Watch today’s show at YouTube or BlipTV.
Hi, I’m Sarah. Welcome to The Daily English Show.
Today I thought I’d tell you a bit about the English language courses they have at Acadia. They have courses called EPP which stands for English for Professional Purposes. Those courses focus on English for travel or communication or work purposes. That’s mainly the kind of stuff I did in Japan.
The other courses are EUP which stands for English for University Purposes. EUP courses are for people who want to study at university. Especially if they want to study at Acadia. But it would also prepare you for studying at another university.
So some students come from China, for example, and they want to do a degree at Acadia so before that they do EUP courses. And to be able to do regular courses you need to reach a certain level. So you either need to pass a certain level of the EUP course or you need to take a test and get a certain score.
And for the EUP courses there are different levels. So on Tuesday the students took a test to see which level they should be in. The test is called the CAEL test which stands for Canadian Academic English Language Assessment. That test is like the TOEFL which you’ve probably heard of, or the International English Language Testing System.
Those are international tests and CAEL is just for Canada. So I think every country probably has their own test.
I haven’t done much teaching of English for academic or university purposes so I don’t know a lot about it. But I’m interested to find out more. So I’m going to talk to some teachers and students and I’ll let you know what I find out.
Kia Ora in Stick News today, Google is sponsoring a moon landing competition. The winner will receive 20 million US dollars.
A robotic spacecraft is a spacecraft with no humans on board, that is usually under telerobotic control.
Google is sponsoring a competition open to private industry and non-government entities worldwide.
The winner will be the group who can land a robotic spacecraft on the moon, take it on a 500 metre hike and return with a data package including video by December 31st 2012.
First prize is $20 million and second prize is $5 million.
TDES studio has yet to announce whether or not they will enter the competition.
Kia Ora.
friday joke
A linguistics professor was lecturing to his English class one day. "In English," he said, "A double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative."
A voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, right."
I found the joke here.
conversations with sarah
#308 What did you take in first year?
Step 1: Repeat Tommy’s lines.
Step 2: Read Tommy’s lines and talk to Sarah.
Tommy It must be hard for international students to take the regular courses at university.
Sarah Yeah, totally. University was hard enough for me and I was a native speaker.
Tommy Right. What did you find the hardest?
Sarah Oh everything ... waking up in the morning after drinking all night. No seriously, um, just when I’d open a book and try and read something there’d be so many words I didn’t understand. And as for the content I had no idea what they were talking about.
Tommy What did you take in first year?
Sarah I took politics, philosophy, English lit. and French.
Tommy How were they?
Sarah Well English and French I’d studied at high school, so I had some idea of what they were on about. But politics, I had noooo idea. I didn’t even know what left wing and right wing meant. I remember there was, there was this guy who lived down the hall from me and he was really into politics so one day I went and knocked on his door and said: “Darren, I don’t what left and right wing means, can you please explain it to me?” And he was like, “Sure”. He was really cool. He’s a member of parliament now actually.
Tommy Wow, really? He must be a young MP.
Sarah Yeah, I think he’s New Zealand’s youngest MP.
notes
I'll let you know
let somebody know = tell somebody
had no idea
have no idea = don't know
English Lit.
English Lit. = English Literature
were on about
be on about = talk about
he was like
he was like = he said
links
today's news
today's STICK NEWS pictures
Acadia's English language courses
CAEL
TOEIC
IELTS
Acadia links
Study English at Acadia University
Acadia University
Acadia's YouTube channel
music
show start
artist: AdHoc
album: Toutes directions
track: La note en cage
from: Annecy, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site
friday joke start
artist: AdHoc
album: Toutes directions
track: Sumbala
from: Annecy, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site
cws start
artist: San Sebastian
track: Happy Sad
artist site
qa start
artist: Manu Cornet
album: Distance & Temps
track: Silk Road
from: Paris, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site
qa bgm
artist: XL Ant
album: XL Ant
track: Track 07
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site
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