English Recordings

to redress an injustice

His desperate efforts to save the company from bankruptcy were ultimately futile

Remember that she's enfeebled and needs your assistance.

Today, I happened to come across a website called RealEnglish.com, or something those lines, and, there, English teachers put up videos to show listeners secret methods to improve their language usage.

Today's "tips and wrinkles" were about how to increase your vocabulary.

So, what are you doing to develop your vocabulary?

In school, I was taught that I should write down words I didn't know in my notebook, and tried to memorize them by going over them repeatedly.

The teachers on the website emphasize that we should learn phrases, not individual words. This is because we speak in groups of words or phrases, not by just a word itself.

They also say that English grammar is to learn that how words go together, and we can learn grammar by following this natural progression. I think that they have a point!

Even if you are Japanese learners, I think this method will work well. What do you think?

Do you have any good ideas?

I'm going to tell you a joke for a change of pace today.

If you're trying to lose weight, what will you do first? Maybe you will look for some ways that are easy but effective?

There seems to be an easy way to get your weight down for some people, and I'm telling you it now.

Here you go:

~~~~~~~

One time when I was home visiting my folks, my mom asked me to set the table for dinner.

I opened the refrigerator and found a risque picture of a lovely, slender, perfectly built, but scantily-clad young woman.

"Mom, what's this?" I asked.

"Oh, I put that up there to remind me not to over-eat." She answered.

"Is it working?" I asked.

"Yes and no." She explained.
"I've lost 15 pounds, but your dad has gained 20!!!"

hahahaha

I don't want to offend people who graduated from prestigious universities, but I have some thoughts about the Japanese education system.

While observing on the recent behavior of Yukio Hatoyama, the former Prime Minister in Japan, I feel academic background is totally irrelevant to a person's accomplishment.

I believe that lots of Japanese people feel the same from watching the series of things he has said and done.

I won't talk about his words and actions here now because it will take too much time, I just wonder what he learned from his alma-mater, Tokyo-university, the so-called best university in Japan.

This year, the government announced that a decade-old policy, relaxed- education, would be abandoned. Instead, the drastically increased page counts of elementary school textbooks will be employed next year.

Under the new policy, the overall number of pages will increase by 42.8%, particularly science and arithmetic textbooks will be increased by 67%!

What a policy! They are trying to adopt Japan's rote-learning methods again! They pitted millions of children against each other to pass entrance exams. I think they feel pressed just because the ranking of Japanese children dropped, according to The International Student Assessment Survey.

I don't think that they can estimate the worth of each child by only their scores in school! I don't want to lose their hidden talents that can't be evaluated on the surface.

It's a controversial issue and I don't know how you feel about this. Which is better: relaxed-education or cramming-education?

With a red card, the referee relegated the player to the sidelines

Observing the happy couple from afar engendered a sense of jealousy in her heart

I just can't believe that after all our efforts the deal went down the drain!

The politician's treacherous behavior allowed him to move up the ranks in government