English Recordings

I like music of the 1980's
when I listen to the music, I feel like I'm in another world.

Hello Emily,

It's Paul! I think you already talked to Samantha and know everything.

I've been to your apartement and left some messages for you.

You must find a yellow paper and a picture!

Then, go to my house and go upstairs in my office.

Take care!

This book is an attempt to make modern literary theory intelligible and attractive to as wide a readership as possible.

This is one reason which makes a new edition of it worthwhile

If this book is a difficult, even esoteric language, then it seems to be...

in a postmodern age, meaning, like everything else, is expected to be instantly consumable.

Some literary theory has indeed been excessively in-group and obscurantist,

What is truly elitist in literary studies is the idea that works of literature can only be appreciated by those with a particular sort of cultural breeding.

Because some students entering higher education were from supposedly 'uncultivated' backgrounds. Theory was a way of emancipating literary works from the stranglehold of a 'civilized sensibility',

Properly understood, literary theory is shaped by a democratic impulse rather than an elitist one;

If one wanted to put a date on the beginnings of th transformation which has overtaken literary theory in this century, one could do worse than settle on 1917,

'reading' and 'criticism' has undergone deep alteration.

I have tried to popularize, rather than vulgarize, the subject.

There are economists who disliked theory, or claimed to get along better without it,

They suspect literary theory as an arcane, elitist enclave somewhat akin to nuclear physics.

Some students and critics also protest that literary theory 'gets in between the reader and the work

Hostility to theory usually means an opposition to other people's theories and an oblivion of one's own.

English literature might even at a pinch be taken to encompass Hobbes's Leviathan or Clarendon's History of the Rebellion.

A distinction between 'fact' and 'fiction' seems unlikely to get us very far, not least because the distinction itself is often a questionable one.

in the words of the Russian critic Roman jakobson, literature represents an 'organized violence committed on ordinary speech'. Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech.

Your language draws attention to itself, flaunts its material being,

Criticism should dissociate art from mystery

the Formalists passed over the analysis of literary 'content' for the study of literary form.

It was this perverse insistence which won for the Formalists their derogatory name from their antagonists.

what all of these elements had in common was their 'estranging' or 'defamiliarizing' effect.

In the routines of everyday speech, our perceptions of and responses to reality become stale, blunted, or, as the Formalists would say, 'automatized'.

By having to grapple with language in a more strenuous, self-conscious way than usual, the world which that language contains is vividly renewed.

if a story breaks off and begins again, switches constantly from one narrative level to another and delays its climax to keep us in suspense,

The story, as the Formalists would argue, uses 'impeding' or 'retarding' devices to hold our attention;

Tristram Shandy impedes its own story-line so much that it hardly gets off the ground,

The Formalists, then, saw literary language as a set of deviations from a
norm, a kind oflinguistic violence:

But to spot a deviation implies being able to identify the norm from which it swerves.

One person's norm may be another's deviation:

Even the most 'prosaic' text of the fifteenth century may sound 'poetic' to us today because of its archaism. If we were to stumble across an isolated scrap of writing from some long-vanished civilization, we could not tell whether it was 'poetry' or not.

The fact that a piece of language was 'estranging' did not guarantee that it was always and everywhere so: it was estranging only against a certain normative linguistic background, and if this altered then the writing might cease to be perceptible as literary

For the Formalists, in other words, 'literariness' was a function of the differential relations between one sort of discourse and another; it was not an eternally given property.

There is no 'literary' device -
metonymy, synecdoche, litotes, chiasmus and so on which is not quite
intensively used in daily discourse.

Nevertheless, the Formalists still presumed that 'making strange' was the
essence of the literary. It was just that they relativized this use of language,
saw it as a matter of contrast between one type of speech and another.

realist or naturalistic writing is not linguistically self-conscious or self-exhibiting in any striking way.

they admire its laconic plainness or low-keyed sobriety.

This may well be a fruitless sort of pursuit, but it is not significantly more fruitless than claiming to hear the cut and thrust of the rapiers in some poetic description of a duel,

but is to be taken as referring to a general state of affairs. Sometimes, though not always, it may employ peculiar language as though to make this fact obvious- to signal that what is at stake is a way of talking about a woman, rather than any particular real-life woman.

it would probably have come as a surprise to George Orwell to hear that his essays were to be read as though the topics he discussed were less important than the way he discussed them.

It leaves the definition of literature up to how somebody decides to read, not to
the nature of what is written.

because I enjoy Gibbon's prose style, or revel in images of human corruption whatever their historical source.

Some texts are born literary, some achieve literariness, and some have literariness thrust upon them. Breeding in this respect may count for a good deal more than birth.

There is no 'essence' of literature whatsoever.

If I pore over the railway timetable not to discover a train connection but to stimulate in myself general reflections on the speed and complexity of modern existence, then I might be said to be reading it as literature.

As the philosophers might say, 'literature' and 'weed' are functional rather than ontological terms: they tell us about what we do, not about the fixed being of things.

They tell us about the purposes it may be put to and the human practices clustered around it.

We may be offering as a general definition a sense of the 'literary' which is in fact historically specific.

Any belief that the study of literature is the study of a stable, well-definable entity, as entomology is the study of insects, can be abandoned as a chimera.

some literature is verbally self-regarding, while some highly-wrought rhetoric is not literature.

value-judgements are notoriously
variable.

Let us imagine that by dint of some deft archaeological research we discovered a great deal more about what ancient Greek tragedy actually meant to its original audiences,

All literary works, in other words, are 'rewritten', if only unconsciously, by the societies which read them;

Facts are public and unimpeachable, values are private and gratuitous.

This cathedral is a magnificent
specimen of baroque architecture.

In chatting to you about the weather I am also signalling that I regard conversation with you as valuable,

stating when a cathedral was built is reckoned to be more disinterested in our own culture than passing an opinion about its architecture,

All of our descriptive statements move within an often invisible network of value-categories,

without particular interests we would have no knowledge at all,
because we would not see the point of bothering to get to know anything.
Interests are constitutive of our knowledge, not merely prejudices which imperil it. The claim that knowledge should be 'value-free' is itself a value-judgement.

such as the belief that I should try to keep in good health,

we share certain 'deep' ways of seeing and valuing which are bound up with our social life.

the prejudice that the meaning of democracy is confined to putting a cross on a ballot paper every few years.

It is deeply ingrained in us to imagine ourselves moving forwards into the future.

I do not mean by 'ideology' simply the deeply entrenched, often unconscious beliefs which people hold;

I. A. Richards sought to demonstrate just how whimsical and subjective literary
value-judgements could actually be by giving his undergraduates a set of
poems, withholding from them the titles and authors' names, and asking
them to evaluate them.

time-honoured poets were marked down and obscure authors celebrated.

Their critical responses were deeply entwined with their broader prejudices and beliefs.

If it will not do to see literature as an 'objective', descriptive category,
neither will it do to say that literature is just what people whimsically choose
to call literature.

They refer in the end not simply to private taste, but to the assumptions by which certain social groups exercise and maintain power over others. If this seems a far-fetched assertion, a matter of private prejudice, we may test it out by an account of the rise of 'literature'
in England.

- So, Julie, do you like Maths?
- No, I don't. It's too difficult!
- Do you like English?
- Oh yes, I do. At school, I love English, French and History.
- What about television? Do you like horror films?
- Oh no, I don't.
- Do you like cartoons?
- Yes, I do. They're fun!
- Thank you Julie. Bye bye.

I like milk.
I don't like water.
I love fish.

Alligator
An alligator has a big mouth. It has many teeth and a big tongue. It has a long tail. It has scales.
Butterfly
A butterfly has a long, thin body. It has two colorful wings. It has two antennae on its head. This butterfly has spots on its wings.
Chimpanzee
A chimpanzee has long arms. It has fingers on its hands. It has toes on its feet. A chimpanzee has lots of hair.
Elephant
An elephant has big ears. It has two long tusks. It has a long trunk. An elephant has four big feet.
Lion
A lion has fur. It has four big paws with claws. This lion has a big mane around its head. It has two eyes.
Parrot
A parrot has two wings. It has a long tail. It has colorful feathers. It has a beak. It has claws on its feet.
Tortoise
A tortoise has a hard shell. It has four legs and four feet. A tortoise can make its head and legs go into its shell.
Shark
A shark has fins. It has two pectoral fins and two dorsal fins. It has other fins too. It uses its fins and tail to move in the water. It uses its gills to breathe under water.

Anne Boleyn was the second wife of Henry VIII. Her love story with Henry VIII shaped history. Indeed, he broke with the Roman Catholic Church in order to marry her. He tore the country apart for Anne Boleyn. When she failed to provide Henry a male heir, she was accused of adultery and incest. She was imprisoned in the Tower of London and she was beheaded on the 19th of May 1536. Anne Boleyn is the mother of Queen Elizabeth I who reigned from 1558 to 1603. Today, Anne Boleyn has become an iconic figure and a fascinating character. She is depicted in numerous paintings. Films and series have told her epic love story and tragic end, even if they sometimes exaggerate the passion shared by Henry and Anne. Naturally, we must bear in mind that these adaptations are not always completely accurate.

Our hotel was bang in the middle of the quarter.

the soldiers took an oath to the flag .

the baseball player hit the ball with his bat .

never forguet what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you.

Small companies are more likely to go belly up than their larger competitors.

Hold on, the best is yer to come.

This is a very difficult concept to get hold of.

the teacher made a sharp comment when the pupil arrived late.

I indented the first line in each paragraph.

I want to thrive, not just survive.

I’m trying to burn off excess flab.

I reviewed my credit report andf I have no outstanding debts.

Bottles of lemonade doctored with rat poison were discovered in the kitchen.

He was found to have provided the court with doctored evidence.

At the last minute, we roped in a couple of spectators to complete the team.

He fell asleep with a full belly and a happy heart.

The global economy is showing signs of coming apart.

By the sixth month of pregnancy, Gina's belly had begun to swell.

The police are advising motorists marooned by the blizzards to stay in their cars until the rescue services can reach them.

I couldn't help drifting off in the middle of that lecture - it was so boring!

My boots are coming apart at the seams.

The global economy is showing signs of coming apart.

While he was at the library, Steve decided to seek out some information on the history of the area.

Ever since the oil crisis, the industry has been in (a state of) disarray.

You clumsy oaf! You broke it!

She delved into her pocket to find some change.

No one was convinced by his glib answers.

What led to the reversal of the policy?

The next sedimentation cycle starts with development of new creeks and gullies.

An expert appraised the paintings before the audicion.

the candidate pledged to build a new stadium.

We are hoping for a reversal in the downward trend of sales.

Suddenly the engine stuttered and then it stopped completely.

Every time I make a suggestion at work, my boss overrides me/it.

The president used his veto to override the committee's decision.

I grew weary of his bantering style of conversation.

While he was at the library, Steve decided to seek out some information on the history of the area.

she is the best teacher in the school by far

She stutters a little, so be patient and let her finish what she's saying.

The local authority may then try to shuffle these responsibilities off onto another authority.

Tomorrow will be cloudy with outbreaks of rain and drizzle.

We underestimate the destructiveness of war at our peril.

More research is needed to round out the article.

We laid the pieces of the dress pattern out on the floor.

She felt as if she had awakened from a long slumber.

The journey through the mountains was fraught with peril.

She doesn't see her grandchildren very often so she makes a real fuss of them when she does.

We've had to jettison our trip because of David's accident.

The code of practice lays out very clearly what the duties of the registrar are.

When I put the key in the ignition it turns over, but it won't start.

She's been making up for her past misdeeds by doing a lot of voluntary work.

He's always jaunting off around the world on business trips, leaving his wife to cope with the babies by herself.

She made such a fuss when Richard spilled a drop of wine on her blouse!

The fragile truce between the two sides is not expected to last long.

On a miniature scale, the conservatory becomes a decorative object among the other furnishings of a parlor or drawing room.

I don't foresee any difficulties so long as we keep within budget.

But even as he inflicted the death-wound, he received a mortal blow from the dagger of the Dane, and the two chiefs fell together.

The television's gone haywire.

She clambered into bed.

I think you're (stark) raving mad to agree to do all that extra work without being paid for it.

I bought myself a pair of good stout hiking boots.

The station has jettisoned educational broadcasts.

English can be weird. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.

a balmy summer evening.

Everyone rejoiced at the news of his safe return.

During the First World War, Turkey and Germany were allies/Turkey was an ally of Germany.

The earthquake wiped out many villages.

From childhood, Britney Spears seemed destined for stardom.

The annual fete to raise money for cancer research netted more than $90,000.

Mind out - this plate's very hot!

They think someone bumped him off.

During the recession, the government opted for a policy of pay/wage restraint rather than a reduction in public investment.

When I asked for the money, he turned really nasty.

You know what he's like about food - thou shalt not serve red wine with fish.

He's a bit cocky for my liking.

The court cannot accept evidence based on hearsay and rumor.

He was seen as a pleasant man – short, a bit stout and balding, with a radiant smile.

The school puts a lot of emphasis on music and art.

They did a thorough search of the area but found nothing.

The doctor gave him a thorough medical examination.

Those who attempted to convert the heathen were put to death.

he's such a heathen - he's never even heard of Metallica.

We refrained from talking until we knew that it was safe.

Women’s organizations have been getting kudos for their service activities.

He told me a brazen lie.

She was completely baffled by his strange behaviour.

You can see the village off in the distance.

She was feted by audiences both in her own country and abroad.

There's a ramshackle old shed at the bottom of the garden

In terms of experience, she definitely had the edge over the other people that we interviewed.

There's a definite edge to/in her voice when she talks to her husband.

Internet banks may have the edge over their old-technology rivals when it comes to charges and rates, but they are not immune from complaints.

I put the heat on, but it will take a minute for the car to warm up.

His finger was cut off when he caught it in a machine, but the surgeon was able to sew it back on.

he tousled her niece's hair, and went out.

Do you use an electric razor or the kind that you have to put a razor blade in.

He worked off and on as a bicycle messenger, but he never found permanent work.

Feelings that had been bottled up for years came flooding out.

A leprechaun is usually shown wearing a cocked hat and shoes with large buckles.

Overton sneaked up behind Brown and knocked the ball out of bounds.

What lies beyond the brazen gates of the palace?

he tousled her niece's hair, and went out.

Henry VIII is one of the best known monarchs in English history. He is famous for his ferocious appetite, for food, wine, power and women. His reign lasted nearly 38 years (from 1509 to 1547) and was marked by radical changes to the English Constitution, expansion of royal powers and the breaking with the Catholic Church through the English Reformation. But he is perhaps most famous for having six wives. Though married to his first wife Catherine of Aragon for nearly twenty five years, Henry’s next five marriages lasted less than that combined. Two of the marriages were declared annulled while two of his wives were beheaded, another of Henry’s wife died after giving birth to his only son while his final wife, Catherine Parr, outlived him.

Hey ! What’s up with you?
My name is Josh and I’m bored today….
I have to stay at home because of the Coronavirus and I’m really bored but I want to help my mum at home.
Tomorrow it’s my brother’s birthday so we want to prepare a cake, not a chocolate cake, we want to make a cheese cake. It’s delicious !
How do I prepare it?
Well, it’s very easy .

What ingredients do I need ?
I need 100 g flour, 200 g sugar, 125 gbutter, 200g cheese, 250 mlmilk and 3 eggs.

And how do I prepare it? Here is the procedure:
Before I start, I wash my hands carefully with water and soap.
First, I have mix the flour with butter and sugar.
Then, I mix the eggs with the milk and the cheese till I get a thick paste.
Next, I bake it in the oven for about 25 minutes..
Finally, I slice the cheesecake and serve it with some coffee or chocolate.

Isn’t it easy?