Pre-intermediate

Dr. Nhung Tran-Davies was only five years old when she needed to flee home because of the Vietnam War. She and her family spent eight months in a refugee camp in Malaysia. Then an Alberta church sponsored their immigration to Canada.

Nhung arrived in Canada on a boat with 300 other refugees. She remembers it was nauseating and suffocating. 

At the airport gate, a little Canadian girl called Adrienne gave a doll to Nhung. 

"This little girl presented a little gift... This doll lit up my heart and in that moment, it meant everything to me," says Nhung. After that, the girls stayed friends. This doll has also inspired Nhung to become a doctor and help others, as this girl has helped her.

Decoding cryptograms is a great way to sharpen your English. A cryptogram with a simple substitution code is fairly easy to decipher, but it forces you to think carefully about spelling and vocabulary. As your English improves, you can move on to harder codes, like ones that don't put spaces in between the words so you have to figure out yourself where one word ends and the next begins.

This simple code uses the English alphabet. Letters are swapped for letters:

Decode this sentence:  "B l f   x z m   g l g z o o b   w l   g s r h !"

Did you get it right? The answer is in the last discussion question.

Were you aware that you practiced English spelling, vocabulary, and colloquial expressions by decoding that saying?

Since smartphones first connected us to the Internet, the time we spend on our phones has been increasing. 

2020 showed us that our whole life can be on the Internet. It is no longer a tool to work. It is something that gives us a voice, an opportunity to build relationships and connect with people. Some people find this useful. Others are worried about developing Internet addiction—when people use the Internet so much that other areas of their lives are damaged (relationships, work, studies, etc...) The American Academy of Pediatrics even proposed the idea of Facebook Depression. It is when people compare themselves with what they see on mass media platforms, and they feel incomplete, depressed and unhappy. 

Most of us have the Internet in our pocket at all times. That means our media consumption and screen time has changed significantly over the last decade.

Please have a look at the graph below about American media consumption.

When I was a child, my mother wanted me to be elegant. She sent me to dance class. I didn’t like it. I cried before the class because I didn’t want to do it. But my mother didn’t allow me to quit. After five years of dancing, I finally stopped going to the classes. I never participated in any concerts, even though everyone else from this dance club did several times. I wasn’t good enough. I felt like a failure.

After dancing, I didn’t come back to sports until I was in university.

When I was doing my third year in university, I tried Thai boxing (Muay Thai). I loved it. Now I am training 5 times a week and preparing for my first competition. It has become a very big hobby of mine. Thai boxing brings me lots of benefits, such as a good mood, self-confidence, great physical shape and a lot of friends. It doesn’t bring me any money and it does not promote me in my career. But it is something I love. Finally, I feel I have succeeded.

The life expectancy of people in Japan has been increasing for the past 65 years. Life expectancy means the prediction of how long people are expected to live. There are many reasons for the increase in life expectancy, such as better food, cleaner water and improved medicine.

Please have a look at the chart below and discuss what you see with your teacher.

Crossing the street is very easy in most countries. You simply wait for the crosswalk light to turn green. The cars stop and let you walk safely to the other side.

However, in Hanoi, Vietnam, crossing the road is an adventure. There are few traffic lights, and the cars and motorbikes will never stop for you. You need to just walk into the street and the vehicles will go around you. It can be very scary, but that is the only way to cross the street in Vietnam. You have to trust the drivers not to hit you.

You get used to it very quickly and then laugh when you see tourists panic while crossing the street.

According to the India Times, in May 1968, a British traveler named Andy Stewart was looking to make his way home to London from Sydney, Australia. So he bought a double-decker bus and converted it into a mobile home, nicknamed "Albert". That October, he set off with 13 others on Albert the Bus for a 16,000-kilometre journey from Sydney to London via India. The journey took 132 days to complete.

Things turned out pretty well for Albert, considering it went on to complete 14 more Sydney-to-London trips over the next 8 years. A "year-round timetable" was drawn up for a regular service between London, Kolkata and Sydney in what was called Albert Tours.

Many businesses are asking their employees to work from home to help stop the spread of COVID-19.  Suddenly workers need to use telecommuting networks all day long. It’s putting a huge demand on internet services. 

Also, many schools have been closed. So children are home doing classwork online and watching videos or playing games. In Italy, internet usage went up by 90% in March when schools were closed. 

So home network providers are being tested in a way they never have before. Large providers say they can handle it, but no one knows when this situation will end. Hopefully the internet will keep working until then.