Tuesday, 30 April 2013

This website is specially designed for learners of English.The articles are carefully chosen and rewritten, so that they can be more easily understood. Each article has a vocabulary list at the end. Presently there are a few hundred topics and special news articles in various categories.

More news articles at http://news.english.online.at

In The News

The Titanic - An Unsinkable Giant - The world's most luxurious ocean liner sank one hundred years ago
The Falkland Islands - 30 years after the Falklands War between Great Britain and Argentina we take a look at the island group in the South Atlantic Ocean
The Olympic Games - The 2012 Summer Olympics are coming up in London this year

Articles in Easy, Understandable English for ESL Learners

Building fell down

29-04-2013 06:00

A building in Bangladesh fell down. It had eight floors....

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English news and easy articles for students of English

Easy English Text - Reading Practice - YouTube
Easy English Texts | Easy Texts in English with Slow Pronunciation

Welcome to Penguin Readers
Easy English Reading
Yes, you can learn English. - Simple English News
English Beginning Level Reading Comprehension Skills - Reading for Lower Level English ESL EFL Learners and Classes
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Sunday, 28 April 2013

on-line stuff for a1 and a2 levels - speaking

Speak English! offers a wide range of materials to help you learn English. Pick up some basic phrases, expand your vocabulary, or discuss language questions in the forums.
Speak English! — Learn English online

For example:
Asking and giving directions in English

Learn English speaking FREE with TalkEnglish.com

Our goal is to help you Learn English speaking so you can speak English fluently. Improve your spoken English Free!
Learn English Speaking and Improve your Spoken English with Free English Speaking Lessons Online!

For example:
English Speaking Basics - Using common expressions for Beginners

Common Daily Expressions - English Listening & Speaking Practice

Common Daily Expressions - English Listening & Speaking Practice - YouTube
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Wednesday, 20 March 2013

archaic language part four

Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice: The Lake Scene (Colin Firth Strips Off) - YouTube

Part 1 - Pride and Prejudice Audiobook by Jane Austen (Chs 01-15) - YouTube

Pride and Prejudice

by Jane Austen

Chapter 1

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in
possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may
be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well
fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered
the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.

"My dear Mr. Bennet," said his lady to him one day, "have you
heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?"

Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.

"But it is," returned she; "for Mrs. Long has just been here, and
she told me all about it."

Mr. Bennet made no answer.

"Do you not want to know who has taken it?" cried his wife
impatiently.

"YOU want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it."

This was invitation enough.

"Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield
is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of
England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to
see the place, and was so much delighted with it, that he agreed
with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession
before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the
house by the end of next week."

"What is his name?"

"Bingley."

"Is he married or single?"

"Oh! Single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large
fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our
girls!"

"How so? How can it affect them?"

"My dear Mr. Bennet," replied his wife, "how can you be so
tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying
one of them."

"Is that his design in settling here?"

"Design! Nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely
that he MAY fall in love with one of them, and therefore you
must visit him as soon as he comes."

"I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you
may send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still
better, for as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley
may like you the best of the party."

"My dear, you flatter me. I certainly HAVE had my share of
beauty, but I do not pretend to be anything extraordinary now.
When a woman has five grown-up daughters, she ought to give
over thinking of her own beauty."

"In such cases, a woman has not often much beauty to think of."

"But, my dear, you must indeed go and see Mr. Bingley when
he comes into the neighbourhood."

"It is more than I engage for, I assure you."

"But consider your daughters. Only think what an establishment
it would be for one of them. Sir William and Lady Lucas are
determined to go, merely on that account, for in general, you
know, they visit no newcomers. Indeed you must go, for it will
be impossible for US to visit him if you do not."

"You are over-scrupulous, surely. I dare say Mr. Bingley will
be very glad to see you; and I will send a few lines by you to
assure him of my hearty consent to his marrying whichever he
chooses of the girls; though I must throw in a good word for
my little Lizzy."

"I desire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not a bit better
than the others; and I am sure she is not half so handsome as
Jane, nor half so good-humoured as Lydia. But you are always
giving HER the preference."

"They have none of them much to recommend them," replied he;
"they are all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy
has something more of quickness than her sisters."

"Mr. Bennet, how CAN you abuse your own children in such a
way? You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion
for my poor nerves."

"You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your
nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention
them with consideration these last twenty years at least."

Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour,
reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three-and-twenty
years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his
character. HER mind was less difficult to develop. She was a
woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain
temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous.
The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its
solace was visiting and news.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - Full Text Free Book (Part 1/8)

Alan Rickman. А Christmas special, BBC - YouTube
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archaic language part iii

charles dickens

CHARLES DICKENS - HARD TIMES PART 1 - YouTube

what I want is facts - YouTube

Chapter I — The One Thing Needful
“NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!”

The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom, and the speaker’s square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster’s sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside. The speaker’s obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders, — nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was, — all helped the emphasis.

“In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!”

The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.

Chapter II — Murdering The Innocents
THOMAS GRADGRIND, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir — peremptorily Thomas — Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. You might hope to get some other nonsensical belief into the head of George Gradgrind, or Augustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind (all supposititious, non-existent persons), but into the head of Thomas Gradgrind - no, sir!

In such terms Mr Gradgrind always mentally introduced himself, whether to his private circle of acquaintance, or to the public in general. In such terms, no doubt, substituting the words ‘boys and girls,’ for ‘sir,’ Thomas Gradgrind now presented Thomas Gradgrind to the little pitchers before him, who were to be filled so full of facts.

Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed away.
‘Girl number twenty,’ said Mr Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger, ‘I don’t know that girl. Who is that girl?’
‘Sissy Jupe, sir,’ explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and curtseying.
‘Sissy is not a name,’ said Mr Gradgrind. ‘Don’t call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.’
‘It’s father as calls me Sissy, sir,’ returned the young girl in a trembling voice, and with another curtsey.
‘Then he has no business to do it,’ said Mr Gradgrind. ‘Tell him he mustn’t. Cecilia Jupe. Let me see. What is your father?’
‘He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir.’
Mr Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable calling with his hand.

‘We don’t want to know anything about that, here. You mustn’t tell us about that, here. Your father breaks horses, don’t he?’
‘If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do break horses in the ring, sir.’
‘You mustn’t tell us about the ring, here. Very well, then. Describe your father as a horsebreaker. He doctors sick horses, I dare say?’
‘Oh yes, sir.’
‘Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse.’
(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.)
‘Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!’ said Mr Gradgrind, for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. ‘Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals! Some boy’s definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours.’
The square finger, moving here and there, lighted suddenly on Bitzer, perhaps because he chanced to sit in the same ray of sunlight which, darting in at one of the bare windows of the intensely white-washed room, irradiated Sissy. For, the boys and girls sat on the face of the inclined plane in two compact bodies, divided up the centre by a narrow interval; and Sissy, being at the corner of a row on the sunny side, came in for the beginning of a sunbeam, of which Bitzer, being at the corner of a row on the other side, a few rows in advance, caught the end. But, whereas the girl was so dark-eyed and dark-haired, that she seemed to receive a deeper and more lustrous colour from the sun, when it shone upon her, the boy was so light-eyed and light-haired that the self-same rays appeared to draw out of him what little colour he ever possessed. His cold eyes would hardly have been eyes, but for the short ends of lashes which, by bringing them into immediate contrast with something paler than themselves, expressed their form. His short-cropped hair might have been a mere continuation of the sandy freckles on his forehead and face. His skin was so unwholesomely deficient in the natural tinge, that he looked as though, if he were cut, he would bleed white.
‘Bitzer,’ said Thomas Gradgrind. ‘Your definition of a horse.’
‘Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.’ Thus (and much more) Bitzer.
‘Now girl number twenty,’ said Mr Gradgrind. ‘You know what a horse is.’
She curtseyed again, and would have blushed deeper, if she could have blushed deeper than she had blushed all this time. Bitzer, after rapidly blinking at Thomas Gradgrind with both eyes at once, and so catching the light upon his quivering ends of lashes that they looked like the antennae of busy insects, put his knuckles to his freckled forehead, and sat down again.
The third gentleman now stepped forth. A mighty man at cutting and drying, he was; a government officer; in his way (and in most other people’s too), a professed pugilist; always in training, always with a system to force down the general throat like a bolus, always to be heard of at the bar of his little Public-office, ready to fight all England. To continue in fistic phraseology, he had a genius for coming up to the scratch, wherever and whatever it was, and proving himself an ugly customer. He would go in and damage any subject whatever with his right, follow up with his left, stop, exchange, counter, bore his opponent (he always fought All England) to the ropes, and fall upon him neatly. He was certain to knock the wind out of common sense, and render that unlucky adversary deaf to the call of time. And he had it in charge from high authority to bring about the great public-office Millennium, when Commissioners should reign upon earth.
‘Very well,’ said this gentleman, briskly smiling, and folding his arms. ‘That’s a horse. Now, let me ask you girls and boys, Would you paper a room with representations of horses?’
After a pause, one half of the children cried in chorus, ‘Yes, sir!’ Upon which the other half, seeing in the gentleman’s face that Yes was wrong, cried out in chorus, ‘No, sir!’ — as the custom is, in these examinations.
‘Of course, No. Why wouldn’t you?’
A pause. One corpulent slow boy, with a wheezy manner of breathing, ventured the answer, Because he wouldn’t paper a room at all, but would paint it.
‘You must paper it,’ said the gentleman, rather warmly.
‘You must paper it,’ said Thomas Gradgrind, ‘whether you like it or not. Don’t tell us you wouldn’t paper it. What do you mean, boy?’
‘I’ll explain to you, then,’ said the gentleman, after another and a dismal pause, ‘why you wouldn’t paper a room with representations of horses. Do you ever see horses walking up and down the sides of rooms in reality — in fact? Do you?’
‘Yes, sir!’ from one half. ‘No, sir!’ from the other.
‘Of course no,’ said the gentleman, with an indignant look at the wrong half. ‘Why, then, you are not to see anywhere, what you don’t see in fact; you are not to have anywhere, what you don’t have in fact. What is called Taste, is only another name for Fact.’ Thomas Gradgrind nodded his approbation.
‘This is a new principle, a discovery, a great discovery,’ said the gentleman. ‘Now, I’ll try you again. Suppose you were going to carpet a room. Would you use a carpet having a representation of flowers upon it?’
There being a general conviction by this time that ‘No, sir!’ was always the right answer to this gentleman, the chorus of NO was very strong. Only a few feeble stragglers said Yes: among them Sissy Jupe.
‘Girl number twenty,’ said the gentleman, smiling in the calm strength of knowledge.
Sissy blushed, and stood up.
‘So you would carpet your room — or your husband’s room, if you were a grown woman, and had a husband — with representations of flowers, would you?’ said the gentleman. ‘Why would you?’
‘If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers,’ returned the girl.
‘And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and have people walking over them with heavy boots?’
‘It wouldn’t hurt them, sir. They wouldn’t crush and wither, if you please, sir. They would be the pictures of what was very pretty and pleasant, and I would fancy — ’
‘Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn’t fancy,’ cried the gentleman, quite elated by coming so happily to his point. ‘That’s it! You are never to fancy.’
‘You are not, Cecilia Jupe,’ Thomas Gradgrind solemnly repeated, ‘to do anything of that kind.’
‘Fact, fact, fact!’ said the gentleman. And ‘Fact, fact, fact!’ repeated Thomas Gradgrind.
‘You are to be in all things regulated and governed,’ said the gentleman, ‘by fact. We hope to have, before long, a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact, and of nothing but fact. You must discard the word Fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You are not to have, in any object of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact. You don’t walk upon flowers in fact; you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. You don’t find that foreign birds and butterflies come and perch upon your crockery; you cannot be permitted to paint foreign birds and butterflies upon your crockery. You never meet with quadrupeds going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds represented upon walls. You must use,’ said the gentleman, ‘for all these purposes, combinations and modifications (in primary colours) of mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and demonstration. This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste.’
The girl curtseyed, and sat down. She was very young, and she looked as if she were frightened by the matter-of-fact prospect the world afforded.
‘Now, if Mr M’Choakumchild,’ said the gentleman, ‘will proceed to give his first lesson here, Mr Gradgrind, I shall be happy, at your request, to observe his mode of procedure.’
Mr Gradgrind was much obliged. ‘Mr M’Choakumchild, we only wait for you.’
So, Mr M’Choakumchild began in his best manner. He and some one hundred and forty other schoolmasters, had been lately turned at the same time, in the same factory, on the same principles, like so many pianoforte legs. He had been put through an immense variety of paces, and had answered volumes of head-breaking questions. Orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody, biography, astronomy, geography, and general cosmography, the sciences of compound proportion, algebra, land-surveying and levelling, vocal music, and drawing from models, were all at the ends of his ten chilled fingers. He had worked his stony way into Her Majesty’s most Honourable Privy Council’s Schedule B, and had taken the bloom off the higher branches of mathematics and physical science, French, German, Latin, and Greek. He knew all about all the Water Sheds of all the world (whatever they are), and all the histories of all the peoples, and all the names of all the rivers and mountains, and all the productions, manners, and customs of all the countries, and all their boundaries and bearings on the two and thirty points of the compass. Ah, rather overdone, M’Choakumchild. If he had only learnt a little less, how infinitely better he might have taught much more!
He went to work in this preparatory lesson, not unlike Morgiana in the Forty Thieves: looking into all the vessels ranged before him, one after another, to see what they contained. Say, good M’Choakumchild. When from thy boiling store, thou shalt fill each jar brim full by-and-by, dost thou think that thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within — or sometimes only maim him and distort him!

Hard Times by Charles Dickens. Search eText, Read Online, Study, Discuss.
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Tuesday, 19 March 2013

archaic language part 2

Miss Marple

Agatha Christie's Marple: S1E3 - 450 From Paddington - YouTube

Miss Marple - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

4.50 from Paddington - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Murder, She Said - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Always great to see Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple. Interesting that she meets a Miss Marple of the future in the shape of Joan Hickson.

Murder, She Said (1961) - Trailer - YouTube

Murder She Said (1961) - IMDb

Agatha Christie: Stories – 4.50 From Paddington

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie - Read Online - The Literature Page

The intense interest aroused in the public by what was known at the time as "The Styles Case" has now somewhat subsided. Nevertheless, in view of the world-wide notoriety which attended it, I have been asked, both by my friend Poirot and the family themselves, to write an account of the whole story. This, we trust, will effectually silence the sensational rumours which still persist.

I will therefore briefly set down the circumstances which led to my being connected with the affair.

I had been invalided home from the Front; and, after spending some months in a rather depressing Convalescent Home, was given a month's sick leave. Having no near relations or friends, I was trying to make up my mind what to do, when I ran across John Cavendish. I had seen very little of him for some years. Indeed, I had never known him particularly well. He was a good fifteen years my senior, for one thing, though he hardly looked his forty-five years. As a boy, though, I had often stayed at Styles, his mother's place in Essex.

We had a good yarn about old times, and it ended in his inviting me down to Styles to spend my leave there.

"The mater will be delighted to see you again--after all those years," he added.

"Your mother keeps well?" I asked.

"Oh, yes. I suppose you know that she has married again?"

I am afraid I showed my surprise rather plainly. Mrs. Cavendish, who had married John's father when he was a widower with two sons, had been a handsome woman of middle-age as I remembered her. She certainly could not be a day less than seventy now. I recalled her as an energetic, autocratic personality, somewhat inclined to charitable and social notoriety, with a fondness for opening bazaars and playing the Lady Bountiful. She was a most generous woman, and possessed a considerable fortune of her own.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie: Chapter 1 - The Literature Page
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archaic language part one

Jeeves and Wooster

Jeeves &Wooster S01 E01 Part 1/5 - YouTube

Jeeves - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jeeves Takes Charge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I shall always remember the  morning he came.  It  so happened that the
night before I had been present at a  rather cheery little supper, and I was
feeling pretty rocky. On  top of this I was trying  to read  a book Florence
Craye had given me. She  had been one of the house-party at Easeby, and  two
or three days before I left we had got engaged. I was due back at the end of
the week, and I knew she would expect me to have finished the book by  then.
You see, she was particularly  keen on  boosting me up a bit nearer  her own
plane of intellect.  She was a girl with a wonderful profile, but steeped to
the gills  in  serious purpose.  I can't  give you a better idea  of the way
things  stood than by telling you that the  book she'd given  me to read was
called  'Types of Ethical  Theory', and that when  I opened  it  at random I
struck a page beginning:

     The postulate or common understanding involved in speech is
     certainly co-extensive, in the obligation it carries, with the
     social organism of which language is the instrument, and the
     ends of which it is an effort to subserve.

     All perfectly true, no doubt; but not the sort of thing to spring on  a
lad with a morning head.

     I was doing  my best to skim through this bright little volume when the
bell  rang. I  crawled off the sofa  and  opened the door. A kind of darkish
sort of respectful Johnnie stood without.

     'I was sent  by the agency, sir,'  he said. 'I was  given to understand
that you required a valet.'

     I'd  have preferred an undertaker; but I told him to stagger in, and he
floated  noiselessly  through  the  doorway  like  a  healing  zephyr.  That
impressed me from the  start. Meadows had had flat  feet and  used to clump.
This fellow didn't seem to have any feet at all. He just streamed in. He had
a grave, sympathetic  face, as if he, too, knew what it was to sup with  the
lads.

P.G.Wodehouse. Jeeves takes charge