Lesson Number 1 in Phonetics

More on puzzling science tricks

Here I suggest a new listening task for you guys: it consists in catching the expressions the experimenter uses to describe some of the actions that he's carrying out in this video. They all involve an action verb. You just have to listen out for the sentence where this action verb appears, and write it down. Find the lists of verbs below. Then click on the key to the listening practice at the bottom of this post to find out how accurate you were with this information filling practice.
1) fill -->
2) place over -->
3) invert -->
4) support & remove -->
5) pour -->
6) overflow -->
7) place & turn upside down -->
8) come out -->
9) tip -->
10)cause the water to come out -->

PS: Didn't you just love his goggles?? Hey, maybe that blue coloring is totally radioactive!

key to the listening practice

Spoken Word

Following up on rhymes, I'd like to present to you one of the latest version of this entrenched form of popular culture in English: Spoken Word. This is a word-based performance art, which generally consists of story-telling or poetry. The link that follows was sent to me by one of your fellow students,where you can see Sulibreaks, a British spoken word artist telling us why he hates school but loves education... Thanks, Miguel, for the videolink!

I will not let an exam result decide my fate. Spoken word

Vincent Malloy's Rhymes by Tim Burton

This week we spent some time in class reading and listening about nursery rhymes, like the very famous Humpty Dumpty, or Mary, Mary, quite Contrary nursery rhymes. Then we learned that there's much more to these rhymes than one could have actually thought at first. The tradition of rhyming in English is really long and rich.
Here follows another example of nursery rhymes made into a short horror film, written, designed, and directed by Tim Burton. Vincent Malloy is a young boy who wants to be just like Vincent Price... And who's Vincent Price? Well, a famous actor from Hollywood, but most significantly the voice-over on Michael Jackson's Thriller. Who can possibly ever forget that eerie rap, huh?

Before watching it, please open the gapped transcript and try to figure out the missing ending words in each verse. You'll see it's just a piece of cake. After that, watch the video to check your guesses. Enjoy!

Vincent Malloy's gapped transcript

Vincent Malloy Short Horror Film

Mayday!

This is a very short video to cheer you up, guys: It will help us realize that Spanish speakers are not the only ones struggling to catch what British say... and terribly missing the point sometimes!

German Coastguard Sinking

And remember: the only way to make progress is actually putting the foot in it, hopefully not in such dire circumstances as the poor German coastguard above!

Ok, most of us had to agree, after the debate we held in class, that money does make the world go around, right? Just like Liza Minnelli sang in this very famous musical play Cabaret, back in 1966... Yet, it can't be all that matters to be happy and enjoy life, can it? And even though economists nowadays seem to be ruling our lives with their technical mumbo-jumbo, we should go back to a grass-roots understanding of economy, our economy.
For the time being, and to make sure we know our whereabouts when dealing with business matters in English, here follows a nice link to a set of listenings all devoted to practicing business-related words and expressions in English. Please, since we have no time to work on this in class, could you just click on those you may find more interesting for your career? Good, thanks. By the way, the transcripts come in very handy too.

Business Language to Go, by the BBC