Difficult, but 'real'. Watch the video through to the end. To make it easier I've added the script below.
The 21st Century Flux
English. The new disease? It pours out of television speakers and computer screens Disregarding Babel with its very cocky fluency Sticking on its labellings at every opportunity. Nothing’s safe; it won’t stop when it begins to spread it dominates the airwaves and reigns/rains on the internet leaving cultures altered and confused as to what’s what turns the dialecting of the youths to a hotch-potch rag-tag scrabble bag; everyone’s affected the little languages will not survive unprotected. So hold your own, but get a firm hold of English and every last one of us shall be a multilinguist: sing it! Shampoo juggernaut moolah hullabaloo ad infinitum, pow-wow, kudos, déjà vu Won ton, billabong, beef, potato, hobo, dream Wha gwan with the wigwam boogie mr Chimpanzee? Welcome to the twenty-first century flux for now, English is the language of choice And when it dies, as every tongue eventually must let it be said you added your voice The professor said, “Pif! What language is this? Degenerate slang isn’t standard English! We at the top must establish limits.” I said “Prof! Language is the people that live it.” Get loose, give it some vision and foresight and juice; we can fling the dictionary door wide. I live in a city where it seems like every single idiom is intermingling stream-like, Like streams, that know no barriers No matter what dams and channels are established – they are irrelevant. What matters is the message that is put across, and the passion that’s invested in it. Nothing’s lost it merely mutates, and lets the people speaking it tweak it in new ways. Meaning that meaning is whatever you say Jilly, Jack, Hussain, in Iraq to the UK … to all corners; through all twists and bends Six billion personal versions of events It’s thrilling when you think of all the tongues on a jostle to express their puzzle in the best words possible. The more words we have, the more ways we have to express the world we have to co-exist in. And if the English language is the lingua franca of this planet, never say that it should be a closed system. Welcome to the twenty-first century flux for now, English is the language of choice for the performers But when it dies, as every tongue eventually must let it be said you added your voice to the chorus Cos English isn’t English; it’s an elastic patchwork A fantastically insane confederation a very strange tapestry of foreign vernaculars borrowed from Norse kings, and fettered slavemen So if language is linked to the land which it springs from English is linked to the globe in entirety With fragments of every language you’ll think of Roots in every type of society: Welsh, French, Jamaican, Indian, Italian Dominican, Hispanic, Germanic, Norse, African, Norman, Dutch, Latin, Greek, Japanese, Yiddish, Native American, Antipodean and Finnish… The list could continue till my tongue went blue; what I’m saying is the owner is you. It lives as it’s spoken, and it mirrors the truth And there isn’t any owner but you… Welcome to the twenty-first century flux for now, English is the language of choice But when it dies, as every tongue eventually must let it be said you added your voice
Did you know that the DVD-ROM at the back of your course book is actually meant for self-study? Most course books come with homework or home study sections or extra books. This one doesn't. It has the DVD-ROM which offers a much more interesting way to study, revise, and learn.
DVD-ROM• Interactive practice of the vocabulary, grammar, writing and pronunciation in each unit • Full-screen, high-resolution video • Business Dilemmas - realistic, interactive business problem-solving scenarios • Editable model business documents • Downloadable MP3 files of all the Student's Book audio, for iPod or MP3 player. As you work your way through the DVD-ROM you will see your status (at the top right hand corner) move up from Intern all the way to CEO. I wonder how many of you make it to CEO?
If you have any problems installing the DVD-ROM, the publisher has set up a technical FAQs page which may be useful. This is especially helpful if you have AntiVir on your computer.
Before our next lesson, please take 10 minutes to watch the video that accompanies unit 1 and to do the exercises. Then when we see each other again you can let me know how you got on.
Dear Students, I have set up this blog to accompany us through your English lessons over the next 3 years. Every now and then (hopefully regularly) I will be adding new information so please make sure you visit the blog before and/or after our lessons.
I will also try to add links and information from our lessons so you can use it to help you revise.
This blog is intended to be a place where I can give you hints and tips on learning English and post information about our sessions and your end of term tests. Let's see how we get on with it.
I hope by now you all have a copy of our course book. If you don't, now's the time to get one. We will be using it for the next 3 years so do please make sure you have your own copy. The title is: The Business Intermediate. The publisher is Macmillan Education (distributed in Germany via Hueber Verlag). The ISBNs are ISBN-10: 3190329176 and ISBN-13: 978-3190329175. the cover looks like this...
