节目资讯
刊物:空中英语教室
日期:2013-04-05
难易度:High
关键字:pitcher, emphatic, debut, durability, lefty, mound, postseason
Hello, and welcome to Studio Classroom.
My name is Gabe.
And I'm Carolyn.
And you are joining us for a lesson about Orioles Pitcher Chen Wei-Yin.
We're going to be learning all about this baseball player who plays for
America's Major League Baseball.
But I do wonder if you do like to watch sports.
Maybe you have some of your own favorite athletes.
Carolyn, do you have any favorite athletes?
Well, I don't watch a whole lot of sports now.
But when I was in high school, I really liked to go watch our high school girls
basketball team play.
They had some really great statistics, very impressive players.
They won over 100 games in a row.
They didn't lose a single game, and they played over 100 teams.
That is pretty impressive.
Well, when I was in high school, I also enjoyed watching the basketball games.
And my school won five or six years in a row against our main competitors.
And so it was pretty fun to be part of that school.
Well, today we're going to be learning about a baseball player.
He's becoming pretty famous.
His name is Chen Wei-Yin.
So let's get started with the first reading of the day.
Orioles Pitcher Chen Wei-Yin.
Durable his Chen's middle name.
When you're a lefty born into a traditional Taiwanese family, you might get
scolded a few times for eating with the wrong hand.
But what if that lefty grows up to use that same hand to pitch in Major League
Baseball (MLB)?
That happened to none other than baseball hero Chen Wei-Yin!
This 27-year-old major league sensation has quite a track record.
He played in the Olympics twice representing Chinese Taipei.
In 2009 he became one of the best starting pitchers in the Japanese Central
League with an emphatic earned run average (ERA) of 1.54.
This is a fancy way of saying not many batters could do their job when Chen was
on the mound.
Well, right in our title today we have a word from the Word Bank.
It is "pitcher." We're talking about Orioles pitcher Chen Wei-Yin.
And a pitcher is a very important part of baseball.
Carolyn, who is the pitcher?
Well, in baseball, the pitcher is the person who throws the ball to the person
at bat.
So this is a very important job.
And we have talked a little bit about this word "pitcher" before in our other
baseball article.
That's right.
So the pitcher, we would say he pitches.
This word can be a verb, P-I-T-C-H.
That's what the pitcher does.
He pitches the ball to the batter.
And it's a very important job.
And I... I bet a lot of pitchers feel a lot of pressure when they are pitching.
Well, we learn something right away here about Chen Wei-Yin.
Durable is his middle name.
He is a durable pitcher.
Let's learn a little more about that phrase "someone's middle name" in the
Information Cloud.
Ken, you did a great job at the basketball game last night.
For the entire game your team was behind.
But then at the last minute, you pulled ahead and defeated the other team.
Well, comeback is my middle name.
Well, I'll say.
Hi, friends.
If you're not sure what we're talking about, let us explain.
Just now Kent said comeback was his middle name.
Well, actually, it's not his real middle name.
But we use "something is someone's middle name" to describe what a person is
good at or what characterizes a person.
Ken did an amazing job last night on the basketball court helping his team with
a come-from-behind win.
For you, Steve, patience is your middle name.
I find you to be a very patient person.
Wow, Ken, how did you know?
Patience is my middle name. OK.
All joking aside, this is a good expression to learn.
A pro wrestler, for example, might say to his opponent: Pain is my middle name.
So he's good at causing pain, a good way to intimidate the enemy.
That's right.
Middle name is, in fact, part of a person's full name, which in the Western
world is made up of the first name, middle name and last name.
In Asia, the terms "surname" or "family name" are used instead of last name
because the family name comes first instead of last in most Asian cultures.
(Chinese).
At the beginning of the article we see:
When you're a lefty born into a traditional Taiwanese family, you might get
scolded a few times for eating with the wrong hand.
Now if you're a lefty, then you probably use your left hand most of the time.
And this is a great word that we want to talk about since we usually think of
people being right-handed, but there are many left-handed people.
That's right.
And sometimes you can call them lefties.
It's kind of a nickname for a left-handed person.
So do you usually use your right hand?
Well, you would say you are right-handed.
Don't say I'm a righty.
But if you do use your left hand, you could say, "Oh, yeah, I'm a lefty." I
write with my left hand.
I do other things with my left hand.
So I'm a lefty.
And I know many people who play sports who actually use their right hand when
they eat or when they write,
but then when they play sports, they use their left hand because it gives them a
little bit of an advantage.
Yes, it does, especially when you are playing sports.
So this does give Chen Wei-Yin an advantage in baseball.
Well, we find out that if you are born into a Taiwanese or traditional Taiwanese
family, you might get scolded for eating with the wrong hand.
Some people might think it's the wrong hand, to use your left hand to do
something.
But we continue.
But what if that lefty grows up to use that same hand to pitch in Major League
Baseball?
What if that happens?
Well, Major League Baseball can also be known as the MLB.
That's right.
And we see that that happened to none other than baseball hero Chen Wei-Yin.
And that's amazing that he was able to become a pitcher for Major League
Baseball.
That's right.
Well, we do want to look at a phrase right here in this sentence: none other
than.
That means really he's the only one that this has happened to.
None other than.
You can use this phrase to emphasize something or to say how important something
is.
So I might say: Well, the race was wonderful.
But the winner is none other than Carolyn Bugg.
Well, that would be very impressive.
And we do usually use this phrase to introduce someone or something that is very
important.
So you might have a speech, and the person who is speaking is none other than
the president or the CEO of the company.
That would be a very impressive person to have come to your meeting to speak.
That's right.
Well, we continue learning about Chen.
This 27-year-old major league sensation has quite a track record.
We're going to be looking at that track record.
But first let's look at those words: a track record.
Carolyn, what does that mean?
Well, a track record is a list of your accomplishments, a list of successes that
you have made.
So if you have a track record, you want to make sure that your track record is
good.
And it sounds like Chen Wei-Yin has a very impressive one.
That's right.
So you could also say it makes him have a good reputation.
He has an impressive track record.
Well, maybe someone doesn't have a good track record.
So you can use this in a positive and negative way.
How is this person's track record?
We're learning about Chen Wei-Yin's track record, and we continue.
He played in the Olympics twice representing Chinese Taipei.
Well, that is pretty impressive, playing in the Olympics twice.
And we learn some more about his track record.
In 2009 he became one of the best starting pitchers in the Japanese Central
League with an emphatic earned run average (the ERA) of 1.54.
So that sounds very impressive.
And we see this very interesting word here, the word "emphatic." If something is
emphatic, what does that mean, Gabe?
Well, that means you use this word to emphasize something.
So an ERA, or an earned run average of 1.54 is really, really good.
There is an emphatic earned run average of 1.54.
You also might use this word in other ways.
I could say when Rex proposed to Unice, she responded with an emphatic yes.
Yes! I will marry you.
So you can use this word in many different ways.
So if something is emphatic, then it really stands out.
It is very impressive.
And he has a very impressive ERA of 1.54.
And this was when he was playing in the Japanese Central League.
We continue in our article.
This is a fancy way of saying not many batters could do their job when Chen was
on the mound.
That's right.
Not many batters could do their job.
What does it mean to do your job?
Well, a batter bats.
So when he was pitching, when he was the pitcher, not many people could hit his
balls while he was pitching from the pitcher's mound.
Well, it's time for us to continue learning something with Michelle in the
Language Lab.
Hi, everyone. I'm Michelle.