Are there some Audio Lessons/Listening Exercises in British Accent?
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BBC Learning English
Synonyms for stagger and walk, advanced level, worksheet 4
on Manday October the 18th 2010
It’s a twenty past 10 in the morning
www.english-test.net
The week’s proverb:
The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
The monday’s adage:
What value is a needle without an eye.
1. to hobble - to walk/go with handicap
He was sad at the sight of the old woman hobbling down to the store every morning.
2. to reel - to walk/go like a teetotum/whipping top
My head reels at the thought of jumping out of an airplane.
3. to stagger - to walk/go in an uncrontrolled, weird, unusual manner
The sailor came out of the pub so drunk that he staggered all the way to the ship.
4. to totter - to walk/go in a shaky way like a teeter-totter
All of a sudden the teacher felt dizzy, he tottered for a second and fell down.
5. to lurche/lɜ:tʃ/ - to stagger but more like a ship, lurching from one near disaster to the next
The footballer twisted his ankle and lurched to the bench to take a seat.
6. to blunder - to walk/go in a clumsy/awkward way like a booby
The lights went out and Jane blundered about the room looking for a candle to burn.
7. to lumber - to walk/go slowly,clumsy like an elephant
The heavily loaded wagon lumbered along the old cobbled/kɒb.l ̩d/ road.
8. to stumble - to stagger more uncontrolled
The little boy stumbled and almost fell down while chasing/tʃeɪsŋ / the ball, but he regained his balance again.
9. to careen/kəri:n/ - go/walk/move quickly while moving left and right
They were experiencing the first storm since the voyage/vɔɪ.ɪdʒ/ started, the wind was so fast that the ship careened and people from the deck started falling out of it in the open sea.
10.to vacillate/væs.ɪ.leɪt/ - to move like a pendulum/pen.djʊ.ləm/
Although this antique clock hasn’t been working for ages now it looks to me that its big hand is vacillating from time to time.
TTFN EvilDwarf
Correct me if I’m wrong!
Brazil elects its first female president
The British Broadcasting Corporation - The Beep Learning English Words in the News
last updated at a 9 44 GMT Greenwich Mean Time, Monday the 1st. of November 2010
Summary
Voters in Brazil have chosen the governing Workers’ Party candidate, Dilma Rousseff, to be their new president. Ms Rousseff won 56% of the vote in the run-off, beating her rival, the Social Democrat Jose Serra. Paulo Cabral tells the story of Brazil’s first female president.
Lend an ear to the report
TOEFL preparation test words 12
- to surrender; to admit; to give up; to yield
to concede
Even an atheist may be ready to concede that a good wine is the drink of gods.
à bientôt
EvilDwarf
BBC World News for children
on Monday the 25th of October
"Wild dolphins walk on water…
…, wild dolphins in Australia have learned to “walk” on water. Six of the animals have been spotted, furiously paddling their tail fins, forcing their body out and across the water. It’s usually something that only dolphins in captivity do, but their wild relatives seem to be doing it for fun! Experts reckon they might have copied the technique from another dolphin called Billie, who is thought to have learnt it during a short stay at a theme park. Researchers say it’s a rare example of animals sharing behaviour that has nothing to do with their survival, they’re just messing around."
TOEFL preparation test words 12
6. to overlook; to forgive; to pardon/pɑ:.dən/
to condone
“One who condones evils is just as guilty as the one who perpetrates it.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
à bientôt
EvilDwarf
Mighty oaks from litte acorns grow.
Autumn in Britain (By Jane Lawson)
The leaves are changing colour/kʌl.ər/ and falling from the trees. Squirrels bury nuts in preparation for winter. The weather is getting colder and the nights are getting longer. It’s autumn!
In the top picture, you can see a typical autumn scene in one of my favourite London parks – St/seɪnt/ James’s Park. There are brown and gold coloured leaves everywhere, and there are many more on the trees, waiting to fall to the ground and be blown around by the wind. Of course, some trees stay green all year round. We call these trees ‘evergreen trees’, and we call the trees that lose their leaves ‘deciduous trees’ /dɪsɪd.ju.əs/.
On Saturday night, the clocks went back 1 hour, so now it gets light earlier in the morning, but it also gets dark earlier in the evening. On the shortest day of the year, 21st December, it will be dark before 4 pm! But on the longest day of the year, 21st June, it does not get dark until about 10.30 at night. There is a big campaign in Britain at the moment to move the clocks forward permanently by 1 hour, so that there is more light on winter evenings for most of the country. This would save a lot of electricity, but it is a very unpopular idea in Scotland, which would have much darker mornings as a result, because it is so far north compared to the rest of Britain.
There are some very old autumn festivals in Britain. One of them takes place on November 5th, when there are fireworks and bonfires in most cities, towns and villages. This festival started after a famous incident in 1605, when the Houses of Parliament in London were saved from a plot to blow them up!
Another famous festival is Halloween, at the end of October. Halloween is a Christian word, meaning ‘All Hallow’s Evening’ because it is the evening before ‘All Hallow’s day’, a Christian festival on 1st November. But in fact, the timing of the Halloween festival, 31st October, dates back to pre-Christian times, to the Celtic harvest festival, called Samhain. The harvest festival is perhaps the most important kind of autumn festival, because without a good harvest, it was difficult to survive the cold winter!
The Ants and the Grasshopper ESL test for intermediate level students
10. All the ants laughed and said in that case he would have to dance famished to bed in the winter.
à bientôt
Hi EvilDwarf,
Thank you for your contributions. I am intrigued by your accent. Can you tell me which is your first language?
Alan
Oh, thank you Mr. Alan,
I’m from Dresden Germany, the capital of Saxonia not far away from Leipzig.
à bientôt
When the witches go riding
and black cats are seen,
the moon laughs and whispers,
'tis near Halloween.
From a very early age Cathy had been passionate … looking after animals.
She used to hob nob with people who … the same way as she did.
These people were not all fuddy duddy or indeed hoity toity and their main interest in life was to … that all animals were treated well.
She soon got to know one of the local big wigs in a local organisation … at stopping cruelty to animals.
He had been in his hey day an important … in a government department for agriculture.
In fact because he had refused to kow tow to some of the official regulations, he had been forced to take … retirement.
But as far … Cathy was concerned he was the bee’s knees and when she left school, she went to work as his assistant in the Society for the Protection of Animals.
Her parents however were not all that pleased … where she had decided to work.
They lived in a des res and her father, John Fortune, who was really a bit of a fat cat thought that all this animal … was a lot of hocus pocus.
Cathy and her father had several pow wows about her decision but it usually … up with a lot of argy bargy
à tout à l’heure
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Sorry Argy Bargy, but I gotta root against you