English Recordings

I had to make a presentation in English the other day. Thanks to you guys, it went very well.

Well, now I want to write about my English skills. I guess you might think I'm going to write something negative as always, but I'm not. www It's been six months since I started using Lang-8. (Time flies fast. Yes it does.) Since my English skills weren't so good in the beginning, they have improved a lot. Yey!

I read some entries Japanese people wrote. They said their English skills hadn't improved. IMO, their English will get better soon because at least they seem to be motivated. Sometimes I wonder what their motivation is. I really want to know. I know of some Japanese housewives on Lang-8 and I don't think they need English. How is it possible for them to keep motivated? Sometimes even I lose my motivation. In addition, it seems like they have their kids learn English too. Some Japanese women, housewives, want their kids to take over their dreams. For example, if they wanted to be actresses, they want their kids to be actors or actresses. If they wanted to get into a famous university, they want their kids to do it. Now I'm off the subject.

I like studying English very much for some reason, so when I see people correct my entries I feel I learn something and that makes me super happy. Anyway, I wonder what would be good for improving my English skills, especially pronunciation. Practice makes perfect, perhaps? Something like Skype?

(obs: Please, in Australian or British accent if possible. American accent is welcomed as well)

BILLIONS of tonnes of garbage could swamp southeast Queensland as the region's population swells, costing millions of dollars.

Waste management experts warn a cultural and legislative shift toward more recycling is needed to stem the tide and contain costs. And Sustainability Minister Kate Jones agrees, concerned the state's waste levels will keep increasing at a higher rate than population growth.

"As a community we don't often think about the unseen impact of our waste," Ms Jones said.

If not addressed, Ms Jones sees more land needed for landfill sites, a loss of green jobs and investments in recycling industries, plus more carbon emissions from landfill.

Some SEQ councils predict annual rate rises of $25 to cover waste disposal and government levies are being floated.

"Too many people think recycling is all about the yellow-topped bin," says Queensland Waste and Recyclers Association chief executive Rick Ralph.

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With 4.4 million people expected in the southeast by 2030, the mountain of household rubbish alone could reach 1.6 billion tonnes per year. A further three million tonnes a year is expected from industrial, construction and demolition waste.

State Government figures show the average Queenslander generates 374kg of household waste a year, plus 134kg of green waste and 102kg of biosolids.

When people speak English, they don't say every word and every part of each word with the same speed, pitch, and loudness. English has patterns of stress, which means saying some sounds louder and stronger. There are two kinds of stress: stress within words and stress within sentences.
Stress within words

Each word is made up of syllables. A syllable is made of a vowel sound (a, e, i, o, u) and the consonant sounds that come with it. For example, the word "example" has 3 syllables:

ex am ple

In every word, there is one syllable that is the most stressed:

ex AM ple

In longer words, there can be more than one stressed syllable, but there's always one syllable that has the biggest stress:

mis un der STAN ding

Stress within words is something that you should learn when you are learning new words. Pay attention to how the word is being said and try to copy how loudly different parts of the word are said. Using correct stress within words makes it easier for a listener to understand what you're trying to say.
Stress within sentences

Stress within sentences is even more important than within words because it can actually change the meaning of the sentence. Here are some simple rules for how you use stress:

* Stress the word that is the topic of your sentence. If you say "I don't know who THAT is," you are suggesting that there is someone else who you do know. On the other hand, if you say, "I DON'T know who that is," you are emphasizing that you don't know it, although someone might think you do.
* When you are pointing out things that are different from what someone else said, or from what you said in the previous sentence, you should stress the parts that are different. For example, if someone said, "I love cheese" you might say "I love BEER". The word "I" is stressed because it's referring to a different person (you, not the person who said "I love cheese." The word "beer" is stressed because it's different from "cheese".
* Nouns, verbs, and adjectives are stressed more than words like "to", "of", "will", "that", "is", "about". For example, here's how a normal sentence would be stressed: "This MORNING I WOKE up at SEVEN THIRTY and was OUT of the HOUSE by EIGHT."

Small talk is polite conversation that people have with people that they are not very close to. In many English-speaking cultures, it is considered strange or rude not to talk to someone that you know if you are near each other for more than a half minute or so.

Common examples of small talk include:

* Greetings ("Hi." "How are you doing?" "What's up?",etc.)
* Asking about someone's family ("How's Alice?" "How are your kids?")
* Talking about the weather ("It's beautiful today, isn't it?")
* Talking about people you both know ("Have you talked to Jessica lately?" "I saw Barry a couple days ago.")

One guide for engaging in polite small talk is to 1) answer the person's question, 2) give a little extra detail, and then 3)ask another question back:

A: How's your wife doing?

B: Pretty good (1). She's started going to the gym a lot more than she used to (2).

A: Oh yeah? That's good.

B: Yeah, she's enjoying it. What about your wife (3)?

People often engage in small talk whenever they haven't seen each other for more than a few days. Even business calls and meetings often start with a minute or two of small talk.

By the way, you should also know that a lot of people don't like small talk. Some people try not to do it, but those people can be seen as rude.

If you own a mirror, take good care of it. If you break it, you'll have seven years of bad luck. If someone asks for the salt, be careful not to drop it. If you see a ladder in the street, don't walk under ladder. Walk around it. If a car hits you on the road, it is probably because it's the thirteenth day of the month, and most likely a Friday.

These are all superstitions, and mostly silly. Many superstitions started a very long time ago but people still believe them today. Some of them are easy to understand. For example, if you walk under a ladder, the person working at the top of the ladder could drop something on you.

But most are not so easy to understand. If it's raining, take an umbrella but don't open it inside the house! And if you see a black cat, keep your fingers crossed that nothing bad happens! Why?

They are small- most of them are less than one centimeter long. They don't look dangerous and they can't kill you, but most people are afraid of them. What are they?

They are leeches, small animals that live on the forest floor and drink blood. Most of the time they drink animals' blood but they are happy to drink human blood too. As soon as they find an animal, they sink their teeth into the skin and drink the blood. The leeches can drink as much blood as more than three times their own weight. When they're full, they drop off and find somewhere to rest for half a year! Each time the leeches drink blood, it can keep them alive for six months.

Just why people are so afraid of leeches is difficult to say. Maybe it's because they drink blood. But they are quite useful too. Doctors use them during operations. The leeches help doctors by drinking blood around a cut. With less blood there, the doctors can see better what they are doing.

Fri Mar 26, 8:33 am ET

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia scientists have found evidence that Tyrannosaur dinosaurs stalked southern hemisphere continents, with the discovery of a hip bone fossil of a small T.Rex in the south of the country.

Previously tyrannosaur fossils had only been found in northern continents, the researchers said in their findings published in Science magazine.

Compared with the ferocious Tyrannosaurus Rex made famous in the Hollywood movie Jurassic Park, which lived about 70 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period, the Australian T.Rex was about one-third its size and lived earlier during the Cretaceous, around 110 million years ago.

The hip bone found in the Australian state of Victoria provides the first evidence of Tyrannosaur dinosaurs in the southern continents and raises the question why only northern hemisphere T.Rexs evolved into giant predators, said the scientists.

"The existence of this hip bone shows that about 100 million years ago, in the Early Cretaceous period, small tyrannosaurs were found in other parts of the world," said Tom Rich, senior curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at Museum Victoria.

"This discovery changes our understanding of the evolution of this group of dinosaurs," Rich said in a statement.

(Reporting by Michael Perry; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

A newfound ant-eating dinosaur was one of the smallest known and also one of the best adapted for running, scientists revealed.

A farmer discovered the fossil skeleton of the roughly foot-and-a-half-long creature, named Xixianykus zhangi, in southern Henan in China. The dinosaur lived in a warm, temperate forested environment watered by rivers and lakes alongside duck-billed dinosaurs and likely sail-backed predators known as spinosaurs roughly 89 million to 83 million years ago. Scientists aren't sure how the dinosaur perished, but the fossil is fairly intact compared with many, so another creature probably did not kill it.

This minute hunter possessed a number of adaptations for quick, highly efficient running, with features of the hind limb, pelvis and backbone that would have promoted stability and reduced superfluous, energy-wasting movements as it dashed across prehistoric landscapes.

The dinosaur also had a short upper leg in comparison with its lower leg, a trait seen in many running animals.

Thu Mar 25, 2:49 pm ET

SEATTLE – Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo has euthanized its oldest animal — a 47-year-old hippo named Gertie — because of normal, age-related physical decline.

The 5,000-pound hippo has lived at the zoo since 1966. She had osteoarthritis and despite medication, zoo officials say she was having trouble getting around and was in pain.

Two female hippos remain at the zoo's African Savanna: 31-year-old Water Lily and 10-year-old Guadalupe.

Zoo officials say hippos can live up to 49 years in zoos. Their life expectancy is 45 years in the wild.

Hippopotamuses are listed as a vulnerable species, primarily because humans have excessively hunted them for their meat, fat, ivory teeth and hides.

Mon Mar 29, 4:40 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Bats rely on the position of the sun at sunset to navigate, even though they are nocturnal creatures and are still in their caves when the sun goes down, a study published Monday showed.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute studied greater mouse-eared bats to see if they could find their way home even from somewhere they had never been before or if Earth's magnetic field, which earlier studies have shown are used by bats to navigate, had been tinkered with.

First, the researchers captured bats and released them 25 kilometers (15 miles) from their roost cave.

When they followed the bats with the help of small radio transmitters, the researchers found that within one to three kilometers (0.6-1.8 miles) most of the bats were heading in the direction of their cave. The fastest were back home within two hours.

Once the researchers had worked out that bats could find their way home from a strange place, they wanted to know how they did it.

They tested the hypothesis that bats do as birds do and calibrate their magnetic compasses -- which use the Earth's magnetic field to navigate -- to the sun.

The researchers altered the magnetic field for half the bats at night, shifting it from north to east using a Helmholtz coil after the sun had completely set.

The bats with the altered magnetic field flew in the same direction as the control bats -- in other words, they headed home.

When the researchers altered the magnetic field when the sun was setting, the bats flew off course, heading east instead of south, towards home.

The researchers concluded that the bats used the position of the sun at sunset as the most reliable indication of direction.