen, 44, had been charged with felony menacing, misdemeanor third-degree assault and misdemeanor criminal mischief following a Christmas Day fight with his wife, Brooke Mueller, 32, in Aspen, Colorado, the source adds that Sheen would not be placed on probation once he completes his jail sentence.

It's not been an easy spring for Sheen or Mueller. In February, Mueller entered rehab for substance abuse with Sheen seeking treatment a week later as a "preventative measure." The couple have been living in separate homes for more than a month while they "work on their marriage," and are currently sharing custody of their twin boys, Max and Bob.

Earlier this month, Sheen agreed to return to his CBS hit "Two and a Half Men" for two more years. The plea deal would allow Sheen to serve out his jail sentence with time to spare before the new season starts shooting at the beginning of August.

Spoken English is so different from the English people learn in schools and textbooks. Students around the world spend billions of dollars and countless hours studying English yet very few can speak well. They wrongly focus on increasing their vocabulary size instead of learning phrasal verbs and slang.

An example of this type of sentence is, "I think he made up that story". "Made up" is the phrasal verb here. Made up means something like, "tell a lie".

Another example is, "I ran into my friend yesterday at the mall". "Ran into" is what we are talking about here.
Ran into means something like, "meet unexpectedly".

These sentences are so common in spoken English yet few non native speakers are able to master them.

They probably understand the words on their own but do not understand the slang usage when the words are used together.

It does not matter how big someone's vocabulary is. If they do not use and understand this stuff well, they will never sound anything like a native speaker.

Some people know this but they use the wrong methods like looking for a phrasal verb dictionary or a list. These are terribly ineffective learning methods.

The best way to learn is to study modern native English speech. I have been teaching exactly how to do this and helping students around the world for years. It doesn't matter what country you are from or what your English level currently is. Learning this material is critical.

Learning American Slang from American TV and movies are also a huge help to get the most relevant material.

Shichi-Go-San is a Japanese festival. Japanese people celebrate this festival on 15 November every year.

Shichi-Go-San means "seven five and three" because it is the festival celebrating children who turn seven five and three years of age. Japanese parents celebrate Shichi-Go-San as their boys turn three and five, and as their girls turn three and seven.

Japanese people think that these ages are very important. At the age of seven, a young girl wears an obi for the first time. An obi is a piece of cloth which they wear around their waist with a kimono. At the age of five, a young boy wears his first hakama pants in public. These pants are very important in Japanese culture. The age of three is very important in Japanese culture because at that age children are allowed to let their hair grow.

People believe that this festival began around one thousand years ago. They chose fifteen of November for the festival because they thought that was a day of good luck for all Japanese people.

Some children wear special, traditional Japanese costumes on that day. More often now, the children wear Western-style clothes.

The pitcher plant is an interesting plant. Take a look at the picture. The plant has the shape of a pitcher.

The pitcher plant is interesting because it eats meat. Pitcher plants catch and eat insects. Insects love the sweet liquid inside the plant. They climb in, and cannot climb out again. Then the plant slowly eats them.

Pitcher plants have different sizes. The biggest can hold almost one liter of water. The smallest are so small that it's difficult to see them.

People often ask if these plants can eat human meat. The answer is "yes", but they can only eat it slowly and in very small amounts. But a person is not likely to fall inside the plant. It's not big enough even for the smallest child. So, there's no need to worry!

Wilbur’s new home was in the lower part of the barn, directly underneath the cows. Mr. Zuckerman knew that a manure pile is a good place to keep a young pig. Pigs need warmth, and it was warm and comfortable down there in the barn cellar on the south side.
Fern came almost every day to visit him. She found an old milking stool that had been discarded, and she placed the stool in the sheepfold next to Wilbur’s pen. Here she sat quietly during the long afternoons, thinking and listening and watching Wilbur. The sheep soon got to know her and trust her. So did the geese, who lived with the sheep. All the animals trusted her, she was so quiet and friendly. Mr. Zuckerman did not allow her to take Wilbur out, and he did not allow her to get into the pigpen. But he told Fern that she could sit on the stool and watch Wilbur as long as she wanted to. It made her happy just to be near the pig, and it made Wilbur happy to know that she was sitting there, right outside his pen. But he never had any fun – no walks, no rides, no swims.
One afternoon in June, when Wilbur was almost two months old, he wandered out into his small yard outside the barn. Fern had not arrived for her usual visit. Wilbur stood in the sun feeling lonely and bored.
“There’s never anything to do around here,” he thought. He walked slowly to his food trough and sniffed to see if anything had been overlooked ant lunch. He found a small strip of potato skin and ate it. His back itched, so he leaned against the fence and rubbed against the boards. When he tired of this, he walked indoors, climbed to the top of the manure pile, and sat down. He didn’t feel like going to sleep, he didn’t feel like digging, he was tired of standing still, tired of lying down. “I’m less than two months old and I’m tired of living,” he said. He walked out to the yard again.
“When I’m out here,” he said, “there’s no place to go but in. When I’m indoors, there’s no place to go but out in the yard.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, my friend, my friend,” said a voice.

Most scientists agree the main cause of the current global warming trend is human expansion of the "greenhouse effect" -- warming that results when the atmosphere traps heat radiating from Earth toward space.

Certain gases in the atmosphere behave like the glass on a greenhouse, allowing sunlight to enter, but blocking heat from escaping. Long-lived gases, remaining semi-permanently in the atmosphere, which do not respond physically or chemically to changes in temperature are described as "forcing" climate change whereas gases, such as water, which respond physically or chemically to changes in temperature are seen as "feedbacks."

Gases that contribute to the greenhouse effect include:

* Water vapor. The most abundant greenhouse gas, but importantly, it acts as a feedback to the climate. Water vapor increases as the Earth's atmosphere warms, but so does the possibility of clouds and precipitation, making these some of the most important feedback mechanisms to the greenhouse effect.
* Carbon dioxide (CO2). A minor but very important component of the atmosphere, carbon dioxide is released through natural processes such as respiration and volcano eruptions and through human activities such as deforestation, land use changes, and burning fossil fuels. Humans have increased atmospheric CO2 concentration by a third since the Industrial Revolution began. This is the most important long-lived "forcing" of climate change.
* Methane. A hydrocarbon gas produced both through natural sources and human activities, including the decomposition of wastes in landfills, agriculture, and especially rice cultivation, as well as ruminant digestion and manure management associated with domestic livestock. On a molecule-for-molecule basis, methane is a far more active greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, but also one which is much less abundant in the atmosphere.
* Nitrous oxide. A powerful greenhouse gas produced by soil cultivation practices, especially the use of commercial and organic fertilizers, fossil fuel combustion, nitric acid production, and biomass burning.
* Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Synthetic compounds of entirely of industrial origin used in a number of applications, but now largely regulated in production and release to the atmosphere by international agreement for their ability to contribute to destruction of the ozone layer. They are also greenhouse gases .

On Earth, human activities are changing the natural greenhouse. Over the last century the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil has increased the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). This happens because the coal or oil burning process combines carbon with oxygen in the air to make CO2. To a lesser extent, the clearing of land for agriculture, industry, and other human activities have increased concentrations of greenhouse gases.

The consequences of changing the natural atmospheric greenhouse are difficult to predict, but certain effects seem likely:

* On average, Earth will become warmer. Some regions may welcome warmer temperatures, but others may not.
* Warmer conditions will probably lead to more evaporation and precipitation overall, but individual regions will vary, some becoming wetter and others dryer.
* A stronger greenhouse effect will warm the oceans and partially melt glaciers and other ice, increasing sea level. Ocean water also will expand if it warms, contributing further to sea level rise.
* Meanwhile, some crops and other plants may respond favorably to increased atmospheric CO2, growing more vigorously and using water more efficiently. At the same time, higher temperatures and shifting climate patterns may change the areas where crops grow best and affect the makeup of natural plant communities.