Show 485 Friday 31 August

Watch today's show at YouTube or BlipTV.

Hi, I’m Sarah. Welcome to The Daily English Show.

Today I’m going to talk about transcripts. Sometimes people leave comments like, “What was that word you said at 1:32?” And I think, “Hmm, they mustn’t know that there’s a transcript.”

If you go to http://thedailyenglishshow.blogspot.com/ – you can see a transcript for every show.

This is one of the key ideas of The Daily English Show – the idea is that I talk in a reasonably natural way – I do grade my language to a certain extent, but not much, it’s fairly natural – and then for every show there’s a transcript.
So what you can do is, perhaps watch the show first and then go and check the script for any words that you didn’t catch or that you want to look up.
Or you can cut and paste the script into a translator if you think that helps or you can use one of those programs where you run the mouse over a word and the meaning pops up in your language – like rikai.com.

The transcripts are all free to use at home or in class. If you’re a teacher, you can print them out and give them out to your students. No problem.

A lot of language learning podcasts make their money by charging people to use the transcripts – but The Daily English Show transcripts are free. And they’ll stay that way too because I think it’s an important part of The Daily English Show philosophy.
This is a non-commercial show, so the purpose is not to make money. So we don’t have any money, surprise, surprise. But we would like to find a way to get some money eventually, to cover some expenses – buy some equipment, that kind of thing. But we won’t do it by charging for transcripts, that’s for sure. Or by getting sponsored by a nasty company like McDonalds. But anyway, that’s another story.

Today I just wanted to make sure that everybody knows that there is a script for every video. And if you’re watching this on YouTube there is a link to the script next to every video. So the script is just a click away.
And if this is a YouTube video you’re watching, but it’s on another site, and you want to find the script easily, then all you have to do is click on the video and it will take you to the original place on YouTube where the video is and then you’ll see the link to the script next to the video.

Also, not only are there transcripts for the show – there are translations in Japanese and German.

Thomas - this guy - is an absolute legend and he has been translating the scripts into German ... and pointing out the mistakes too, which is great. Every script there are a couple of mistakes so it’s really good to have someone to point them out.

Today’s joke was sent to me a couple of days ago by someone called Robert on MySpace. And I thought today is very good timing for this joke – people have been talking about stupid Americans a lot recently. So I thought it was about time we start talking about stupid Australians.

Robert says:
As an Aussie I have always liked this one. I thought you may like to add it to your collection.

Q. How do you tell the difference between a kangaroo and an Australian?
A. The intelligent look in the kangaroo's eyes .

STICK NEWS

Kia Ora, in Stick News today, a thief in New Zealand returned to the house he burgled the same day because he felt guilty about the burglary.

On Tuesday a person broke into a house near Queenstown in New Zealand.
They smashed a window to get inside then stole a laptop, a camera and a wallet with a credit card inside.
The burglar then went shopping and bought a basketball and two pairs of gloves using the stolen credit card.
At some point, the thief started feeling guilty. He or she went back to the house to return the stolen goods. They also left a full-page apology note.
The owner of the house said he was more "bewildered" than angry.
Police are now searching for the offender. They said the change of heart would be taken into account.

And that was Stick News for Friday the 31st of August.
Kia Ora.

conversations with sarah
#300 What does “grade your language” mean?

Step 1: Repeat Brad’s lines.
Step 2: Read Brad’s lines and talk to Sarah.

Brad What does “grade your language” mean?

Sarah It means to simplify your language so it’s easier to understand.

Brad Is that easy to do?

Sarah It’s, it’s easy for me now because I’ve been teaching for a while, but for some people – especially if they’ve never taught English – they have no idea how to do it.

Brad How do you do it?

Sarah Well, one thing you can do is avoid using idioms or phrasal verbs. So, for example, instead of saying, I’m going to hit the sack you could say, I’m going to go to bed. Or you might say visit instead of drop in on.

Brad And you would avoid difficult words?

Sarah Yeah. If there is an easier word that means the same thing, use that. Like instead of strenuous say hard.

Brad Do you always do that?

Sarah No, not always. Well, I try and judge the students level – and then use language appropriate for that level. So I think it’s good to use some words and expressions that you think they probably won’t know – so that they can learn something new. But just don’t use too many, or they’ll get discouraged.

links

today's news
today's STICK NEWS pictures

music

show start, cws start, qa start
artist: Matthew Tyas
album: Music for the movies vol1
tracks: Superheros, Intellectuel, Three ways to run away
from: Oloron Sainte-Marie, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site

qa bgm
artist: San Sebastian
track: Capo 6
artist site

Did you notice a mistake in this script? Please leave us a comment and tell us! We really appreciate people pointing out our mistakes.Thank you.

Have you have translated this script - or part of it - into your language for English practice and published it on your blog? Please leave a comment and a link so other people can read your translation. Thank you.