English Recordings

The problem is shown even in the difficulty we have in distinguishing between the concept of the ‘esteem’ in which we may or may not be held by others, and our own self-esteem. The evidence of our sensitivity to social evaluative threat’, coupled with the American psychologist’s evidence of long-term rises in anxiety, suggests that we may –by the standards of any previous society –have become highly self-conscious, overly concerned with how we appear to others, worried that we might come across as unattractive, boring, ignorant or whatever, and constantly trying to manage the impressions we make. And at the core of our interactions with strangers is our concern at the social judgements and evaluations they might make: how do they rate us, did we give a good account of ourselves? This insecurity is part of the modern psychological condition.
Greater inequality between people seems to heighten their social evaluation anxieties by increasing the importance of social status. Instead of accepting each other as equals on the basis of our common humanity as we might in more equal settings, measuring each other’s worth becomes more important as status differences widen.
We come to see social position as a more important feature of a person’s identity.
Between strangers it may often be the main feature. As Ralph Waldo Emerson, the nineteenth-century American philosopher, said, ‘It is very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it.’ Indeed, psychological experiments suggest that we make judgements of each other’s social status within the first few seconds of meeting.
No wonder first impressions count, and no wonder we feel social evaluation anxieties!

Why have social anxieties increased so dramatically in many developed countries over the last half century,
as one American psychologist’s studies suggest they have? Why does the ‘social evaluative treat’ seem so great?
A reasonable explanation is the break-up of the settled communities of the past. People used to grow up knowing, and being known by, many of the same people all their lives. Although geographical mobility had been increasing for several generations, the last half century has seen a particularly rapid rise. At the beginning of this period it was still common for people –in rural and urban areas alike –never to have travelled much beyond the boundaries of their immediate city or village community. Married brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents, tended to remain living nearby and the community consisted of people who had often known each other for much of their lives. But now that so many people move from where they grew up, knowledge of neighbours tends to be superficial or non-existent. People’s sense of identity used to be rooted in the community to which they belonged, in people’s real knowledge of each other, but now it is lost in the facelessness of mass society.　Familiar faces have been replaced by a constant flow of strangers. As a result, who we are, identity itself, is endlessly open to question.

The foreign has long been my stomping ground, my sanctuary, as one who grew up a foreigner wherever I happened to be. 　Born to Indian parents in Oxford, England, I was seven when my parents moved to California
by the third grade, I was a foreigner on all three of the continents that might have claimed me—a little Indian boy with an English accent and an American green card*. 　Foreignness became not just my second home, but my theme, my fascination, a way of looking at every place as many locals could not.
As some are born with the blessing of beauty or a musical gift, as some can run very fast without seeming to try, so I was given from birth, I felt, the benefit of being on intimate terms with outsiderdom.
It’s fashionable in some circles to talk of Otherness as a burden to be borne, and there will always be some who feel threatened by—and correspondingly hostile to—anyone who looks and sounds different from themselves.
But in my experience, foreignness can as often be an asset. 　The outsider enjoys a kind of diplomatic immunity in many places, and if he seems witless or alien to some, he will seem glamorous and exotic to as many others.
In open societies like California, someone with Indian features such as mine is a target of positive discrimination, as strangers ascribe to me yogic powers or Vedic wisdom that couldn’t be further from my background or my interest．
Besides, the very notion of the foreign has been shifting in our age of constant movement, with more than fifty million refugees; 　every other Torontonian you meet today is what used to be called a foreigner, and the number of people living in lands they were not born to will surpass 300 million in the next generation.
Soon there’ll be more foreigners on earth than there are Americans.　 Foreignness is a planetary condition, and even when you walk through your hometown—whether that’s New York or London or Sydney—half the people around you are speaking in languages and dealing in traditions different from your own.
From the moment westerners began living in Bali, soon after World War I, they sent back two messages, more or less contradictory: 　first, they were no longer foreign—they had gone native, and felt wonderfully at home in Eden;　 second, the rest of us would always remain outsiders, the gates to the garden having closed behind them. By 1930, Hickman Powell, a reporter from Duluth*, was entitling his book on Bali The Last Paradise;
soon thereafter, the Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias, author of Island of Bali, was wondering if Paradise was lost when its denizens* began wearing shorts.　 Here was a truly unfallen place, every newcomer seemed to report, which would fall as soon as the next newcomer disembarked*.
This is the point of the foreign. 　We don’t travel halfway across theworld to find the same things we could have seen at home.　 Those who undertake long and dangerous journeys have every incentive in stressing their discovery of a world far better than the one they left behind.　 Paul Gauguin* became a “true savage, a real Maori,” he wrote, after he traveled deep into the jungles of Polynesia (having found his first port of call, Papeete, a place polluted by “the absurdities of civilization”).　 His outsider’s appeal in the South Seas put to shame his Everyman status as an artist of uncertain prospects back in Paris. 　Somerset Maugham later adapted Gauguin’s story into a novel, The Moon and Sixpence, reminding readers that any distant port might be more liberating and richer in romance than a stockbroker’s* life.

No European, surely, can ever feel that he is qualified to write an entirely adequate history of an Eastern country. Certainly for a Western historian Japan presents peculiar difficulties.　 For although the social and political changes in Japan during the past hundred years have been both drastic and widespread, nevertheless the Japanese nation has been spared, so far, the radical change of a violent revolution.　 Thus in spite of everything a certain basic continuity with past traditions, some of them very ancient, has been preserved. 　In Japan, as in Great Britain, old and new exist together, are indeed intermingled: but so are East and West. 　In fact it is becoming increasingly less easy to separate the specifically Eastern and Western elements of Japanese life and thought.
Anybody who travels to Japan by way of Asia must feel on arrival that he has entered a semiWestern environment. Yet the longer he remains in the country, the more clearly he will perceive that Western ideas and techniques, now generally accepted and applied, sometimes undergo a subtle but definite change when transplanted to Japan.
This was much more true, of course, in the first quarter of 20th century, and earlier, than it is today.
It could be claimed, indeed, that the younger generation – those who were in their infancy during or just after the Pacific War – greatly resemble their contemporaries in Europe and America.
In course of time the similarities between Japan and the West may weigh more than the differences.
The factor, then, that lends great interest to the history of Modern Japan, and makes the writing of it a peculiarly challenging task, is the Japanese response to intrusion by the Western World.

I want to star story with my favorite books and authors.
My favorite book at the moment is “Inferno” Den Brown.
And I like the books deception point and the lost symbol
In school time I read the da Vinci code and Angels and Demons
I forgot the Details so I want to read it again I like books Stephen King Bag of bones
My favorite moves is Harry Potter all parts and “Twilight”, and “The notebook”
In addition I like TV series “The Vampire Diaries” and “Game of throne”, “Sherlock Holmes” and “Supernatural”

1.
- Your blue shirt matches your blue eyes.
- We painted the cabinets green to match the rug.
- a scarf with gloves to match
2.
- The jacket’s fine, but the pants don’t fit.
- The key doesn't fit the lock.
3.
- That dress really suits you.
- Those shoes don't suit you. You should wear something more formal.
- The dress fits, but it doesn’t suit me.
4.
- A white shirt and a black tie go well together.
- Do you think this shirt will go with the skirt I bought?

Hi Em,
You wanted to know about my twelfth birthday and what I did. Well, some things went wrong, but it was OK in the end. When I got up, I tripped over Sid and hurt my foot. But no problem, the morning was cool because I had breakfast with my parents. That doesn’t happen very often because they always work a lot. They gave me a new computer and a new pair of shoes – they were the wrong size! But no problem, I can take them back to the shop.
My granny made a cake for me, but she only put eleven candles on it. So I ran to the shop to get one more. But no problem, the cake was yummy!
Sid tried some of it and was sick1 on the floor. But no problem, I cleaned the floor and he was OK again later.
Dave

The Three Billy Goats Gruff

Once upon a time, there lived three billy goat brothers: Little Billy, Middle Billy, and Big Billy.

One day, they decided to cross the bridge to eat the sweet green grass on the other side.

There was only one problem. A mean troll lived under it.

CLOMP, CLOMP, CLOMP! Little Billy started across the bridge. Then he heard a craggy voice.

“Stop there! I am going to eat you."

“Wait for my brother. He is bigger and much more delicious than I!” cried Little Billy.

“What a fine idea,” said Troll, licking his lips. And with that, Little Billy crossed the bridge.

CLOMP, CLOMP, CLOMP! Middle Billy started across the bridge. Then he heard a craggy voice.

“Stop there! I am going to eat you up!” yelled Troll.

“Wait for my brother. He is bigger and much more delicious than I!” cried Middle Billy.

“What a fine idea,” said Troll, licking his lips. And with that, Middle Billy crossed the bridge.

CLOMP, CLOMP, CLOMP! Big Billy started across the bridge. Then he heard a craggy voice.

“Stop there! I am going to eat you up!” yelled Troll. “Okay said Big Billy, for he had a sneaky plan.

When Troll climbed onto the bridge, Big Billy butted him so hard that he fell in the water with a giant SPLASH!

After that, the three brothers crossed the bridge whenever they liked. And, my, was
that sweet green grass delicious!

--Already recorded, thanks!--

--Already recorded, thanks!--