BBC Talk about English

History
Listen online or download
A very incomplete transcript

( two related videos )

is a charming virtual charcter you can talk to online. She was created in 1995 by a computer scientist Richard Wallace. Over the years she's become much more sensible, than she used to be. You can ask her any questions, she may also ask you something. Her name is A.L.I.C.E., which means Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity. Warning: she ( Read more... )

... a rock version. Enjoy.

Click to view

UPD: just in case: this is a remake of a rather old and famous song.

1. I have come across a fascinating speech synthesizer. There's a demo online. You simply type a word or a phrase, press "say it" and listen to what it says. Only it speaks according to English pronunciation rules, so if you want it to say something in Russian for example, you'll have to think carefully how to transcribe Russian words within the ( Read more... )

Evgeniya Krasavtseva's essay about

dreams and dreamers

The word 'dream' is mainly used in two meanings. One is a series of thoughts, images and feelings that you experience when you're asleep. But also we can use this world when we're talking about dreams as hopes and things we really want to happen.

People`s wishes and hopes are things which are ( Read more... )

There's a podcast about how to use whether and if. Just came across the recording by chance. If you like, you can listen to or download it right at its page (there's the transcript by the way). What I liked most was that they recite a famous tongue twister - Whether the weather is fine - at the very end of the programme. Here you are:


Whether the ( Read more... )

Look at them in person


( Read more... )

BBC Talk about English
Halloween
In class, we listened to a shortened version of the podcast:

The full version is here. You may listen to it online or download.
There was also a vocabulary quiz (a crossword puzzle), which can be found online.
( supplement )

Last March, we listened to an NPR podcast A Halloween Special.  I reckon, it's high time you revised what it was all about, especially as we're going to have another Halloween podcast in the near future.

BBC Talk about English
Nonsense
Listen online or download
Transcript (incomplete)
Vocabulary

( Supplement (Глокая куздра, Jabberwocky, and Hey Diddle Diddle) )