Grammar: Conditionals

Zero conditional:

The zero conditional is used to make statements about the real world, and often refers to general truths, such as scientific facts. In these sentences, the time is now or always and the situation is real and possible.

We can make a zero conditional sentence with two present simple verbs [If + present simple, .... present simple].

Examples:

- If water reaches 100 degrees, it boils. (It is always true, there can't be a different result sometimes).

- If I eat peanuts, I am sick. (This is true only for me, maybe, not for everyone, but it's still true that I'm sick every time I eat peanuts).

- Ice melts if you heat it.

Reading Comprehension: Sport and Health

What Happened When Hitler Hosted the Olympics 80 Years Ago

The Summer Olympic Games serve as a grand podium for the belief that a nation’s best athletes can bolster its sense of pride and honor for another four years—setting the stage for real-world superheroes who defy the odds and challenge the capabilities of the human body. It’s a tradition the globe is unlikely to kick.

But 80 years ago, when the Summer Olympics opened on Aug. 1, 1936, in Berlin, that creed nearly crumbled. That year, it became increasingly clear that Germany only wanted to see its superheroes in one light: the stars of the Aryan race, superior for their genetic makeup rather than their athleticism, says Barbara Burstin, history lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University.

“It provided Hitler with a showcase,” Burstin says. “It was a propaganda bonanza for him.”

Adolf Hilter, who had effectively become Germany’s dictator in 1933, had instituted an “Aryans-only” policy throughout all German athletic organizations, sparking global outrage, especially among American athletes. Only one German-Jewish athlete was permitted to play in the games—fencer Helene Mayer—because only her father was Jewish. Even her position wasn’t guaranteed; TIME reported in 1935 that Charles Hitchcock Sherrill, a U.S. member of the International Olympic Committee, had traveled to Germany prior to the Olympics to ensure Mayer would receive her rightful spot on the team.

Vocabulary about Nature + Idioms related to Nature

• Natural Disasters: 

-Acid Rain:
Rain which contains large amounts of harmful chemicals as a result of burning substances such as coal and oil.
-Drought:
A long period when there is little or no rain.
-Flood:
A large amount of water covering an area that is usually dry.
-Earthquake:
A sudden violent movement of the Earth's surface, sometimes causing great damage.
-Global Warming:
A gradual increase in world temperatures caused by polluting gases such as carbon dioxide which are collecting in the air around the Earth and preventing heat escaping into space.
-Greenhouse Effect:
An increase in the amount of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere which is believed to be the cause of a gradual warming of the surface of the Earth.
-Oil Slick:
A layer of oil that is floating over a large area of the surface of the sea, usually because an accident has caused it to escape from a ship or container.
-Ozone Layer:
A layer of air high above the Earth, which contains a lot of ozone, and which prevents harmful ultraviolet light from the sun from reaching the Earth.
Scientists believe that there is a hole in the ozone layer.
-Pollution:
Damage caused to water, air.... by harmful substances or waste.
-Tsunami:
An extremely large wave caused by movement of the earth under the sea, often caused by an earthquake.

Grammar: Reported Speech

1.Reported Speech

The first thing we need to know about Reported Speech is that we use a 'reporting verb' like 'say' or 'tell'. If this verb is in the present tense, it's easy. We just put 'she says' and then the sentence:  

• Direct speech: “I like ice cream”.
• Reported speech: She says (that) she likes ice cream.

But, if the reporting verb is in the past tense, then usually we change the tenses in the reported speech:

• Direct speech: “I like ice cream”.
• Reported speech: She said (that) she liked ice cream.

Here you can check the different changes that take place in the sentence depending on the original tense: 

Sometimes when we change direct speech into reported speech we have to change time expressions too. We don't always have to do this, however. It depends on when we heard the direct speech and when we say the reported speech. For example:
It's Monday. Julie says "I'm leaving today".
If I tell someone on Monday, I say "Julie said she was leaving today".
If I tell someone on Tuesday, I say "Julie said she was leaving yesterday".
If I tell someone on Wednesday, I say "Julie said she was leaving on Monday".
If I tell someone a month later, I say "Julie said she was leaving that day".

2.Reported Questions

How can we make the reported speech here?  "Where do you live"?
In fact, it's not so different from reported statements. The tense changes are the same, and we keep the question word. The very important thing though is that, once we tell the question to someone else, it isn't a question any more. So we need to change the grammar to a normal positive sentence. A bit confusing? Maybe this example will help:

• Direct speech: "Who are you?"
• Reported speech: She asked me who I was.

  The direct question is in the present simple tense. We make a present simple question with 'do' or 'does' so I need to take that away. Then I need to change the verb to the past simple. 

 But, what if you need to report a 'yes / no' question? We don't have any question words to help us. Instead, we use 'if':

• Direct speech: "Do you like chocolate?"
• Reported speech: She asked me if I liked chocolate.

3.Reported Requests

What if someone asks you to do something (in a polite way)? For example:

• Direct speech: "Close the window, please"
• Or: "Could you close the window please?"
• Or: "Would you mind closing the window please?"

All of these requests mean the same thing, so we don't need to report every word when we tell another person about it. We simply use 'ask me + to + infinitive':

• Reported speech: She asked me to close the window.

4.Reported Orders

When someone tells you very directly to do something, We can say this is an 'order' in English. In fact, we make this into reported speech in the same way as a request. We just use 'tell' instead of 'ask':

• Direct speech: "Sit down!"
•  Reported speech: She told me to sit dow.

Reported Speech 1
Reported Speech 2

5.Excercises about Reported Speech:

Writing: Review

Step One: Decide What To Look At

The first thing you need to do before you start your review is decide what aspects of the item you are going to evaluate. What I mean is this: what is it that can be good or bad about something you're going to review? An example: when you're watching a movie, you can look at the acting, the special effects, the camera work, or the story, among other things. Those are all items you can examine and decide if they are well or poorly done. With a book, you can look at the plot, the characters, and the way that the author puts words together. With a restaurant, you can look at the food, the service, and the setting. In fact, everything has qualities you can analyze and evaluate; you just need to sit down and figure out what they are.

Step Two: Decide What Makes Things Good or Bad

Before you can decide whether something is good or bad, you have to figure out what you mean by "good" and "bad." Do you like stories that have a lot of action or a lot of character development? Do you like acting that's realistic or acting that's wild and nutty? Do you like authors to use a lot of complicated words, or very simple words? You decide. Whatever you like, apply those standards to the thing you are reviewing.

Grammar: Gerunds and infinitives

A gerund is the present participle (-ing) form of the verb. An infinitive is to + the base verb (the verb with no ending). Both gerunds and infinitives are action words (i.e., verbs) in meaning, but they act like nouns in the sentence. They always take a noun position: a subject or an object of the main verb.

GERUNDS:

A gerund is a verb in its -ing (present participle) from that functions as a noun that names an activity rather than a person or thing. Any action verb can be made into a gerund.

Spelling Tips:

1. - Adding -ing to most infinitives. Ex: Play-playing; do-doing.
2. - For verbs that end in -e remove the -e and add -ing. Ex: slide-sliding; ride-riding.
3. - For verbs that end in ie, change the ie to y and add ing. Ex: die -dying, tie -tying
4. - For a verb whose last syllable is written with a consonant-vowel-consonant and is stressed, double the last letter before adding ing. Ex: beg -begging, begin -beginning. However: enter -entering.

Reading Comprehension: History of TV

Televisions show sounds and pictures. They get data from cables, discs, or over-the-air signals. They turn this data into sounds and images. People watch news and shows on them. You probably call them TVs. John Baird made the first TV in 1925. It had one color. It could only show 30 lines. This was just enough room for a face. It didn't work well, but it was a start.

The first TV station was set up in 1928. It was in New York. Few people had TVs. The broadcasts were not meant to be watched. They showed a Felix the Cat doll for two hours a day. The doll spun around on a record player. They were experimenting. It took many years to get it right. By the end of the 1930s, TVs were working well. America got its first taste at the 1939 World's Fair. This was one of the biggest events ever. There were 200 small, black and white TVs set up around the fair. The U.S. President gave a speech over the TVs. The TVs were only five inches big but the people loved it. They wanted TVs. But World War II was going on during this time. Factories were busy making guns and bombs. When the war was over, TV spread across the country.

Reading Comprehension: How to Learn a Second Language

How to Learn a Second Language

Robert DeKeyser, a professor of second language acquisition at the University of Maryland says: “The only way to learn a language is to make quite a bit of effort on a daily basis.”

Programs designed to mimic the learning methods of children are also a waste of time and money, says DeKeyser. “You cannot expect to just absorb language the way that a child does,” he says. “Children are good at learning the underlining system of all the language input they get because they can infer the underlying patterns without understanding the rules. Adults must be conscientious of the rules of the language. Their implicit learning doesn’t work all that well.”

Lisa Davidson, an associate professor of linguistics at New York University, says one major difference in the language learning process between adults and children involves interference from a native tongue. “When you’re a kid all you’re working at is acquiring a language, and you don’t have anything to get in the way of that,” she says. “When you’re an adult and you already have a language, the one you already know filters sounds and you get substantial interference from it.”

 Before the age of one, infants are able to differentiate between sounds that their parents cannot (a notable exambple is the inability of native Japanese-speaking adults to distinguish between the "r" and "l" sounds). The ability can be reactivated with the proper amount of language input right up until puberty; a stage linguists refer to as the critical perios. And then comes adulthood, and with it many more hurdles.

Many experts agree that the ideal learning method for adults really depends on the individual. “Find the method that works for you and stick with it,” says Richard Simcott, a polyglot who has professionally worked in over 14 languages at once for the British Foreign Service. “The main thing is to do a bit every day and to not get discouraged if you miss a day. If audio works for you, do audio. If it’s classes, do classes. But find whatever it is and be consistent.”

But not all adults are created equal. There are several factors that contribute to the success of one student over another. “First of all you need aptitude for language learning,” says DeKeyser. “People vary in their aptitude like they do in learning math or in playing basketball.”

These biological differences in aptitude do not mean that individuals with a knack for languages can just move to Japan and passively await fluency. “Motivation is a key part of learning a language,” says Davidson. “The more time that you spend during the day speaking your second language, the better at it you’re going to be.”

Learning from multiple people is another key to success, especially when attempting to cultivate a native accent. “When you are exposed to a lot of people you get a much better sense of what the sound of a word is supposed to be,” says Davidson. “You avoid exposing yourself to what could be idiosyncrasies in one individual’s speech patterns.”

Once an individual masters one language, experts say learning additional foreign tongues can be much easier for a number of reasons. Individuals with previous experience know what’s involved in the learning process and are more adept at cultivating strategies for communicating with limited comprehension. “And no matter how different the two languages are, there are some sounds or words that can be carried over,” says DeKeyser.

The tricks to maintaining foreign fluency are very similar to the methods used to achieve it–you have to practice. “Maintaining a language is a matter of dedicating enough time to it,” says DeKeyser. “You need to interact with native speakers. Make every possible effort to speak the learned language on a daily basis.”

Simcott recommends continually challenging yourself even after you’ve reached fluency. “Sign up for political, science or philosophy classes where you will be tested beyond asking things like ‘how much is the bread?’ This will help you understand the culture and the people infinitely better as well.”

Source: Forbes

Reading Comprehension: Crocodiles and Palm Trees in the Artic?

Crocodiles and Palm Trees in the Artic?

In even the bleakest climate change scenarios for the end of this century, science has offered hope that global warming would eventually slow down. But a new study published Monday eliminates such hope, projecting temperatures that rise lockstep with carbon emissions until the last drops of oil and lumps of coal are used up. Global temperatures will increase on average by 8 degrees Celsius (14.4 degrees F) over preindustrial levels by 2300 if all of Earth’s fossil fuel resources are burned, In the Arctic, average temperatures would rise by 17 degrees C (30.6 degrees F). If these temperatures do become reality, greenhouse gases would transform Earth into a place where food is scarce, parts of the world are uninhabitable for humans, and many species of animals and plants are wiped out, experts say.

"It would be as unrecognizable to us as a fully glaciated world," says Mylles Allen, head of a climate dynamics group at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Allen was not involved in the new study, but his research has focused on carbon’s cumulative impacts on climate. It also would heat the world to a level approaching that of the early Eocene period, 52 million to 56 million years ago, when palm trees grewas far North as Alaska and crocodiles swam in the Arctic.

Mammals survived Eocene temperatures; this is when early primates appeared. Some horses, however, shrank to the size of house cats, adjusting through evolution to a diet altered either by heat or carbon. Today's organisms and ecosystems may not be able to adapt to warming over the next 200 to 300 years—an instant on the geological time scale, says Scott Wing, the Smithsonian Institution’s curator of fossil plants.
Allen says not only could tropical rain forest systems collapse, but drought in southern Europe and the United States would be "completely catastrophic for agriculture." Wealthy nations might maintain food supply, but not places like southern Africa. "A lot of people would have to leave, or a lot of people would die," Allen says.