Humor4u

The Northern Hemisphere is where most people live. Furthermore, most people live on land. Let's first look at the temperature rise on the Northern Hemisphere.  The image below, created with a September 30, 2022 screenshot from  NASA customized analysis plots , shows June-July-August temperature anomalies from 1880-1920 on the Northern Hemisphere with June-July-August 2022 highlighted with an anomaly of 1.4°C or 2.52°F, a record high in a tie with 2020.  Secondly, most people live on land. The image below shows the monthly mean global surface temperature anomaly on land. It is similarly created with a September 30, 2022 screenshot from NASA customized analysis plots and shows a peak anomaly from 1880-1920 of 2.95°C or 5.31°F (for February 2016, land only). The year 2016 was an El Niño year. During an El Niño, temperatures are higher than usual. We are currently in the depths of a persistent La Niña, which suppresses temperatures. We look set to move into another...

That is the question that some BBC reporters asked a few children back in 1979 for the programme Junior That's Life. The answer is this funny video clip about the perception of wealth by innocent children that can be found on BBC Archive .  Some of the most interesting words you can come across in this video are: cabbages, lettuce, carrots, a platinum ball, a display cabinet, a pistol, miserable, a piggy bank, a booby, jolly [rich], to polish, silly me! This video with subtitles can be watched by B2 students and above. This video can be used to end a class about the topic "Money" with a touch of humour.  Here you can find a speaking task to discuss "Attitudes to Money",   and you can add a split reading task about two historical figures of Capitalism in the USA, John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie , which come with a simple vocabulary matching task with a key entitled "The Birth of Capitalism (... and Philanthropy)" .  All these tasks are suitable...

Queen Elizabeth II died last Friday, September 8th, and was immediately succeeded by her son King Charles III. Her death started a mourning period in the United Kingdom , in the Commonwealth realm  -the countries where the monarch is the head of state, in the wider Commonwealth of Nations , which includes republics like India, Pakistan, South-Africa, Nigeria, Kenya or Tanzania, and in the world at large. The Queen's death has prompted a deluge of speeches and articles about the Crown. Former UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, paid tribute to her Majesty the Queen in the House of Commons, with a solemn, personal and emotional speech (8:25), which describes with brilliance and a touch of humour, the feelings of the British people towards their deceased monarch and her role in the British Constitutional system.  This memorable speech can be watched with subtitles and it is suitable for C1 students. Here you can find very rich English words and collocations like [cameras] start ro...

Nasir is a Marketing student from Pakistan who has done an internship in the town of Fitero  for a university project called KiNESIS. In the video below, Nasir explains what the project is about and what he has learnt in the project.  In this entry you can find a listening comprehension task , and you can also find the answer key .  The vocabulary in the video (4': 41") is not really a barrier, and the video is divided into sections, which can help the learner to follow the narration, so the task can be recommended for B2 students, if they are familiar with the Pakistani accent. Otherwise, the task would be more suitable for C1 learners. The video has subtitles, which can be used after the listening exercise for consolidation.  Some of the most interesting words you can pick up while watching this video are: rural development, an impact, mayor, brand, heritage, gastronomy, professors, municipal authorities, a monastery, monks, landscape, to be interlinked, to perform...

The image on the right shows a NASA Worldview satellite image of a blue Beaufort Sea (with Barrow, Alaska, at the top left, on September 7, 2022).  The image shows that there is a lot of open water between the coast of Alaska and the sea ice. Such a satellite image provides a visual way to determine how much sea ice is present. It can be hard to determine where there is open water and where the sea ice starts; the sea ice is often covered by clouds; furthermore, even when there are no clouds, the question remains what is to be regarded as sea ice and what is to be regarded as water.  Another way to measure how much sea ice is there is to look at sea ice concentration. Sea ice concentration in the Central Arctic region has been very low for some time.  The image on the right, from an earlier post , shows that on August 12, 2022, sea ice concentration in a large area close to the North Pole was as low as 0%.  In the two images below, Nico Sun  calculates the ...

You are going to hear Megan, a History student who works as a tour guide in the summer, talking to a group of tourists about the application process and student life in general at Oxford University. This homemade video lasts 5':35" , and it comes with a listening comprehension task for C1 students and its answer key . There is neither a script nor subtitles for the video, but you can use this list of interesting words to follow the speech, which is casual, humorous and fast at times, but also meticulous in word choice.  You should look at this vocabulary list, after you have done the listening task: application process, undergraduate study, postgraduate studies, All Soul's College, a top [university], so they say, [Oxford is] way, way [better], a college, stage one, to sit an entrance exam, unique, to my knowledge, a subject, a handful [of interviews], [it's pretty] intense, you guys, [so] rigorous, one professor, the lecturer, one-on-one learning, a tutorial, resear...