listening

 OCA ** is The Corpus of Conterporary American English 400+million words, 1990-2009 **

VOAnews  **is a Special English program which allowes people whose native language is not English learn about America and American life as well as stay informed about news all over the world**

**I.** ESL podcast ESLPod.com is run by a team of experienced English as a Second Language professors with over 30 years of high school, adult, and university ESL teaching experience. **Dr. Lucy Tse** writes scripts and story ideas for the podcasts, and records many of the dialogs and stories. The host for the podcast is **Dr. Jeff McQuillan**, who helps read the scripts and provides explanations for them. These podcasts are free to anyone who wants them. ESL Podcast uses a very different approach than other courses or websites. The author believe the fastest way to improve your English is to listen to conversations and discussions you can understand. At ESL Podcast, they provide English at a slower speed and use everyday phrases and expressions. They explain what these expressions mean and how to use them. That’s all! It’s simple, it’s obvious, and it’s very powerful.
 * What’s so different about ESL Podcast?**

II. Following gives you the opportunity to read and listen to the same text. The first is British English. The second is American English.

1) British English
//Click it for listen// Are you worth it?

Today, we meet the English word “worth”, and a famous cosmetics company that tells us that we are “worth it”. “Worth” means simply the value that something has. Sometimes we use it in a [|literal] way, to mean “how much money would people pay?” But often we use it [|figuratively], to mean “how much time and effort and energy would people pay?” Here are some examples: Kevin is, as I am sure you know, a fan of the loudest punk rock group in the world “Futile Vendetta”. He has all their records and CDs. His collection of records and CDs is worth about £300, which means that – if Kevin sold them – he might get £300 for them. But he is not going to sell them. They are worth much more than £300 to him. Kevin's friend George lives in a flat. George owns the flat – he does not rent it from a landlord. George wants to move to another flat, closer to his work. The first thing he does is to ask an [|estate agent] to look at his flat and tell him how much it is worth – that is, how much somebody might pay for it. When he knows this, George can work out how much he can afford to pay for a new flat. Last summer, Kevin and Joanne went for a holiday in the Lake District in the north-west of England. They climbed a mountain called [|Scafell Pike]. Scafell Pike is less than 1,000 metres high, but it is still the highest mountain in England. It was a long climb. After about an hour, their legs were tired and their feet were sore. They were out of breath and it had started to rain. Their clothes were wet, and Kevin had water in his boots. Eventually, they reached the top. Suddenly, the sun broke through the clouds. They could see all the way to the sea, far away to the west and the south. They could see the other mountains around, and the valleys and lakes far below. It was magic. It was worth the aching legs and the wet clothes. Or, as we often say in English, “it was worth it”. If you say that something is “worth it”, you mean that that thing has a bigger value than the money you paid, or the work you did, or the time you spent, or the emotional upset which you had, in order to get that thing. Here are some other things which are “worth it” (or “not worth it”): Kevin's football team, United, has paid £10 million for a new striker. The first time he played for United, he scored twice. He was worth it. Joanne wants to see a new film. But the only cinema which is showing it is on the other side of town. It would take nearly an hour to get there. “Is it worth it?” wonders Joanne. George's Dad grows vegetables in his garden. It is hard work, but George's Dad says that fresh, home-grown vegetables are worth it. Jimmy and Carole, whom we met in an earlier podcast, and who were doing fine the last time we saw them, have had a row. Joanne finds Carole in tears. “Don't get so upset,” says Joanne. “He's not worth it.” And finally, we come to the French cosmetics company L'Oreal. L'Oreal sells industrial [|chemicals] that people put on their bodies to make themselves look younger or smell sweeter. Some of their products are quite expensive. But, as L'Oreal tells us in their advertisements on TV, “You're worth it.” They mean, “You are wonderful and beautiful. You want to stay wonderful and beautiful. So, it is worth spending lots of money on our products, and worth spending time putting them on your face and taking them off afterwards. Trust L'Oreal. You are worth it.” There is a quiz on the website about the word “worth”. And that is the end of today's podcast. I hope you think that it was worth it.

Source Listen to English - Learn English Podcast

2) American English
//Click it for listen// Call of the wild(Chapter 1)

Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not only for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost. Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. Judge Miller's place. He was neither house-dog nor kennel-dog. His father, Elmo, a huge St. Bernard, had been the Judge's inseparable companion, and Buck bid fair to follow in the way of his father. He was not so large,--he weighed only one hundred and forty pounds,--for his mother, Shep, had been a Scotch shepherd dog. It was in the fall of 1897 that the Klondike strike dragged men from all the world into the frozen North. But Buck did not read the newspapers, and he did not know that Manuel, one of the gardener's helpers, was an undesirable acquaintance. Manuel had one besetting sin. He loved to play Chinese lottery. Also, in his gambling, he had one besetting weakness--faith in a system; and this made his damnation certain. For to play a system requires money, while the wages of a gardener's helper do not lap over the needs of a wife and numerous progeny. One night the Judge was at a meeting of the Raisin Growers' Association, and the house boys were busy organizing an athletic club. So no one saw Manuel and Buck go off through the orchard on what Buck imagined was merely a stroll. And with the exception of a solitary man, no one saw them arrive at the little flag station known as College Park. This man talked with Manuel, and money chinked between them. "You might wrap up the goods before you deliver them," the stranger said gruffly, and Manuel doubled a piece of stout rope around Buck's neck under the collar. "Twist it, an' you'll choke him plenty," said Manuel, and the stranger grunted a ready affirmative. Buck had accepted the rope from Manuel, a man he knew, with quiet dignity. But when the ends of the rope were placed in the stranger's hands, he growled menacingly. To his surprise the rope tightened around his neck, shutting off his breath. In quick rage he sprang at the man, who met him halfway, grappled him close by the throat, and with a deft twist threw him over on his back. Then the rope tightened mercilessly, while Buck struggled in a fury, his tongue lolling out of his mouth and his great chest panting futilely. His strength ebbed, his eyes glazed, and he knew nothing when the train was flagged and the two men threw him into the baggage car. For two days and nights he neither ate nor drank, and during those two days and nights of torment, he accumulated a fund of wrath that boded ill for whoever first fell foul of him. His eyes turned blood-shot, and he was metamorphosed into a raging fiend. The express messengers breathed with relief when they bundled him off the train at Seattle. Four men gingerly carried the crate from the wagon into a small, high-walled back yard. A stout man, with a red sweater that sagged generously at the neck, came out and signed the book for the driver. Buck hurled himself savagely against the bars. The man smiled grimly, and brought a hatchet and a club. "You ain't going to take him out now?" the driver asked. "Sure," the man replied, driving the hatchet into the crate for a pry. There was an instantaneous scattering of the four men who had carried it in, and from safe perches on top the wall they prepared to watch the performance. Buck rushed at the splintering wood, sinking his teeth into it, surging and wrestling with it. Wherever the hatchet fell on the outside, he was there on the inside, snarling and growling, as furiously anxious to get out as the man in the red sweater was calmly intent on getting him out. "Now, you red-eyed devil," he said, when he had made an opening sufficient for the passage of Buck's body. At the same time he dropped the hatchet and shifted the club to his right hand. And Buck was truly a red-eyed devil, as he drew himself together for the spring, hair bristling, mouth foaming, a mad glitter in his blood-shot eyes. Straight at the man he launched his one hundred and forty pounds of fury, surcharged with the pent passion of two days and nights. In mid air, just as his jaws were about to close on the man, he received a shock that checked his body and brought his teeth together with an agonizing clip. He whirled over, fetching the ground on his back and side. He had never been struck by a club in his life, and did not understand. With a snarl that was part bark and more scream he was again on his feet and launched into the air. And again the shock came and he was brought crushingly to the ground. This time he was aware that it was the club, but his madness knew no caution. A dozen times he charged, and as often the club broke the charge and smashed him down. After a particularly fierce blow, he crawled to his feet, too dazed to rush. He staggered limply about, the blood flowing from nose and mouth and ears, his beautiful coat sprayed and flecked with bloody slaver. Then the man advanced and deliberately dealt him a frightful blow on the nose. All the pain he had endured was as nothing compared with the exquisite agony of this. With a roar that was almost lionlike in its ferocity, he again hurled himself at the man. But the man, shifting the club from right to left, coolly caught him by the under jaw, at the same time wrenching downward and backward. Buck described a complete circle in the air, and half of another, then crashed to the ground on his head and chest. For the last time he rushed. The man struck the shrewd blow he had purposely withheld for so long, and Buck crumpled up and went down, knocked utterly senseless. He was beaten, but he was not broken. He saw, once for all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had learned the lesson, and in all his after life he never forgot it. As the days went by, other dogs came, in crates and at the ends of ropes, some docilely, and some raging and roaring as he had come; and, one and all, he watched them pass under the dominion of the man in the red sweater. Again and again, as he looked at each brutal performance, the lesson was driven home to Buck: a man with a club was a lawgiver, a master to be obeyed, though not necessarily conciliated. Of this last Buck was never guilty, though he did see beaten dogs that fawned upon the man, and wagged their tails, and licked his hand. Also he saw one dog, that would neither conciliate nor obey, finally killed in the struggle for mastery. Now and again men came, strangers, who talked excitedly, wheedlingly, and in all kinds of fashions to the man in the red sweater. And at such times that money passed between them the strangers took one or more of the dogs away with them. Buck wondered where they went, for they never came back; but the fear of the future was strong upon him, and he was glad each time when he was not selected. Yet his time came, in the end, in the form of a little whizened man who spat broken English and many strange and uncouth exclamations which Buck could not understand. "Sacre damn!" he cried, when his eyes lit upon Buck. "Dat one damn bully dog! Eh? How much?" "Three hundred, and a present at that," was the prompt reply of the man in the red sweater. "And seeing it's government money, you ain't got no kick coming, eh, Perrault?" Perrault grinned. Considering that the price of dogs had been boomed skyward by the unwonted demand, it was not an unfair sum for so fine an animal. The Canadian Government would be no loser, nor would its despatches travel the slower. Perrault knew dogs, and when he looked at Buck he knew that he was one in a thousand -- "One in ten thousand," he commented mentally. Buck saw money pass between them, and was not surprised when Curly, a good-natured Newfoundland, and he were led away by the little whizened man. That was the last he saw of the man in the red sweater, and as Curly and he looked at receding Seattle from the deck of the Narwhal, it was the last he saw of the warm Southland. Curly and he were taken below by Perrault and turned over to a black-faced giant called Francois. Perrault was a French-Canadian, and swarthy; but Francois was a French-Canadian half-breed, and twice as swarthy. Buck speedily learned that Perrault and Francois were fair men, calm and impartial in administering justice, and too wise in the way of dogs to be fooled by dogs. In the 'tween-decks of the Narwhal, Buck and Curly joined two other dogs. One of them was a big, snow-white fellow from Spitzbergen known as Spitz who had been brought away by a whaling captain, and who had later accompanied a Geological Survey into the Barrens. He was friendly, in a treacherous sort of way, smiling into one's face the while he meditated some underhand trick, as, for instance, when he stole from Buck's food at the first meal. As Buck sprang to punish him, the lash of Francois's whip sang through the air, reaching the culprit first; and nothing remained to Buck but to recover the bone. That was fair of Francois, he decided, and the half-breed began his rise in Buck's estimation. The other dog was a gloomy, morose fellow, called Dave. Day and night the ship throbbed to the tireless pulse of the propeller, and though one day was very like another, it was apparent to Buck that the weather was steadily growing colder. At last, one morning, the propeller was quiet, and the Narwhal was pervaded with an atmosphere of excitement. He felt it, as did the other dogs, and knew that a change was at hand. Francois leashed them and brought them on deck. At the first step upon the cold surface, Buck's feet sank into a white mushy something very like mud. He sprang back with a snort. More of this white stuff was falling through the air. He shook himself, but more of it fell upon him. He sniffed it curiously, then licked some up on his tongue. It bit like fire, and the next instant was gone. This puzzled him. He tried it again, with the same result. The onlookers laughed uproariously, and he felt ashamed, he knew not why, for it was his first snow.

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** Last updated on 06/20/2010 ** **The author** Student of MATESOL program of St.Michael's Alla Potashikova about me E-mail: potash7070@yahoo.com