Welcome...
Tuesday 24 July 2007
..to Listen to English, the podcast website for people learning English.
The podcasts on this site will help you to improve your English vocabulary and pronunciation and your listening skills. There are two short (3 to 5 minutes) podcasts every week, in clearly spoken English. Many of them are linked to grammar and vocabulary notes, or to exercises or quizes. You can download the podcasts to your computer, or subscribe using a programme such as iTunes or Yahoo, or simply listen to them by clicking the Flash player on the web page beneath each episode. You can put the podcasts onto your iPod or MP3 player, and listen to them on your way to school or work. The full text of each podcast is on this site (and will also appear on your iPod screen), so you can look up the meanings of words that you do not understand in a dictionary. Then close your eyes and listen! Have fun!
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Frustrated
Friday 11 January 2008
On the day after Christmas Day – the day we call Boxing Day in England – something terrible happened. My internet connection stopped working. I could not surf the net. I could not read my e-mails. I could not check my website or upload new podcasts. The internet is a bit like cigarettes. You become addicted, or “hooked” as we say in colloquial English. When suddenly you cannot use the internet, it is like wanting a cigarette, and finding that you do not have any cigarettes and that the shops are all closed. So, when my internet connection stopped working, how did I feel? What words can we use to describe my feelings?
Well, we could use words like “angry” or “furious”. But these words are too strong. If someone is angry or furious, they are shouting at people and banging the table. I was not shouting at people about my internet connection, nor was I banging the table. So “angry” and “furious” are not the right words.
Could we use the word “upset”? If something upsets you, it means that it has hurt you emotionally. You may be unable to discuss the upsetting thing without crying. You may not want to talk to people, or to eat your food. Well, my internet connection problem was not like that. So I was not “upset” when my internet connection stopped working.
We need some words that mean “a little bit angry”. There are several of them. We can say, for example, that I was cross when the train was late and I missed an important meeting. I was annoyed when I could not find my car keys. I was irritated when someone did not reply to an e-mail. Yes, all of these words would do – I was cross, and annoyed, and irritated, when my internet connection stopped working.
But there is another word that describes exactly how I felt. I wanted to do things – surfing the net, sending e-mails etc – but I could not. And I could do nothing to solve the problem. The only thing to do was to wait for my internet provider to mend the connection. And it was Christmas, so all of their engineers were on holiday. So I had to wait, and wait, and wait! I felt “frustrated”. The feeling we have when we cannot do something we normally do is “frustration”. If you break your leg, and you cannot play football for two months, you might find this “frustrating”. That is how it was with my internet connection – it was frustrating. I felt frustrated
The really bad news is that my internet connection still does not work. I have complained to my internet company. They say that there is nothing wrong. What do they mean, nothing is wrong? I can’t access the internet. Of course something is wrong. Now I am very frustrated. I am not just cross with my internet company, I am starting to be angry. I am shouting at the internet company and banging the table. I have cancelled my contract with them, and next week some nice people from the cable TV company will come and install a new fibre-optic cable to my house, and I will have the internet again.
And how will I feel then? “Happy” – yes, of course. But a really good word is “relieved”. Imagine that your teenage daughter goes out with some friends for the evening. She says she will be home at 10 o’clock. Ten o’clock comes and she is not home; 10.30, 11 o’clock. You get worried and anxious. What has happened? Should you telephone the police? Then at midnight, the phone rings. It is your daughter. She is at her friend’s house. How do you feel? You might be cross with your daughter because she did not telephone earlier. But mainly you would feel relieved – no more worries, no more problems, everything is OK again – relieved. That is how I shall feel when my internet connection is back – relieved.
In the meantime, I am using an internet cafe to upload my podcasts. It takes a lot longer to make and upload podcasts without an internet connnection at home. So, sorry, I do not have time to find a good picture to put on the website or your iPod screen to illustrate this podcast. And I may not be able to make another podcast until my internet connection is back. How will you feel about no new podcast next week? Will you be angry, or annoyed, or upset, or frustrated? Or will you feel relieved? I hope not!
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Eddie the Eagle
Monday 07 January 2008
Every four years, the Olympic Games are held. This year – 2008 – is an Olympic year. The games are to be held in Beijing in China. As well as the main Olympic Games, there are also the winter Olympics. The winter Olympics are for snow sports – things like ski-ing, ice-skating and bob-sleighing. Like the main Olympic Games, they take place every four years. They used to be held in the same year as the main Games; but now they are held in the year mid-way between the main Games. The last winter Olympics were in 2006; the next winter Olympics will be in 2010, in Vancouver in Canada.
Naturally, most of the winners in the sports at the winter Olympics are from countries with mountains and lots of snow – countries like Austria, Norway, Finland and Switzerland for example. In Britain, our mountains are quite small, and we do not have a lot of snow, so generally there are only a few British winners at the winter Olympics. But 20 years ago, in 1988, when the winter Olympics were held in Calgary in Canada, one of the British competitors became world famous. It happened like this.
Michael Edwards was 13 when he first when ski-ing on a school ski trip. He loved it. He also had a childhood ambition to be a stuntman. A stuntman is someone who acts the really dangerous bits in films – where people fall through windows, for example, or drive a car over a cliff. So Michael decided that ski-jumping should be his sport. In ski-jumping, the competitors ski very fast down a long, straight slope and onto a ramp. They then take off and fly though the air, and land 100 or 200 meters further on. It is slightly less dangerous than jumping out of an aeroplane with no parachute. You have to be very brave or very stupid to do ski-jumping.
It is not easy to be a ski-jumper in Britain. There are, to start with, no ski jumps where you can practice. Michael went to some of the top French and Austrian ski-jumping coaches to ask them for advice. However, as he did not speak any French or German, this did not help him much. Also, Michael was short-sighted. He had to wear thick glasses, that often steamed up as he went down the ski slope, so that he could hardly see where he was going. But he kept on practising and training, and in 1987 he entered the world ski-jumping championships in Obertsdorf. There were 98 competitors. Michael came 98th. The press started to call him “Eddie the Eagle”.
Eddie (as we will now call him) then asked the British Olympic Committee whether he could represent Britain in the ski-jumping event at the winter games in Calgary. There were no other British ski-jumpers. So the Committee agreed that he could go. He borrowed some skis, and set off for Calgary. In Calgary, Eddie was in competition with some of the finest ski-jumpers in the world. His best jump was 73.5 meters. To me, this seems a very long way to fly through the air with skis on one’s feet. But top-class ski-jumpers regularly jump 200 meters and more. So Eddie did spectacularly badly in the Games, but he became one of the best known people in Calgary. Everyone laughed about him; and wondered whether he would be taken away in an ambulance after his next jump. He waved to the television cameras, and shouted “Hello Mum, it’s me” before he set off down the ski slope. We British love a brave loser, so we loved Eddie.
The International Olympic Committee, the men in suits who run the Olympic Games, did not find Eddie amusing however. They changed the rules to make it much more difficult for someone like him to compete in future Games. The International Olympic Committee must be some of the most boring people in the world. So, at the next Winter Olympics in 2010, there will be some magnificent ski-ing, but there will be no-one like Eddie the Eagle.
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(Added: 4-Oct-2007) 
