Monday, September 22, 2008

#833 JALT Hokkaido, J. K. Rowling + Politics, Sub, Subprime Loans


Show 833 Monday 22 September
Watch today’s show at YouTube or BlipTV.


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

I have some very exciting news today. The Daily English Show is going to another conference.
Actually two conferences – well two events, a conference and a workshop that are related.

One is the 25th Annual JALT Hokkaido language teaching conference.
JALT stands for Japan Association of Language Teaching.

And it’s a non-profit organisation dedicated to the improvement of language teaching and learning both within Japan and internationally.

And they have chapters in different parts of Japan – and they have one in Hokkaido, called JALT Hokkaido.

And this year their conference is on Sunday the 19th of October. And the day before that, on the 18th, there’s an event called the CALL Workshop. CALL stands for computer assisted language learning.

We’re going to both days which is very exciting. I’ve been reading the schedules online and there are a lot of interesting presentations. There are professors and instructors from schools and universities in Hokkaido and other parts of Japan coming to give presentations – about things like some of the projects they’ve been doing with their classes, which sound really interesting.

And no doubt they know a lot more about language teaching than I do – so I’m looking forward to hearing what they have to say and I’d like to do some interviews so I can share some of their ideas with you.

I’m actually going to meet a couple of the organizers when I go to Sapporo this week to so I’ll be able to tell you more about it after that.

Anyway, if you’re a language teacher in Hokkaido, then check out this site to find out more about the conference and the workshop and if you’re planning to go then I’ll see you there.



STICK NEWS

Kia Ora, in Stick News today, J. K. Rowling has donated 1 million pounds to a political party.

J. K. Rowling is the British novelist famous for writing the Harry Potter series. She’s also famous for her rags to riches life story. When she started writing Harry Potter she was a single mother living on welfare. She’s now one of the richest women in Britain. She doesn’t keep all her money for herself. Rowling donates money to charities such as a trust she established to combat poverty and social inequality. "I think you have a moral responsibility when you've been given far more than you need, to do wise things with it and give intelligently,” she said. On Saturday Rowling donated a million pounds to the British Labour Party.
“I believe that poor and vulnerable families will fare much better under the Labour Party than they would under a Cameron-led Conservative Party.”

And that was Stick News for Monday the 22nd of September.
Kia Ora.




Word of the Day


Today’s word is sub.

Sub is an informal noun, short for:

submarine subscription substitute subeditor

Sub- is also a prefix meaning below, less than, under, a smaller part of sth

Sub-zero temperatures are temperatures that are below zero.



conversations with sarah

#513 What does subprime mean?

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

Tom What does subprime mean?

Sarah As in the “subprime mortgage crisis”?

Tom Yeah.

Sarah Well, sub means below and prime means best quality. I think a subprime loan is basically … like a dodgy loan.

Tom Dodgy?

Sarah Yeah. The conditions aren’t very good and the fees are higher.

Tom Why would anyone get a loan like that?

Sarah Because they can’t get a better one.

Tom Why not?

Sarah Because the banks don’t trust them, I guess. Because maybe they’ve had financial problems before. Or maybe the banks are racist and they think that they won’t pay the money back because they’re a certain race. I don’t know. Lots of reasons I guess … but anyway, you should probably ask someone else, because I don’t really know much about it.



links

today's news
today's STICK NEWS pictures

music

show start
artist: Boom Tschak
album: Indietronic CCBit.
track: More Chocolate, Please
from: Former Yugoslavia
MySpace

cws start
artist: Wolfgang S.
album: Indietronic CCBit.
track: Dynamite
from: Belgrade, Serbia, Former Yugoslavia
artist site
MySpace

qa start
artist: ioeo
album: triptracks
track: triptrack2
from: Saint Raphael, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site

qa bgm
artist: Ensono
album: Night Culture
track: Anyway
from: Vigo, Spain
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo

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