Show 928 Monday 5 January
Watch today’s show at YouTube or BlipTV.
Hi, I’m Sarah, welcome to The Daily English Show. Happy New Year! Long time no see! Well not that long, but it feels like a long time. I had a nice break. I slept a lot – for about 10 or 12 hours a night for about week – it was great. And I even sent some nengajyo. It was touch and go if that was actually going to happen because my printer is on its last legs, and I definitely couldn’t be bothered writing all the addresses by hand – but luckily it worked and I sent some … a bit late, but, you know, better late than never.
If you’re still on holiday, right now, I hope you’re enjoying it … and I hope everyone has an excellent year in 2009.
The first guest of 2009 is Chloe. She’s from Paris in France and she stayed here in Niseko for a couple of weeks. She’s already gone which is a shame because she’s really nice, I wish she could’ve stayed longer.
Chloe is on a gap year – which means she’s taking a year off studying between high school and university. Before coming to Niseko she spent a couple of months in Tokyo studying at a language school there. And I asked her if she learnt much when she was studying there.
Yeah, um, like, I had studied Japanese, well, for about eight years, like I started in primary school. And … but it was really slow. Um, for kids, kind of, so we learnt songs, we drew with Japanese signs, things like that, which was fun, and I got the basics. But I didn’t practice and I didn’t study a lot. So, like, those two months, like, allowed me to actually use what I’d learned. And, and being in the city helped me. So it was really, yeah, really worth it, it really helped me.
STICK NEWS
Kia Ora in Stick News today 2008 was one second longer than 2007.
UTC is a time standard which stands for Coordinated Universal Time. Apparently, when the official abbreviation was being decided, English speakers wanted CUT but French speakers wanted TUC, so UTC was chosen as a compromise. Sometimes the time keepers add seconds to the time, to compensate for the Earth’s slowing rotation. On the 31st of December 2008 an extra second was added at 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds.
And that was Stick News for Monday the 5th of January.
Kia Ora.
conversations with sarah
#577 Why did you go to an international school?
Step 1: Repeat Sarah’s lines.
Step 2: Read Sarah’s lines and talk to Chloe.
Sarah What made you chose Japanese when you were at school?
Chloe I didn’t choose it actually, um, it was, we had to take one year and I just thought I’d continue. It was, it was an international school, so, a bit different from the other normal French schools and they offered the possibility to study Japanese, so my parents encouraged me to … you know, it’s a great opportunity, which I thought it was too, so.
Sarah Why did you go to an international school?
Chloe Um, well, my, my Dad, for my Dad’s work, we travel quite a lot and we have a lot of family abroad, so my parents always thought it would be good for me to speak English well. Plus, another reason is that, like, the public school next to my house wasn’t really good. So, I just, they just put me in that school. And then I lived in the States for a year, when I was ten. So when I came back I continued in the international school so that allowed me to keep up my English, my level and … and have an opening to the world too, because it’s, it’s different from other schools, so …
Sarah Are you glad you went to an international school?
Chloe Yeah. Really. Um, I changed high school and then went to a public high school, normal French high school, just to also try something different and … so, like I don’t regret that decision at all, but I’m very happy about the years I spent in that international school. Cause I met great people from all over the world, it was kind of fun cause like French girls would even talk English together sometimes. It was just very mingled and nice, yeah.
Sarah So all your classes were in English?
Chloe Ah, pretty much, ‘til … um, well, in primary school, it’s just like a normal primary school with a lot of English classes. But then in junior high school, it’s, all the classes are in English, but mathematics and French, of course, French … and, yeah, and then when you get to high school … well, as you grow older, some classes become French and English for the vocabulary. Like, history you start having French and English in order to study, like, well, different programs too. And then science becomes only … is only studied in French from high school on, to have the proper vocabulary for the final French exam.
Sarah What are you going to study at university?
Chloe I’m going to study biology.
Sarah Why biology?
Chloe Well, I, like I had to choose something. So, I was sort of looking through all the possibilities and really hesitating but then I thought you know that’s the subject matter that interested me the most at school. It’s just really interesting. It’s about life, everything that surrounds us is concerned by biology, ourselves … everything. And since I was small, I’ve had an idea of, um, becoming a marine biologist. So, if I’m actually interested in biology and I want to specialise, that might be what I want to do later.
notes
touch and go adj. (of an outcome) possible but very uncertain
on one's last legs idiom near the end of life, usefulness, or existence
better late than never idiom, saying used especially when you, or sb else, arrive late, or when sth such as success happens late, to sya that this is better than not coming or happening at all
* definitions from the Concise Oxford Dictionary
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artist: Boom Tschak
album: Indietronic CCBit.
track: More Chocolate, Please
from: Former Yugoslavia
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artist: Wolfgang S.
album: Indietronic CCBit.
track: Dynamite
from: Belgrade, Serbia, Former Yugoslavia
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artist: ioeo
album: triptracks
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from: Saint Raphael, France
album at Jamendo
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artist: Kevin MacLeod
track: Style Funk
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