American slang 2

American slang 3

American slang 4

American slang 5

American slang 6

Smart Board (Interactive White Board)

The Passive I

The Passive II

The Passive III

PAST PERFECT TENSE

Past perfect tense is used to indicate that one action occurred before another action in the past. In other words, past perfect tense indicates the first of the two actions.*

For example,

When I woke up this morning, my roommate had already left.

After I had eaten my dinner, I went to see a movie.

Before I arrived at the theater, the movie had already begun.

Sometimes, when the meaning is clear from context, the simple past tense can be used.

After I had gone shopping, I stopped at the health spa.

After I went shopping, I stopped at the health spa.

The most common error with the past perfect is using it where it does not belong.

When I was young, I had been a cowboy. When I was young, I was a cowboy.

(Incorrect: no reference to other events) (Correct)

Yesterday the Johnsons had opened their new business. Yesterday the Johnsons opened their new business.

(Incorrect) (Correct)

Click here for audio

Making a request

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- how to make a request, as in, "Could you help us out?"

RS: That's what we asked our friend Lida Baker. She teaches in the American Language Center at the University of California at Los Angeles, and she writes textbooks for English learners.

AA: We'll start with the simplest form of request, the imperative form: "Close the door." "Sit down." "Read this." Beware, though: Unless you're saying this in a friendly way to someone you feel comfortable with, you could offend people. That's because it sounds more like an order than a request.

BAKER: "Most Americans, I think, would agree that the imperative form is a little bit too direct."

RS: "It doesn't give you a sense of security or politeness."

BAKER: "Right. So what we do is that we can take that imperative form and we can add words and phrases that we call softeners. So 'close the door doesn't sound very polite, but as soon as we say 'please close the door' it becomes a lot more acceptable."

RS: Now if that's not polite enough, Lida Baker says, you can take it a step further.

BAKER: "Would you mind closing the door' or 'would you mind telling me where the cafeteria is?' So we also use the form 'would you mind' followed by the -ing form if we're trying to be very polite.

"Now an interesting thing about requests is if we think that we're asking for something that's an imposition on the other person, or if the other person has a lot more authority than we have, then we might tend to make the request longer and we would add these softeners at the beginning that are kind of a combination of the things that we have already talked about.

"So we start with 'close the door.' We add 'please close the door,' and to make it softer, we could say, 'Could you please close the door,' and to make it even softer, we could say, 'Could I ask you to please close the door?'"

AA: Lida Baker says you'll never offend anybody if you begin a request with a phrase like "could you" or "would you," as in, "Would you mind closing the door?"

BAKER: "By the way there's something interesting about the form 'would you mind closing the door.' How do you answer that?"

AA: "Yes, I mind. (laughter)"

RS: "You don't answer that. You just say yes."

AA: "It's rhetorical."

BAKER: "OK, if I say to you, 'would you mind lending me your English book?'"

RS: "I might say 'no problem.'"

BAKER: "That's right. You don't say 'yes' or ‘no.’ You say 'no problem' or you say 'sure.' But what does it mean if you say 'no'?"

RS: "No, I wouldn't mind lending you (the) book' -- which means yes! (laughter)"

BAKER: "That's right. It's funny with this expression 'would you mind,' that 'no' means 'yes.' 'No, I wouldn't mind' means 'yes, I'm going to lend you my book.'"

RS: "You know, the problem here is the question is not a yes or a no question, so you can't answer it with a yes or a no."

BAKER: "That's exactly right. If they agree to do what you want, they'll say 'sure' or no problem and if they're not able to do the thing that you're asking them to do, they'll say something like 'sorry' and then they'll give you an excuse. So if you say 'would you mind lending me your English book tonight,' they'll say, sorry, I can't. I need it.'

"Here's another one that we haven't mentioned before, if you REALLY want to be polite, you could say to somebody: 'I hope I'm not imposing, but could you please lend me your English book."

AA: "But you would reserve that for a situation where you're really asking for an imposition."

BAKER: "You suspect that what you're asking for is asking the person to go out of their way for you."

AA: Lida Baker -- whose books are available through the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company -- cannot reply to messages personally. But she does go out of her way to answer questions on the air, so keep sending them in!

RS: Our postal address is VOA Wordmaster, Washington DC 20237 USA. E-mail is word@voanews.com. And our Web site is voanews.com/wordmaster. With Avi Arditti, I'm Rosanne Skirble.

MUSIC: "Could You Use Me" [from George and Ira Gershwin's Great Depression-era Broadway show "Girl Crazy"]

Click here FOR AUDIO

What Is Globalization?





Globalization is a process of interaction and integration among the people, companies, and governments of different nations, a process driven by international trade and investment and aided by information technology. This process has effects on the environment, on culture, on political systems, on economic development and prosperity, and on human physical well-being in societies around the world.

Globalization is not new, though. For thousands of years, people—and, later, corporations—have been buying from and selling to each other in lands at great distances, such as through the famed Silk Road across Central Asia that connected China and Europe during the Middle Ages. Likewise, for centuries, people and corporations have invested in enterprises in other countries. In fact, many of the features of the current wave of globalization are similar to those prevailing before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.................

click here to read more

What do Americans know about Arabs and Muslims?

Information R/evolution

Photosynthesis

Study Skills

conjunctions

What is Culture? Culture is defined as the shared patterns of behaviors and interactions, cognitive constructs, and affective understanding that are learned through a process of socialization. These shared patterns identify the members of a culture group while also distinguishing those of another group. Other Definitions of Culture Banks, J.A., Banks, & McGee, C. A. (1989). Multicultural education. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon. "Most social scientists today view culture as consisting primarily of the symbolic, ideational, and intangible aspects of human societies. The essence of a culture is not its artifacts, tools, or other tangible cultural elements but how the members of the group interpret, use, and perceive them. It is the values, symbols, interpretations, and perspectives that distinguish one people from another in modernized societies; it is not material objects and other tangible aspects of human societies. People within a culture usually interpret the meaning of symbols, artifacts, and behaviors in the same or in similar ways." Damen, L. (1987). Culture Learning: The Fifth Dimension on the Language Classroom. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. "Culture: learned and shared human patterns or models for living; day- to-day living patterns. these patterns and models pervade all aspects of human social interaction. Culture is mankind's primary adaptive mechanism" (p. 367). Hofstede, G. (1984). National cultures and corporate cultures. In L.A. Samovar & R.E. Porter (Eds.), Communication Between Cultures. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. "Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one category of people from another." (p. 51). Kluckhohn, C., & Kelly, W.H. (1945). The concept of culture. In R. Linton (Ed.). The Science of Man in the World Culture. New York. (pp. 78-105). "By culture we mean all those historically created designs for living, explicit and implicit, rational, irrational, and nonrational, which exist at any given time as potential guides for the behavior of men." Kroeber, A.L., & Kluckhohn, C. (1952). Culture: A critical review of concepts and definitions. Harvard University Peabody Museum of American Archeology and Ethnology Papers 47. " Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e. historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, and on the other as conditioning elements of further action." Lederach, J.P. (1995). Preparing for peace: Conflict transformation across cultures. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. "Culture is the shared knowledge and schemes created by a set of people for perceiving, interpreting, expressing, and responding to the social realities around them" (p. 9). Linton, R. (1945). The Cultural Background of Personality. New York. "A culture is a configuration of learned behaviors and results of behavior whose component elements are shared and transmitted by the members of a particular society" (p. 32). Parson, T. (1949). Essays in Sociological Theory. Glencoe. "Culture...consists in those patterns relative to behavior and the products of human action which may be inherited, that is, passed on from generation to generation independently of the biological genes" (p. 8). Useem, J., & Useem, R. . Human Organizations, 22(3). "Culture has been defined in a number of ways, but most simply, as the learned and shared behavior of a community of interacting human beings" (p. 169).