English Conversation Questions

Education & Language

Education

THE PEOPLE VS THE SCHOOL SYSTEM.

Category:  Education & Language
Keywords: Change | Education | Laws | School
At the University of Texas, Dr. Kate Biberdorf is breaking stereotypes and blowing stuff up—all in a good pair of heels. Through her theatrical and dynamic approach to teaching, Dr. Biberdorf is breaking the stigma of what a

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stereotypical scientist looks like, while reaching students that might otherwise be intimidated by chemistry. By making waves within her field and empowering the next generation to get involved in STEM, she’s sending a message that any human can be a scientist.

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Keywords: Science | Stereotypes | Teaching

Boyd Maxwell and Perry Schmidt report on the latest developments in the exciting world of pro teaching on TV network CSEN’s “TeachingCenter.”

Category:  Education & Language
Keywords: Studying | Teaching
Vox
These schools are much better than Harvard, Yale, or Princeton at making poor kids rich.
Wealthy, prestigious universities such as Harvard Yale, Stanford and Columbia garner billions in donations

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with the message of financial aid. They show off case after case of talented students from humble backgrounds reaching the top 1% after attending elite schools. The story goes that these universities aren’t just world leaders in cutting-edge research, they’re engines of upward social mobility.

But the latest research by the Equality of Opportunity project suggests this is a myth. A study 10.8 million people on the effect colleges have at moving kids born into the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution up to the top 20 percent showed that though elite universities are very good at moving students up the income ladder, they let in very few low-income students. The problem isn’t one of financial aid, but outreach; thousands of high-achieving poor kids just aren’t applying to elite schools.

The true heroes are less selective schools that let in a large number of students from the bottom 20%. They include Cal State Los Angeles and PACE University. These schools take in the most low-income students who move to the top fifth of income in the US after graduation.

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Category:  Education & Language
Keywords: Education | Poverty | University
Almost 80% of the textbook industry is dominated by 5 publishing companies. They use restrictive codes and re-publish new versions of textbooks every 2 to 3 years. Due to these tactics, textbook costs overall have

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risen 67% from 2008 to 2018.

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Keywords: Books | Prices | University

Expressions

Learn how to describe the weather and the seasons with grammar, adjectives, nouns, verbs and idioms in this English lesson with your English teacher Lucy.

Category:  Education & Language

Learn the most important time related idioms and expressions in this English lesson with your English teacher Lucy.

Category:  Education & Language
Keywords: Time | Time expressions

Have a look around a traditional Christmas market with us and learn some idioms and expressions which are related to Christmas but which we use all year round. Learn English with Leila & Sabrah and have fun while you learn.

Category:  Education & Language

This video will teach you how to say, write, read and pronounce dates and years in both British and American English!

Category:  Education & Language
Me, myself, and I. You may be tempted to use these words interchangeably, because they all refer to the same thing. But in fact, each one has a specific role in a sentence: ‘I’ is a subject pronoun, ‘me’ is an object pronoun,

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and ‘myself’ is a reflexive or intensive pronoun. Emma Bryce explains what each role reveals about where each word belongs.

Lesson by Emma Bryce, animation by Karrot Animation.

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Category:  Education & Language
Keywords: Grammar | Language | Self

Learning & Advice

English is fast becoming the world’s universal language, and instant translation technology is improving every year. So why bother learning a foreign language? Linguist and Columbia professor John McWhorter shares four

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alluring benefits of learning an unfamiliar tongue.

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Category:  Education & Language
We asked people of all ages what advice they would give to someone younger than they are.
We asked people of all ages the same question. What’s your biggest regret? Who’s your biggest celebrity

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crush? What’s your goal in life? From 5-year-olds to 75-year-olds, take a look at what people of every consecutive age think about their life experience.

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Keywords: Advice | Age | Generation gap
Can you imagine what life was like before smartphones and the internet? Or what old people think of tinder and selfies? Well, I decided to find out. I met with residents of a retirement community to learn more about

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their way of life, and if their values differ from ours in this modern digital world.

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Keywords: Advice | Modern life
At the end of the year, everyone always reflects and set new goals for the year ahead. After a few months, a majority of those people forget their New Year Resolutions and fall into old patterns. Are you one of them? There

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are also those who never even try to rise above or try to aim for anything. Are you one of them? In this video, I share my thoughts on New Year’s Resolutions.

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Category:  Education & Language
Keywords: Goals | Last year | This year
There are about 7,000 languages spoken around the world — and they all have different sounds, vocabularies and structures. But do they shape the way we think? Cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky shares examples of

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language — from an Aboriginal community in Australia that uses cardinal directions instead of left and right to the multiple words for blue in Russian — that suggest the answer is a resounding yes. “The beauty of linguistic diversity is that it reveals to us just how ingenious and how flexible the human mind is,” Boroditsky says. “Human minds have invented not one cognitive universe, but 7,000.”

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Category:  Education & Language
Keywords: Language | Thinking

Michael from Vsauce explores names, their meanings… and promptly digresses into a myriad of seemingly unconnected topics all more fascinating than the last.

Keywords: Laws | Names

The Social Security card and number explained.

Category:  Education & Language
Keywords: Cards | Identity cards | Security
Child prodigy Adora Svitak says the world needs “childish” thinking: bold ideas, wild creativity and especially optimism. Kids’ big dreams deserve high expectations, she says, starting with grownups’ willingness to

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learn from children as much as to teach.

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Category:  Education & Language

Spoken language

An animated interpretation of Denice Frohman’s poem “Accents”.

Category:  Art | Education & Language
Keywords: Pronunciation | Roots

The development of agriculture was a huge game changer for human beings and it may have even changed the way we speak.

Keywords: Change | Farming | Language | Speaking
Over the course of human history, thousands of languages have developed from what was once a much smaller number. How did we end up with so many? And how do we keep track of them all? Alex Gendler explains

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how linguists group languages into language families, demonstrating how these linguistic trees give us crucial insights into the past.

Lesson by Alex Gendler, animation by Igor Coric.

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Keywords: Change | Language
Don’t make people pay for music, says Amanda Palmer. Let them. In a passionate talk that begins in her days as a street performer (drop a dollar in the hat for the Eight-Foot Bride!), she examines the new relationship between

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artist and fan.

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Keywords: Asking | Music | People | Questions
Tara Strong makes her living rolling off cliffs and fighting villains … of the animated variety. You might not recognize her face, but you likely have heard her in hit cartoons like “The Powerpuff Girls,”

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“Rugrats” and “The Fairly OddParents.” Step inside the studio with one of most prolific voice actors in the game.

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Category:  Education & Language
Keywords: Acting | Cartoons | Voice
Pop quiz. Try pronouncing the following. Ready? Go. Elucubrate. Smaragdine. Scherenschnitte. Head scratchers, huh? Not for Jacques Bailly. As the official pronouncer of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, he can tackle

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any word thrown at him. He started his wordsmith career as the 1980 spelling bee champion. These days, Jacques feels the heat of etymological battle from the other side of the mic.

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Category:  Education & Language
Vox

Monkeys are our closest biological relatives, and they can’t speak. But parrots don’t seem to have a problem at all.

Keywords: Birds | Discussions | Speaking
Vox
How a cheesy joke from the 1830s became the most widely spoken word in the world.
OK is thought to be the most widely recognized word on the planet. We use it to communicate with each

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other, as well as our technology. But it actually started out as a language fad in the 1830’s of abbreviating words incorrectly.

Young intellectuals in Boston came up with several of these abbreviations, including “KC” for “knuff ced,” “OW” for “oll wright,” and KY for “know yuse.” But thanks to its appearance in Martin Van Buren’s 1840 presidential re-election campaign as the incumbents new nickname, Old Kinderhook, OK outlived its abbreviated comrades.

Later, widespread use by early telegraph operators caused OK to go mainstream, and its original purpose as a neutral affirmative is still how we use it today.

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Keywords: Common expressions | Okay

Written word

An animated interpretation of William Shakespeare’s poem “All the World’s a Stage”
Poem by William Shakespeare, directed by Jeffig Le Bars and Jérémie Balais.
Category:  Art | Education & Language
Keywords: Poetry | Writing
Puzzle through a set of hypothetical health studies and headlines and see if you can spot what’s misleading about the headline.

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In medicine, there’s often a disconnect between news headlines and the scientific research they cover. While headlines are designed to catch attention, many studies produce meaningful results when they focus on a narrow, specific question. So how can you figure out what’s a genuine health concern and what’s less conclusive? Jeff Leek and Lucy McGowan explain how to read past the headline.

Lesson by Jeff Leek and Lucy McGowan, directed by Zedem Media.

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Category:  Education & Language
Keywords: News | Tricks

Stanley Tucci, Kim Cattrall, Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse react to hilarious menu translation fails, some of these are ridiculous!

Category:  Education & Language | Food
Keywords: Eating out | Food
As simple as it seems, it’s often impossible to accurately translate the word you without knowing a lot more about the situation where it’s being said. Krystian Aparta describes the specific reasons why it can be difficult,

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citing examples from many different languages.

Lesson by Krystian Aparta, animation by Avi Ofer.

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Category:  Education & Language
Keywords: Language | Words
“My science fiction has different ancestors — African ones,” says writer Nnedi Okorafor. In between excerpts from her “Binti” series and her novel “Lagoon,” Okorafor discusses the inspiration and roots of her work — and how

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she opens strange doors through her Afrofuturist writing.

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Keywords: Africa | Future | Science fiction
How do metaphors help us better understand the world? And, what makes a good metaphor? Explore these questions with writers like Langston Hughes and Carl Sandburg, who have mastered the art of bringing a

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scene or emotion to life.

Lesson by Jane Hirshfield, animation by Ben Pearce

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Category:  Art | Education & Language
Keywords: Language | Metaphors | Writing
At the New York Public Library, you can call a librarian who will answer any researchable question you might have. The help-line has been around for over 40 years, and to this day it receives more than 30,000 calls a year.

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Need to know the color of an arctic fox’s eyes? Ever wonder if there are full moons every night in Acapulco? Well, if Google isn’t your thing, these librarians have got your answer.

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Category:  Education & Language
You need social skills to have a conversation in real life — but they’re quite different from the skills you need to write good dialogue. Educator Nadia Kalman suggests a few “anti-social skills,” like eavesdropping and muttering

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to yourself, that can help you write an effective dialogue for your next story.

Lesson by Nadia Kalman, animation by Enjoyanimation.

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Category:  Education & Language
Keywords: Advice | Skill | Writing
Dig into Noam Chomsky’s theory of universal grammar and decide: are there universal grammar rules and are they hardwired into our brains? —

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Language is endlessly variable. Each of us can come up with an infinite number of sentences in our native language, and we’re able to do so from an early age— almost as soon as we start to communicate in sentences. How is this possible? In the early 1950s, Noam Chomsky proposed a theory that the key to this versatility was grammar. Cameron Morin details Chomsky’s theory of universal grammar.

Lesson by Cameron Morin, directed by Eoin Duffy.

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Category:  Education & Language
Keywords: English | Your language
2,300 years ago, the rulers of Alexandria set out to fulfill a very audacious goal: to collect all the knowledge in the world under one roof. In its prime, the Library of Alexandria housed an unprecedented number of scrolls and

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attracted some of the Greek world’s greatest minds. But by the end of the 5th century CE, it had vanished. Elizabeth Cox details the rise and fall of this great building.

Lesson by Elizabeth Cox, directed by Inna Phillimore.

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Keywords: Books | Place of learning
Written language, the hallmark of human civilization, didn’t just suddenly appear one day. Thousands of years before the first fully developed writing systems, our ancestors scrawled geometric signs across the walls of the

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caves they sheltered in. Paleoanthropologist and rock art researcher Genevieve von Petzinger has studied and codified these ancient markings in caves across Europe. The uniformity of her findings suggest that graphic communication, and the ability to preserve and transmit messages beyond a single moment in time, may be much older than we think.

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Category:  Education & Language
Keywords: Symbols | Writing
Mounting his skinny steed, Don Quixote charges an army of giants. It is his duty to vanquish these behemoths in the name of his beloved lady, Dulcinea. There’s only one problem: the giants are merely windmills. What is it

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about this tale of the clumsy yet valiant knight that makes it so beloved? Ilan Stavans investigates.

Lesson by Ilan Stavans, directed by Avi Ofer.

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Category:  Education & Language
Keywords: Books | Heroes | Reading

Vocabulary:
cove
secluded
float
shore
anchor
lighthouse
greenhouse
handsaw
hammer
power tool
nail
board (noun)
ton
land sick
biomass
canoe
paddle
real estate
prosper
fulfilled

Expressions:
subsistence living
hon

Vocabulary:
word
word
word
word
word
word
word
word
word

Expressions:
expression
expression
expression
expression

Vocabulary:
prestigious
involuntary
swindler
fraudulence
unwarranted
concern
unfounded
impostor
syndrome
faculty
pervasive
prevalent
disproportionately
underrepresented
downplay
abnormality
self-esteem
spiral
accolade
threshold
susceptible
voice (verb)
peer
dismiss
excel
ease
mentor
competence
banish
frank

Expressions:
nagging doubt
shake a feeling
put something to rest
surefire way

Vocabulary:
filmmaker
principle
handcuff
clown
distill
underdog
aspect
familiar
unfamiliar
chopsticks
keyboard
organic
grounded
clarity
stuntman
steady
gag
perfectionist
rhythm
distinct
continuity
elbow
bunch
flail around
unlike
invincible
impressive
humanize
asset
payoff
relentlessness
finale

Expressions:
kick ass
going above and beyond
get smacked in the face
sell a joke

Vocabulary:
explosion
smoke (noun)
engine
unique
pilot
route
unemotional
terror
instant
reach out (to someone)
postpone
urgency
purpose
regret
humanity
ego
reflect
eliminate
frame (verb)
artistic
talent
bawl
miracle

Expressions:
bucket list
brace for impact
mend fences
make sense
connecting dots