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Angielski ze świata
English LingQ
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#298 Steve and Alex - About World Leaders (Part 2)
Steve and Alex talk about various world leaders, including Vaclav Havel, Kim Jong Il, Martin Luther King, Dr. and more. They discuss how these leaders came into power, why they became prominent and what they are known for.
Difficulty: Advanced
Click here to listen to About World Leaders (Part 2).
Category: News and Politics
Duration: 10:32Click here to see the full transcript of this podcast.
For an excerpt from the text, click below:Alex: Yeah. Well, even then. I mean even to people who know a lot about it North Korea is so illusive. It’s so difficult to find any substantive information to really learn more about it. I had the privilege of talking to a lot of professors who study Korean history and Korean politics and have spent a good portion of their life on this and even to them there’s a lot of uncertainty when it comes to really having insight into North Korea.
Steve: Well, you know it’s interesting. I read in the paper that children are taken from their parents and brainwashed from the age of like two. I mean that is tremendously powerful and so they probably did think that Kim Jong-il was like their father. They’re told that all the time. I know from listening to Echo Moskvy that when Stalin died, despite you know perhaps one in 10 Russians were either killed or imprisoned by him and I mean massive famine in farming areas all caused by this man, plus out and out just eliminating people, like shooting them, having them shot and yet when he died everyone thought they’d lost a family member because the power of indoctrination is so great. So maybe those people sincerely feel they lost, in a sense, somebody more important than their father.
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#297 Steve and Alex - About World Leaders (Part 1)
Steve and Alex talk about various world leaders, including Vaclav Havel, Kim Jong Il, Martin Luther King, Dr. and more. They discuss how these leaders came into power, why they became prominent and what they are known for.
Difficulty: Advanced
Click here to listen to About World Leaders (Part 1).
Category: News and Politics
Duration: 10:19Click here to see the full transcript of this podcast.
For an excerpt from the text, click below:Alex: But it's so interesting to see. I mean, in a way, when you compare the two it's almost like it's a different species. The thoughts that go through their heads are so differing. In a way, you can compare say Hitler to Martin Luther King, Jr. where they stand for things in the complete opposite spectrum I mean.
Steve: Exactly. What I think is unusual with people like Martin Luther King, which is another good example, or Havel or Nelson Mandela -- and I think to some extent, although I don't know that much about the Dalai Lama, maybe in fact he does abuse his power -- but there is that expression “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” We see it in politicians or even people who have a lot of money. Once they have power and influence they become corrupt. It corrupts people and what's striking about those people is that they weren't corrupted by power; at least they were able to give the impression that they weren't corrupted by power. We don't know what goes on behind the scenes, right?...
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Beginner #48 - Eating Out, Part 14
A simple dialogue which takes place in a restaurant. Part 14 of 14 episodes. It is a good idea to listen many times to each part. This story is available in other languages at LingQ. You can use these versions to provide a direct translation.
Difficulty: Beginner
Category: 1. Beginner I
Duration: 0:54Click here to see the full transcript of this podcast.
Click here to listen to Eating Out, Part 14.
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Beginner #47 - Eating Out, Part 13
A simple dialogue which takes place in a restaurant. Part 13 of 14 episodes. It is a good idea to listen many times to each part. This story is available in other languages at LingQ. You can use these versions to provide a direct translation.
Difficulty: Beginner
Category: 1. Beginner I
Duration: 1:02Click here to see the full transcript of this podcast.
Click here to listen to Eating Out, Part 13.
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Beginner #46 - Eating Out, Part 12
A simple dialogue which takes place in a restaurant. Part 12 of 14 episodes. It is a good idea to listen many times to each part. This story is available in other languages at LingQ. You can use these versions to provide a direct translation.
Difficulty: Beginner
Category: 1. Beginner I
Duration: 1:13Click here to see the full transcript of this podcast.
Click here to listen to Eating Out, Part 12.
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Beginner #45 - Eating Out, Part 11
A simple dialogue which takes place in a restaurant. Part 11 of 14 episodes. It is a good idea to listen many times to each part. This story is available in other languages at LingQ. You can use these versions to provide a direct translation.
Difficulty: Beginner
Category: 1. Beginner I
Duration: 0:44Click here to see the full transcript of this podcast.
Click here to listen to Eating Out, Part 11.
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#296 Steve and Alex - Motivation (Part 2)
Steve and Alex discuss the importance of motivation in learning a language, and how forcing people to learn a language often breeds poor results.
Difficulty: Intermediate
Click here to listen to Motivation (Part 2).
Category: Language
Duration: 11:02Click here to see the full transcript of this podcast.
For an excerpt from the text, click below:Steve: It’s just that I have put in that much effort into learning these other languages. Other people, for whatever reasons, didn’t have the time to do it, but the fact of speaking 10 versus two versus five, to me it’s got nothing to do with it. It’s just that that’s where I have chosen to spend my time.
Alex: Yeah, exactly.
Steve: It’s like a musician. If the musician doesn’t spend any time learning to play the trumpet he won’t know how to play the trumpet, but if he takes it upon himself to learn to play the trumpet he’ll be able to learn it.
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#295 Steve and Alex - Motivation (Part 1)
Steve and Alex discuss the importance of motivation in learning a language, and how forcing people to learn a language often breeds poor results.
Difficulty: Intermediate
Click here to listen to Motivation (Part 1).
Category: Language
Duration: 13:31Click here to see the full transcript of this podcast.
For an excerpt from the text, click below:Steve: Good. Yeah, it's time to have another podcast. You know, one subject that comes up and we're both, obviously, interested in languages and learning languages and many of the people who listen to this podcast, by definition, they're interested in learning languages, whether it be English or some other language. There was a discussion on our forum about what are your motivations. Actually, one of our LingQ members from China said what is your motivation for learning Chinese and then there was a discussion about motivation and so forth.
Of course, most often you hear you should learn Chinese because you should. It's a bit like in Canada you should learn French and, of course, because in Canada we should learn French, in fact, very few people learn French because you should learn French. So, now, it's you should learn Chinese because the economy is growing and you might get a job. Does that really work, you should learn?Alex: My experience has been the exact opposite. Whereas, when I was in elementary school I was in Canada and we had French, obviously, mandatory French lessons. When I was in grade seven I moved to the United States and I guess grade seven and eight I didn't do any language study. When I hit grade nine -- high school -- then there was the option to take either French or Spanish. So I thought well, I already have some background in French and I have to take a language anyway so I'll just take French. I'll say, quite honestly, at that point I really had about zero interest in French. It was just to kind of fill that requirement....
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#294 Steve and Alex - Forgetting Languages
Steve and Alex talk about their experiences related to forgetting languages, and Alex shares about his new goal to learn French again.
Difficulty: Intermediate
Click here to listen to Forgetting Languages.
Category: Language
Duration: 15:19Click here to see the full transcript of this podcast.
For an excerpt from the text, click below:Steve: I’ve mentioned this on my blog on a couple of occasions and on every occasion people have come back and said yeah. I thought I was the only one. That’s true. I mean it may not be true for everyone, but it’s true for a lot of people. True for a lot of people, so I would not worry. If you set your Korean aside and worked on Chinese or French or whatever for six months, you would go back to Korean and you’d do better.
Alex: Yeah. I think that’s an interesting thing, too, to take it from another perspective, is if you’ve been studying a language for a long time and you’re feeling what we talked about before, the doldrums or whatever, it’s good to take a break because that may in fact give you some time to process all that and refresh yourself with some other stuff and you go back to it with a new outlook.
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#293 Steve and Alex - Starting from Scratch (Part 2)
Steve and Alex talk about good ways to start learning a language from scratch and share their experiences.
Difficulty: Intermediate
Click here to listen to Starting from Scratch (Part 2).
Category: Language
Duration: 12:10Click here to see the full transcript of this podcast.
For an excerpt from the text, click below:Alex: I think that’s the thing, too, of having the confidence. Like you said before, you read a text in Czech you know three words. You listen to it five more times and then you read it again and you know seven words.
Steve: Right.
Alex: I think a lot of people get very discouraged at that, but I think it takes the know how to understand every little step counts and every little bit that you do is going to help you in the long run.
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