English Recordings

Daphne is a dolphin. She lives in the ocean and she is very smart.
Daphne and her friends love to jump in and out of the water.
She likes to click, chirp and whistle when she is happy. Daphne eats a lot of small fish every day.

(Silence a minute)

True or false?

Daphne is a river dolphin.

Daphne often plays with friends.

Daphne can jump out of water.

Daphne clicks and whistles when she is sad.

Daphne is a clever dolphin.

Since walking out of the continent now known
as Africa, modern man has regularly packed
his bags and moved on. Such journeys into the
unknown often require a leap of faith. This is
the case for many of the subjects interviewed in
Aisha Dunbar’s Worlds Apart, a group of people
who underwent the immigrant experience in the
1970s. As they recall the cultural and language
barriers they once had to face, they all speak of
the need to believe that life will get better. In the
first chapter, Dunbar herself provides a first-hand
account of being on the receiving end of racism
and the strategies she employed to deal with those
who abused her, and cites this as her incentive for
assembling this collection of other voices. Worlds
Apart is, admittedly, a slightly sentimental book,
particularly in the narrative thread that connects
each person’s story, but the anecdotes they tell are
often genuinely humorous and upliftingp4

Fans of Neil Gough’s The Right Man, a look at
political campaigning in the 21st century, have
eagerly anticipated a follow-up, but whether his
latest volume, In Retrospect, rises to the challenge
is arguable. This book poses the question ‘does
advertising merely reinforce stereotypes or create
them?’ It is bursting with commercial artwork
and slogans from the 1950s onwards, and some
may appreciate the trip down memory lane to
a time when ‘real men’ smoked pipes and wore
fedora hats, and when slogans such as ‘Christmas
morning she’ll be happier with a Hoover and Don’t
worry darling, you didn’t burn the beer’ were perfectly
acceptable. Where In Retrospect falls down is its
lighter emphasis on the analysis side of things,
and thus it feels a superficial read at times.
Nevertheless, a treasure worth buying or giving.

In January 1918, the first cases of a new strain
of influenza were observed in Kansas, USA. The
ensuing pandemic lasted to December 1920,
spreading across Europe, and even to the Arctic,
claiming an estimated 20–50 million lives.
With little understanding of how the ‘Spanish
flu’ virus spread, many people were forced to
rely on folk remedies such as eating onions
or wearing goose fat poultices. In Contagion,
Dirk Smithey takes a comprehensive look at
over 2000 years of disease and treatment. He
is not the first to attempt this, but he writes
with unusual compassion, and in doing so,
elevates his work above the rest. Interestingly,
once we arrive in the 21st century, Smithey
makes reference to the anti-immunization
trend, but does not enter the debate, a decision
I suspect may irritate those working towards the
elimination of needless childhood disease. All
in all, an alarming yet fascinating read

Britain under the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901) witnessed a great leap forward in technological terms, propelled by the Industrial Revolution. Social reform, however, took longer to gain momentum. In The Unseen, Amelia Drew skillfully intersperses extracts from Victorian household management manuals describing the duties of young servants with contemporary pamphlets calling for improvements in working conditions. The diary entries of Drew’s great-grandmother also appear, allowing us a glimpse into the gruelling and monotonous life of a housemaid. Drew does not shy away from providing meticulous descriptions of the foul tasks that servants were charged with and the kind of horrific injury that befell very young factory workers, and in doing so, dispels any lingering romantic notions of this era. This is a compelling book, but I suspect one that will be dipped into rather than read in its entirety.

Red apple, red apple, what do you see?
I see a green pear looking at me.
Green pear, green pear, what do you see?
I see a blue plum looking at me.
Blue plum, blue plum, what do you see?
I see a red strawberry looking at me.
Red strawberry, red strawberry, what do you see?
I see an orange orange looking at me.

Another aspect of the curriculum that may challenge teachers is the growing emphasis on ICT, with the 2006 Literacy Framework including many activities related to film and computers, interactive whiteboards, children's writing and so on. The levels of subject knowledge required to teach children about language are now considerably greater than many of us acquired during our secondary schooling, and even during teacher training. 'Knowledge about language', explores ways of teaching about language through m.eaningful activities, but many people may initially be confused by much of the terminology that appears there and in the Primary Strategy. with several other subjects to understand, as well as class management (the major concern of most trainees), training and induction-year programmes have become increasingly intensive. One would hope that, by the time the children who were educated through the Literacy Framework and National Strategies reach higher education, teacher trainers will need to give far less attention to explaining the first three items in the bullet list, which, on the whole, remain constant. As for the fourth item, teaching reading, this highly important part of the curriculum is a matter for constant debate and frequent change of emphasis .

I see you.
Legolas hears something.
The room smells.
This tastes good.

You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.

Saint George and the dragon
Once upon a time there was a strong brave knight called George.
He travelled to many places on his beautiful white horse.
One day he came to a village.
The villagers were terrorised because a dragon lived in a cave next to a lake and it attacked the village every day.
One day the dragon demanded that they sacrificed a beautiful girl.
The girls were chosen by lottery. The villagers were desperate.
George heard that the lot of the day fell on the king’s daughter.
George decided to kill the dragon to save the princess.
He went to the lake where the dragon lived.
The dragon rose out of the water with a mighty roar!
George wasn’t scared. He started to fight the dragon.
He attacked the ferocious beast with his lance, but the dragon's scales were so hard that the lance broke into a thousand pieces, and George fell from his horse.
Fortunately George took refuge under a magic orange tree. Soon the oranges made him strong again so he used his sword to pierce the dragon under its wing where there were no scales.
The dragon fell dead at his feet.
The princess was saved, the dragon was dead, the villagers were overjoyed!
THE END