节目资讯
刊物:空中英语教室
日期:2013-10-03
难易度:Low
关键字:flash, sympathy, educate, sculpture, transparent, Jerusalem Knights
Festival, contemporary
Hello, and welcome to Studio Classroom.
My name is Gabe.
And my name is Carolyn.
And your English will improve today.
We're going to be talking all about October.
Yes, there are many things that are special about October.
Well, what does October make you think about?
Is there anything that you are looking forward to this month?
What is special about October for you?
Carolyn, is there anything special about October?
Well, I love October when I'm in the U.S. because, well, the leaves are
beautiful.
They're still on the trees.
It's not too cold yet.
And my hometown has a great festival - the second and third weekends of October.
Wait. What is that festival, Carolyn?
It is Railroad Days.
Railroad Days? Wait, can you explain a little more about Railroad Days?
Well, my hometown is a railroad town, or it used to be, and there used to be a
lot of train traffic going through.
Oh.
So we have a festival to celebrate our railroad heritage.
Well, that is a cool thing to celebrate in West Virginia.
Well, what about you, friends?
What is special about October for you?
What does it make you think about?
It's somebody's birthday this month - so happy birthday!
Let's get started with our lesson all about October.
(Music).
October.
The tenth month of the year has a lot to offer.
O - Opal is the traditional birthstone for this month.
The Greek meaning is to see a color change.
The stone occurs in several colors such as white or black.
It can even be transparent with flashes of color.
C - The calendula, or marigold, is this month's flower, which represents
sympathy.
T - Top names in theater, music and dance will appear at the Melbourne Festival.
It runs from October 11 to 27.
If you are headed to Australia, don't miss it.
OK, let's learn all about October.
Actually, the month October, the word starts with O-C-T.
And that is a prefix for eight.
You know other words that begin with "oct," right?
Octagon has eight sides.
An octopus has eight arms.
So why is October the tenth month of the year?
Carolyn?
Well, it does seem a little bit strange.
But October used to be the eighth month of the year, and then two more months
were added later.
OK. Well, that's a good history lesson.
And in case you didn't know, January and February were added later to the
calendar.
So now October is the tenth month of the year.
And the tenth month of the year has a lot to offer.
Carolyn, get us started with O.
All right.
Yes, the first letter in October is O.
And our lesson today uses each letter in the word to describe something special
about the month.
So, O - Opal is the traditional birthstone for this month.
So if you are born in the month of October, your birthstone is the opal.
OK. So were you born in October?
Well, the opal is your birthstone.
And let's learn a little bit about the meaning of this word.
The Greek meaning is to see a color change.
Well, it's fun to learn about the meanings of words.
So opal in Greek means to see a color change.
What about opal in Chinese?
(Chinese).
That's egg white stone.
It kind of looks like egg white if you look at it.
Some opals have that color.
That's right.
But we learn a little bit more about this stone.
The stone occurs in several colors such as white or black.
So you can have white opals like the (Chinese).
Or you could have a black opal.
And there are even more colors, right, Gabe?
That's right.
That's why we see this phrase "such as." That means it includes more than those
colors.
OK. It can even be transparent with flashes of color.
OK, so not just white or black, it could be transparent sometimes.
If something is transparent, that means you can see through it, like the windows
of your car or house, or maybe your glasses or a glass that you're drinking out
of.
Those things are transparent.
And if an opal is transparent, then it will have flashes of color.
And "flash" is a word from our Word Bank.
Let's take a look at it.
If something flashes, that means that it's very bright.
You only see it for a short amount of time.
That's right.
So you just use the word as a verb.
So flash can be a noun or a verb.
Something could flash like lightning or your camera, if you have your flash on.
Of course here it is used as a noun.
So there are flashes of color.
The flashes that pop out; you can see the color for a second or two.
So you could talk about something like lightning that has a flash as well.
Well, right now it's time for us to continue learning something with Steve and
Ken in the Information Cloud.
They're going to tell us a little bit more about the kind of lesson we have here
today.
It's called an acrostic.
In this month's MONTH FACTS feature, our author presents her information in a
very creative way.
She uses the word October as an acrostic.
An acrostic is formed when the first letters in a series of lines or verses are
arranged in such a way that they spell out a word or phrase.
Over the centuries, acrostics have been used to highlight people's names, to
conceal a message and to remember information.
Right.
By associating something with each of the seven letters of the word October,
the author is helping us remember the seven points she makes about the month of
October.
OK. Here's an acrostic that helps us remember the colors of the rainbow.
ROY G. BIV.
Now this acrostic is made up.
Roy is the fictitious man's first name.
G. is his middle initial.
And Biv, B-I-V, is his last name.
ROY G. BIV helps us remember the colors in order: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green,
Blue, Indigo and Violet.
Here's another acrostic to help us remember the planets of our solar system.
The sentence: My Very Excellent Mom Just Served Us Nachos.
Good one, Ken.
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune for nachos.
(Chinese).
Thank you, guys.
Well, let's get back to our acrostic here for the month of October.
We are on C.
The calendula, or marigold, is this month's flower, which represents sympathy.
So the marigold can also be known as a calendula, and it represents sympathy.
And I like a flower that represents sympathy.
Let's look at that word from our Word Bank: sympathy.
If you have sympathy for someone, that means you provide care for that person.
You care for them, especially if they're going through a difficult time.
You sympathize with that person.
So this word can also be a verb.
S-Y-M-P-A-T-H-I-Z-E.
Do you sympathize with people?
That's right.
So this is just a very natural feeling of caring for someone who seems to have
some problem, and you feel bad and you want to help them even.
So if you remember our lesson on Moses the elephant, uh... we read about a woman
who had a lot of sympathy for orphaned animals,
so she started this special orphanage for them.
That's right. That's a good reminder.
So you can use this word in a way like this.
You could say you have my sympathy.
If you care for somebody, you want to let them know you're there for them, you
could say you have my sympathy.
This is a little different from the word empathy, E-M-P-A-T-H-Y.
And that is if you have experienced something that someone went through, you
understand their pain exactly; you can empathize with that person.
But if you just want to show them you care, you sympathize with that person.
That is great.
Those two words are different but share that same feeling of caring.
Well, moving on in our acrostic, the letter T.
Top names in theater, music and dance will appear at the Melbourne Festival.
Well, hey, let's look at some words from that sentence there.
We see top names.
If something is at the top, that means it is the best or maybe the most popular,
the most well-known.
So you could use that word in other ways.
You want to find the top doctor if you need to have surgery.
That is a very good idea.
You might also look at the music charts to see which song is the top song or the
number one song right now.
And of course here we're talking about top names or celebrities that will appear
at the Melbourne Festival.
It runs from October 11 to 27.
If you are headed to Australia, don't miss it.
Yes, if you have a chance to be in Australia at this time, don't miss this
festival.
It will be a great one with those top names there.
Well, right now it is time for us to learn something with Michelle in the
Language Lab.
Hi, everyone. I'm Michelle.