Communication Events

Welcome to Fastfood English with Cassie.  In today's audio post I talk about strategies for studying English using dialogues and set phrases.  I've also included links to websites with dialogues for eating in restaurants.  Please click on the Read More button below to listen to the show.

Listen to English with Cassie

Hi join me for 3 and a half minutes of talk in English.  

Today I use -

one idiom "Long time, no see"  

It's a greeting used in the US when you haven't seen someone for a long time but it can also be used as joke when you've seen someone many times in a short period of time.  

and a web link www.yourdictionary.com.

Listen to here to hear more.  



Thanks for listening.  This has been Cassie Brenn for Fastfoodenglish.blogspot.com.

Language Learning Communities

Here are a few links to language learning communities on the web.  It's a great place to meet Conversation Partners.   

livemocha.com
busuu.com
italki.com
myhappyplanet.com

Listen to a Good Book

Listening to stories read out loud is a great way to improve your listening skills in English.   I recently discovered a website called storylineonline.net  that has many videos of  books being read by actors.  The books are really intended for young children but they are all well written stories with beautiful illustrations.  The videos are professionally done and under 10 minutes in length.  So, give them a try.  Here's a tip - if you want to see the words as they are being read, turn on the closed captioning that the CC button in the YouTube frame.

Culture Connection
These are all really popular Children's picture books in the US, so chance are many Americans have read them or had these books read to them.  Reading and listening to these stories as an English language learner helps you connect with American culture and thinking.  

DIY Space Program

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Yesterday I led a Conversation Hour at the American Center Hanoi about Neil Armstrong.  One of the questions that came up during the discussion was - Are there cheaper ways to run the Space Program?  Well, when I got home I turned on the TV and CNN was on talking about DIY Space Programs. So, I asked Google to show me the links and here are some pretty cool Space experiments you can do yourself on the cheap*.  
   
Send a camera (or object) in to space.  In the show notes you will find a link to a video about a father and son who did just that.  They attached a video camera to a weather ballon and launched it from Brooklyn, New York.  It made it all the way to space and back safely. The images are pretty cool. 

Join a citizen scientist project.  You don't have to be an expert in engineering or science to participate in Space Exploration. At Spacehack.org you can find a list of different projects run by different groups and organization that you can help out with. 

Google also brought me to this interesting article related to another question brought up in our discussion - Should the space Program be run by private corporations instead of the government? It could be the next wave of the future*.  

The article mentioned a small company called ArduSat which is using Kick Start to fund their small satellite project.  Check out their video that explains their project. 

I'm always impressed with the great thoughts, questions, and ideas brought up during the conversation hours.  Language learning allows us the opportunity to share and learn from each other.   

*Language Link
On the cheap is an idiom that means something done for not a lot of money.  

Wave of the future means a trend that will become popular in the days ahead.  

Thanks for listening.   This has been Cassie Brenn for fastfoodenglish.blogspot.com.  

Cooking from US recipes

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Have you ever tried to cook a recipe from a US cookbook?   I bet you noticed a few differences in the way we measure the ingredients and the temperatures that we use.   The reason for these differences is that in the US, we don't use the metric system.  So, if you want to bake a cake from a US recipe, you need to understand our measurements and how to convert them. 

One website that can help you with that is The Metric Kitchen.  There you will find tables and charts for converting a US recipe to metric measures. 

For example, if you want to bake a cake, the recipe will probably say preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  That means 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  You can use the tools on The Metric Kitchen website to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius.  So, 350 degrees Fahrenheit becomes 176.66666 degrees Celsius. 

US recipes also use abbreviations such as
tsp for teaspoon
Tbsp for Tablespoon
c for cup
lb. means pounds

Now you're ready to cook?  Try these recipes for Traditional American Food at MyRecipes.com.

And as always, thanks for listening.  This has been Cassie Brenn for fastfoodenglish.blogspot.com.