节目资讯
刊物:生活知识家
日期:2009-07-20
难易度:High
关键字:operative, sputter, poky, catch, broadband, dial-u
Welcome back, everybody.
Do you ever think about how fast and smooth your Internet connection is?
If you don’t, then perhaps you’re taking your broadband Internet connection for
granted.
Pause and think about a time, which was not too long ago,
when a video, a huge digital picture or a music file would have crashed the
fastest of network servers.
Compared to today, the Internet of years ago was definitely poky.
Poky is a great adjective.
And that’s our next key word.
Our example sentence reads:
We were stuck behind a poky old truck all the way down the road.
And next is the noun:
catch.
Judy wants this particular book but there is a catch.
She has to buy two others to get it.
Now let’s pick up where we left off before the break.
Same page,
but now we’re on line thirteen.
The Final Mile.
Whether cable, DSL or mobile broadband,
today’s connections are many times faster than those in the days of the poky
dial-up modem.
Videos play smoothly, complex websites load quickly, and files download in a
fraction of the time it would have taken ten years ago.
(And the files are much bigger too.).
There’s a catch, of course:
You have to live near enough to a major city to get broadband Internet.
If you don’t, it’s poky dial-up access for you.
And for those living really far out, there may be no Internet access at all.
Welcome back, friends.
Before the break, we were talking about high speed Internet access and how it’s
frustrating if you don’t have high speed access.
In fact, some people have been using dial-up for a long time.
And we’re talking mainly about people who live out in the country, like in
America or in many other countries,
where they just don’t have the access to what you and I have.
And dial-up is probably the slowest kind of form of Internet connection because
you have to dial up and go through a phone.
But we have a couple of different other kinds of Internet connections.
And you can be connected to the Internet through cable or DSL and mobile
broadband.
And we... we’ll be talking a little bit more about this.
But first Rachel, what is DSL?
Well, we see here capital D, capital S, capital L.
So that stands for something.
And it stands for digital subscriber line.
I didn’t know that before researching this article.
But basically, we throw around DSL and it just means high speed Internet access.
And so whether you’re using cable or DSL or mobile broadband,
today’s connections are many times faster than those in the days of the poky
dial-up modem.
Now the main point here is every year it seems our connection gets a little
faster,
or we have the ability to just get online and watch a lot of videos,
and we don’t have to worry about the poky dial-up modem.
Now this is a great word:
poky.
And it just means very, very slow or very dull.
And the modem is very slow and dull compared to cable and other types of
Internet connection that we use today.
I remember in high school using the mode and we always had to wait for it to...
for the line to get through.
And it was very poky, very slow and kind of um, stumbling and silly at times.
And frustrating.
And we can also use this word ”poky” to describe a person like a little... a
child maybe that is not walking fast enough,
and the mom might turn around and say... says:
Stop being so poky.
Speed up.
So that’s a great word to learn.
Well, let’s continue on with our lesson where we read that nowadays,
videos play smoothly, complex websites load quickly, and files download in a
fraction of the time it would have taken ten years ago.
So the point here is that we are very lucky, I guess, to be at this point where
we can play videos so quickly and download files.
And people are constantly downloading pictures onto the Internet and it’s so
much faster than it was ten years ago.
I remember just even downloading a song, taking about five minutes for one song.
Now maybe just twenty and thirty seconds you can download one whole song onto
your computer.
And today the files are even much bigger.
So we’ve really made a lot of improvements when it comes to Internet connection
and the speed of Internet connection.
Well, that is if you’re living in a big city.
You might be able to enjoy all these benefits.
But as our author says:
There’s a catch.
And catch is one of our Word Bank words.
This word has many, many different meanings.
Here we’re kind of saying there’s a trick or uh, there’s something that isn’t
always true.
There’s a catch.
And the catch is you have to live near enough to a major city to get broadband
Internet.
So we’re kind of assuming that many of you already have this.
But maybe some of you don’t live near a big city and you are listening to us
right now through dial-up.
Right.
And if you are listening or watching our program through dial-up, well, maybe
your dial-up access is a little poky; it’s a little slow.
And you might have a hard time.
Maybe your... your video is stuttering and sputtering.
But hopefully this will improve in the future.
Right.
Hopefully broadband Internet access will come to your neighborhood, to... to
your town, and you won’t have to wait too long.
So we see here that for those living really far out, there may not even be any
Internet access at all.
I think of places that are very remote.
We talk about the word:
remote.
It means hardly anyboddy lives there.
And those are some of the last places probably that will receive high speed
Internet access.
So this is something that we can’t take for granted because not everyone in the
world has high speed Internet connection.
And if you do, then be thankful.
But if you don’t, well, then be patient,
because maybe one day you will get faster Internet connection.
I’m sure,
because I’m sure within a few years the whole world will be connected through
high speed access.
Well, we hope you learned something new today.
We’re going to continue talking about this next time.
But right now let’s watch a skit.
Hey, turn on your computer.
I want to show you a cool video.
OK.
Hmm.
You find the website and I will find the pillows.
Pillows?
Yes.
We can sleep while we wait for the video to download.
It won’t take that long.
Ah, here it is.
Watch this.
You mean, try to watch it.
”Try” is the operative word.
Here it goes.
Hahahahaha.
Oh, that’s funny.
Why does it skip and hiccup?
Why does it stutter and sputter?
I have a poky dial-up modem.
That’s why.
This.
Is.
Agonizing!
Why don’t you get a faster connection?
Your video will play better and websites will load more quickly.
You can download files in a fraction of the time.
I know! I know!
I’d love to get broadband.
But there’s a catch.
A catch?
Yes. You have to live near enough to a major city to get broadband.
But technology has come so far.
Yes, but not as far as the backcountry.
So for now, it’s poky dial-up.
Uh...
OK. I’ll take that pillow now.
Oh, look!
Hahahaha...
Hmm.
Hahahaha!
(Music).
Hi, everyone.
I’m Michelle.
(Chinese).
And that’s all for today.
Keep up the good work.
And I’ll see you tomorrow.
Thank you, Michelle.
So if you live in the countryside, it’s likely that your Internet connection is
slow if you have any Internet connection at all.
If you live in a major city, your ability to surf the Internet is greatly
improved with the availability of cable, DSL and Wi-Fi connections.
Friends, let me remind you of our Key Points activity on page forty-two in your
magazines,
based on what you’ve learned from the lesson by creating English sentences,
and then compared them with the sentences on page seventy-seven.
Tomorrow we’ll continue with this TECHNOLOGY article titled The Final Mile.
Until then, all of us here at Studio Classroom hope you have a great day.
Bye-bye,friends.