节目资讯
刊物:空中英语教室
日期:2013-08-03
难易度:Low
关键字:sum up, sway, release, pilot, balloon, Hua Hin
We are on the third day of our article Hualien From a Hot Air Balloon.
And today we are reading about Nathanael and his friends as they are riding
through the air in this white balloon.
We found out that as they gazed from the balloon, what they saw could be summed
up in one word - beautiful.
And the breeze blew gently, and they swayed backward and forward from side to
side and just enjoyed their trip.
Well, we have a little bit more to learn in the rest of our article.
Let's do that now.
Hualien From a Hot Air Balloon.
He had ballooned the world over, flying as high as eight or nine thousand feet.
His shirt read "Hua Hin Ballooning," and he was indeed from Thailand.
The burners heat air inside the balloon to take it up.
A rope can be pulled to release air from the balloon.
But there are no controls for direction - you go where the wind blows.
Though difficult to pilot, hot air balloons are easy to enjoy.
In what seemed like a moment, we found ourselves back on the ground.
Well, it was over pretty quickly.
There's an English phrase.
This makes me think about "all good things must come to an end." Sometimes
things just end too quickly.
And we want to enjoy them for longer, but they're over, just like this hot air
balloon trip.
Well, how does this section begin, Carolyn?
It begins with: He had ballooned the world over, flying as high as eight or nine
thousand feet.
And here we're talking about their pilot Tawin.
And he had been talking about a close call he experienced in Malaysia.
And he has ballooned the world over.
Well, let's take a look at that phrase.
I like this phrase: to do something the world over.
That means to do it all over the world or worldwide, around the world.
So he's ballooned the world over.
That means he's flown in hot air balloons all around the world.
And that would be very, very interesting to experience because you get a
bird's-eye view.
So you are high up in the air, looking down at the world below you.
And I think it would be a very interesting way to experience different places in
the world.
Oh, man. I'm kind of jealous.
I would like to do this for myself.
Well, what else can you do the world over?
Some people love to travel.
They have traveled the world over.
Some people like to go backpacking and hiking in many different countries.
They can say: I've backpacked the world over.
That's right.
So perhaps you would like to explore the world over.
Maybe you would like to do it in a hot air balloon.
And Tawin has travelled to heights of eight or nine thousand feet.
This is very, very high up in the air.
And it makes me think of being in an airplane.
I know! It's approaching that high, right?
So a lot of airplanes fly at 35,000 feet.
So this is also very, very high.
Well, we continue learning about this.
His shirt read "Hua Hin Ballooning," and he was indeed from Thailand.
So Hua Hin is a place, a beach resort town in Thailand.
I don't know if you've been there.
But that's why Nathanael says, he was indeed from Thailand.
So that's where he's from.
Maybe Hua Hin is his hometown.
It very well could be.
Or at least he works there or has participated in ballooning events in Hua Hin,
Thailand.
Well, continuing: The burners heat air inside the balloon to take it up.
So here we're learning a little bit more about how hot air balloon works.
We've talked about before how the burners were turned on.
They breathed fire into the balloons, and it filled them with hot air.
So the heat... the heated air inside the balloon makes it rise up into the sky.
That's right.
And of course there's a phrase: heat rises.
So if you want to be cool in a room, then you want to go down below so the air
conditioning can be there below because heat rises.
Well, we're going to learn something new with Steve and Ken in the Information
Cloud all about hot air.
So we've been talking about hot air balloons.
And up to now, "hot air" means just that - air that is hot.
But "hot air" is also an informal expression that means empty or exaggerated
talk.
Someone might make a lot of promises.
But then after a while, you realize that their promises turned out to be a lot
of hot air or empty talk.
And if someone is in the habit of boasting or making exaggerated remarks, then
we can say the person is full of hot air.
I used to know such a person.
He always told me how much money he had.
He was just full of hot air.
I stopped paying attention to him after a while.
Because he was such a blowhard?
Yes. He was a real blowhard.
He loved to boast in an obnoxious way.
And what he blew was a lot of hot air.
Yes. You can say that again.
(Chinese).
Thank you, guys, for those great idioms.
Continue learning about how hot air balloons work and how to pilot them:
A rope can be pulled to release air from the balloon.
So a rope can be pulled.
There's a rope in the balloon, and it is used to release air from the balloon.
Now "release" is a word from our Word Bank.
And what does that mean to release?
Well, you let something go.
You make it free.
So it is released.
There's a lot of hot air here in a hot air balloon.
Sometimes you need to release some of that air.
Maybe it will help make the balloon go down a bit.
That's right.
So if you release the air from a balloon, then it will go lower.
If you turn up the burner, then more hot air will be put inside the balloon, and
it will go higher.
So here they can release air from the balloon by pulling on a rope.
Now there are many other things that you can release.
Maybe there is an animal who has been put in a cage, you can release the animal
so that it is free.
It's true.
Some people will release their birds.
They have the cage, but then they release the bird to fly around for a little
while.
Well, we continue with this story.
Nathanael says: But there are no controls for direction - you go where the wind
blows.
That's a little different from flying in an airplane that has a direction.
A hot air balloon just goes where the wind blows.
That's right.
So it would be very difficult to steer this balloon, to direct it or go in a
particular direction.
You're just being blown around by the wind.
And continuing into the next sentence:
Though difficult to pilot, hot air balloons are easy to enjoy.
And we have another word from our Word Bank here, the word "pilot." Now before
we had learned that a pilot is a person who controls a balloon or a plane.
But here it's being used as a verb.
And it means to just steer or direct.
OK. So unlike an airplane, it's not easy to pilot a hot air balloon.
You don't know exactly how to steer or direct this hot air balloon.
But it might be difficult to pilot, but it's easy to enjoy.
Well, we continue.
In what seemed like a moment, we found ourselves back on the ground.
And this is all too soon.
It was very quick.
That's right.
This was a very short ride in a hot air balloon that Nathanael and his friends
were able to enjoy.
And it just seemed like a moment.
So it was just so short.
Maybe they were actually in the balloon for several minutes, or maybe even half
an hour or an hour, but it seemed like a moment.
It was just over far too quickly.
And he said: We found ourselves back on the ground.
So when you find yourself somewhere, that means maybe you were planning on being
there, but it maybe happened suddenly.
Maybe it didn't happen the way that you expect it.
You find yourself somewhere.
And we find ourselves now at the end of our lesson for today.
It's time for us to learn something new with Michelle in the Language Lab.
OK.
(Chinese).
And let's see what our other teachers are up to.
Well, Nathanael and his friends have indeed enjoyed a very nice ride up into the
air in a hot air balloon.
And he's... he's written a very good lesson about his experiences in Hualien.
Now I'm wondering if you would like to join this kind of activity.
Would you like to ride in a hot air balloon sometime? Carolyn?
Well, I think that it does sound like a really funny thing to do, although I do
worry about how the wind can just below you in any direction and maybe you rise
and then you fall.
So I think that if it were very controlled and very safe and I had a good pilot
like Tawin, then maybe I would join this activity.
Well, I would suggest and recommend that you do try this sometime, Carolyn.
Maybe we can fly in a hot air balloon together because it's something I've
always wanted to do.
Well, friends, we did... we did learn some key words today - sum up.
And I want you to try to sum up this three-day lesson in a short paragraph, in a
couple of sentences.
All right.
Thank you for joining us.
And we'll see you next time right here on Studio Classroom.
See you.