English Recordings

Martians invade earth.

Incredible as I may seem, it has been confirmed that a large martian invasion fleet has landed on earth tonight.

First vessels were sighted over Great Britain, Denmark and Norway already in the late evening from where, as further reports indicate, the fleet headed towards the North Pole and Santa Claus was taken hostage by the invaders.

Afterwards they split apart in order to approach most major cities around the earth. The streets filled as thousands fled their homes, many only wearing their. pajamas.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have a million pounds? Or a billion?
How about a trillion? Or even a gazillion? Meet Joe Spud.

Joe didn’t have to imagine what it would be like to have loads and loads and loads of money. He was only twelve, but he was ridiculously, preposterously rich.
Joe had everything he could ever want.

100-inch plasma widescreen flat-screen high-definition TV in every room in the house
500 pairs of Nike trainers
A grand-prix racetrack in the back garden
A robot dog from Japan
A golf buggy with the number plate ‘SPUD 2’ to drive around the grounds of his house
A waterslide which went from his bedroom into an indoor
Olympic-sized swimming pool
Every computer game in the world
3-D IMAX cinema in the basement
A crocodile
24-hour personal masseuse
Underground 10-lane bowling alley
Snooker table
Popcorn dispenser
Skateboard park
Another crocodile
£100,000 a week pocket money
A rollercoaster in the back garden
A professional recording studio in the attic
Personalised football coaching from the England team
A real-life shark in a tank

In short, Joe was one horribly spoilt kid. He went to a ridiculously posh school. He flew on private planes whenever he went on holiday. Once, he even had Disneyworld closed for the day, just so he wouldn’t have to queue for any rides.

Here’s Joe. Speeding around his own private racetrack in his own Formula One racing car.

Some very rich children have miniature versions of cars specially built for them. Joe wasn’t one of those children. Joe needed his Formula One car
made a bit bigger. He was quite fat, you see. Well, you would be, wouldn’t you? If you could buy all the chocolate in the world.
You will have noticed that Joe is on his own in that picture. To tell the truth, speeding around a racetrack isn’t that much fun when you are on your own, even if you do have a squillion pounds. You really need someone to race against. The problem was Joe didn’t have any friends. Not one.

Now, driving a Formula One car and unwrapping a king-size Mars Bar are two things you shouldn’t try and do at the same time. But it had been a few moments since Joe had last eaten and he was hungry. As he entered the chicane, he tore open the wrapper with his teeth and took a bite of the delicious chocolate-coated nougat and caramel. Unfortunately, Joe only had one hand on the steering wheel, and as the wheels of the car hit the verge, he lost control.
The multi-million-pound Formula One car careered off the track, span around, and hit a tree.

The tree was unharmed. But the car was a write-off. Joe squeezed himself out of the cockpit. Luckily Joe wasn’t hurt, but he was a little dazed, and he tottered back to the house.
“Dad, I crashed the car,” said Joe as he entered the palatial living room.
Mr Spud was short and fat, just like his son. Hairier in a lot of places too, apart from his head – which was bald and shiny. Joe’s dad was sitting on a hundred-seater crocodile skin sofa and didn’t look up from reading that day’s copy of the Sun.
“Don’t worry Joe,” he said. “I’ll buy you another one.”
Joe slumped down on the sofa next to his dad.
“Oh, happy birthday, by the way, Joe.” Mr Spud handed an envelope to his son, without taking his eyes off the girl on Page 3.
Joe opened the envelope eagerly. How much money was he going to receive this year? The card, which read ‘Happy 12th Birthday Son’, was quickly discarded in favour of the cheque inside.
Joe could barely disguise his disappointment. “One million pounds?” he scoffed. “Is that all?”
“What’s the matter, son?” Mr Spud put down his newspaper for a moment.
“You gave me a million last year,” whined Joe. “When I turned eleven. Surely I should get more now I’m twelve?”
Mr Spud reached into the pocket of his shiny grey designer suit and pulled out his chequebook. His suit was horrible, and horribly expensive. “I’m so sorry son,” he said. “Let’s make it two million.”

In 1804, John and Lucy Bell and their children moved from North Carolina to Tennessee. They had heard of the area’s rich farmland and dense forests. They purchased property on the Red River, which included a house and barns. John cleared some of the land and started farming. Life in Tennessee seemed perfect.
Until the trouble began.
It was the summer of 1817. While working in the field, John stumbled upon a strange animal sitting between two rows of corn. It looked like a dog with the head of a rabbit. John raised his gun and shot at the creature, but it ran off.
The strange sightings didn’t end there. A few days later, John and Lucy’s son Drew spotted a large turkey perched on a fence. As Drew approached the bird, he saw that it wasn’t a turkey at all. The bird flapped its large wings and took off. Drew had no idea what kind of bird it might be.
Betsy, the youngest daughter, went for a walk in the woods near the house around this same time. She saw a girl in a green dress climbing one of the oak trees. She had never seen this girl before and found it strange.
A few days later, one of the Bells’ enslaved workers reported seeing a large, black dog in the road. This dog followed him every night when he went to visit his wife. She was also enslaved and lived with a different family. As soon as the man arrived at his wife’s door each night, the dog ran away.
Little did the Bells know, these odd events were about to take a terrifying turn.

On an April afternoon in 1933, Aldie and John Mackay were driving along the shores of one of Scotland’s largest lakes, Loch Ness. The road, the A82, was brand-new, and Aldie was enjoying the view from the car window.
The Scottish highlands are often rainy but this day was bright. The trees were vivid green, and even the murky waters of the lake seemed to sparkle.
Then Aldie saw something she would never forget. The water rippled, and a giant creature seemed to rise out of the loch. It appeared to be black, with a humped back. Aldie grabbed her husband’s arm, trembling with fright, and pointed.
« Stop!, the beast! » she gasped.
John screeched the car to a halt. For several minutes, the stunned couple stared at the loch as the creature seemed to be « rolling and plunging » until the waters finally calmed.
For a few days, Aldie and John kept quiet about what they had seen. After all, who would believe them? A monster in Loch Ness? It sounded preposterous. People would think they were liars or, worse that they were insane.
Ultimately, though, the couple couldn’t resist sharing their remarkable story, and the news soon speak. As the Mackays had predicted, some people rolled their eyes and laughed. Many others listened with fascination, however. There had always been something mysterious about Loch Ness, something spooky. For centuries, people from nearby towns had whispered stories about a creature living in the loch, a huge and terrifying beast that, according to some tales, lured children to their deaths. Another story, dating back to the sixth century, told of a water monster that tried to devour farmers working nearby. Many Locals avoided the surrounding woods because of these stories. To them, the Mackays’ story was completely plausible.

At least a thousand creatures that once enlivened Hawaii's landscape have vanished since Polynesian voyagers-and later European explorers-first set foot here about 1,500 years ago. Having evolved in isolation, native species were not equipped to survive the on-slaugnt of predators and competitors introduced with human arrival. Among the first to go were 20 species of flightless birds-easy prey for hunters- including the large tortoise-jawed moa nalo, foreground, known today only from skeletal remains.

Phonology Box: listen to the following words.

attracted
developed
invested
founded
employed
accessed
founded
established
forced
accused
supported
worked
managed
designed
rewarded
created
produced
ranked
located
specialized

How did you first hear about the Beatles?
How old were you in those days?
Why did you like them?
Did you actually ever see them?
What was the audience like?
Which Beatle was your favourite?

Hi, nice to meet you! How are you?
My name is Nadège and I’m forty-eight old. What’s your name and how old are you?
I live in the South West of the France.
I have been learning English with Mosalingua for five months but I learned English at school of course mainly in writing
Now I would like to improve my pronunciation and my spoken English !
I am a teacher for children who are six or seven old. I really like to read. What do you do for a living? What are your hobbies ?

Rocky Mountain wildlife lives in three dimensions. Their habitats are patchy and diverse. Summer is brief and cool in the high country. Winter brings deep snow, prolonged cold, treacherous travel and, to the unlucky, starvation.
Some, like marmots and black bears, feed and give birth during the green wealth of an alpine summer, then wait out the winter's scarcity by sleeping and pikas, lay in winters supplies of food and take advantage of the insulating snow cover to escape the cold of winter. Still others, like elk and mule deer, migrate out of the high country to wind-blown foothills and the edges of the low-elevation plains where snow stays shallow in winter.

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