Objective Proficiency p 152. Major Events and the Most Relevant People. Extra Speaking
Vocabulary
he is a maverick: (of a person) independent, with unusual opinions. E.g. a maverick film director. A politician with a maverick streak (Sp. vena, cualidad).
Objective Proficiency p 152.Hardtalk with Sir Ian McKellen, Actor . Extra Listening
Whether you think of him as Richard III or Gandalf, you will know he has won hearts and accolades around the world - not just for five decades of work on stage and screen, but also for his passionate public advocacy, particular on the issue of gay rights. Sir Ian McKellen was brought up in a Britain in which homosexuality was still a crime. He did not come out publicly until he was 49. Almost three decades on he is still acting and still campaigning. For this special programme recorded in front of an audience to mark 20 years of Hardtalk, Stephen Sackur asks him to what extent has the cultural landscape changed?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04yc2hk
Objective Proficiency p 152. Emmanuel Kelly on X Factor. Extra Listening
- Lennon's widow Yoko Ono tweeted about Kelly's performance of her late husband's hit song, writing: "Thank you, Emmanuel. You sang beautifully! Thank you. John would have been proud of you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Love, Yoko."
- Kelly was rescued and adopted by Children First Foundation boss Moira Kelly along with his brother Ahmed after they both suffered from limb deficiencies as a result of chemical warfare in Iraq.
Objective Proficiency p 146. Graham Hill: Less Stuff, More Happiness. Extra Listening
Writer and designer Graham Hill asks: Can having less stuff, in less room, lead to more happiness? He makes the case for taking up less space, and lays out three rules for editing your life.
Objective Proficiency p 146. Leisure. Extra Speaking
Vocabulary
Drag: to pull somebody/something along with effort and difficulty. E.g. I was dragged along to a party.
Stay in: to not go out or to remain indoors. E.g I feel like staying in tonight.
Drag: to pull somebody/something along with effort and difficulty. E.g. I was dragged along to a party.
Stay in: to not go out or to remain indoors. E.g I feel like staying in tonight.
Rut: a boring way of life that does not change. Sp. Estancarse. E.g. If you don't go out and meet new people, it's easy to get into a rut.
Splash: the sound of something hitting liquid or of liquid hitting something. E.g. We heard the splash when she fell into the pool.
Squad: (in sport) a group of players, runners, etc. from which a team is chosen for a particular game or match. Sp. Equipo. E.g. the Olympic/national squad.Settle in/ settle into something: to move into a new home, job, etc. and start to feel comfortable there. Sp. instalarse, adaptarse. E.g. It's not always easy for a new player to settle in.
Pick sth out: to play a tune on a musical instrument slowly without using written music. E.g. He picked out the tune on the piano with one finger.
Objective Proficiency p 146. Stephen Fry: The Secret Life Of The Manic Depressive
In the mid-1990s, Stephen Fry, the British actor and comedian, had a moment of crisis. He recalled in 2006:
"Eleven years ago, in the early hours of the morning, I came down from my flat in central London. I went into my garage, sealed the door with a duvet I’d brought and got into my car. I sat there for at least, I think, two hours in the car, my hands on the ignition key. It was, you know, a suicide attempt, not a cry for help".
Fry didn’t end up killing himself. We know that. Instead, he left the country, heading first to Europe, then to the US where he sought treatment and, at the age of 37, received a diagnosis explaining “the massive highs and miserable lows” he had experienced his whole life: manic depression.
Once he learned to live with manic depression, Fry decided to talk publicly about his struggle and break the taboos around the condition. So, in partnership with the BBC, Fry helped produce the 2006 documentary Stephen Fry: The Secret Life Of The Manic Depressive. The programme puts Fry’s personal experience center stage. But it also brings Fry to talk with other celebrities (Robbie Williams, Richard Dreyfuss & Carrie Fisher) and everyday people living with bipolar disorder.
Objective Proficiency p 146. Stephen Fry: What I Wish I Knew When I Was 18. Extra Listening
Above you can listen to British writer and actor Stephen Fry offering life lessons based on his 54 years living in this world. Some of the highlights:
- Don’t set goals for yourself, particularly material ones. They’re disastrous and will keep you from becoming who you really are.
- Keep your ego in check. You’ll be better liked, and more opportunities will come your way.
- Get outside your comfort zone by traveling to distant lands and reading books in a serendipitous way.
- Be a giver, not a taker. It’s more rewarding.
- Learn with friends.
- Have heroes.
- And always think for yourself.
Objective Proficiency p 145. Making Sense of Memory. Extra Reading
It happens to all of us: We think we learned of the Sept. 11 attacks from a radio report, when, in fact, the news came from a co-worker; we’re sure the robber running from the bank was tall, when actually he was short; we remember waking up at 7 yesterday, when 8 is closer to the truth. Such “false memories,” unavoidable in everyday life, can have disastrous consequences in courtrooms and other settings where exactitude matters.
We create these false memories, according to Harvard psychologist Daniel Schacter, because our brains are designed to tell stories about the future. “Memory’s flexibility is useful to us, but it creates distortions and illusions,” says Schacter, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Psychology. “If memory is set up to use the past to imagine the future, its flexibility creates a vulnerability — a risk of confusing imagination with reality.”
Schacter, author of two books on memory, was recently honored with the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association (APA). In a review paper in a forthcoming edition of the journal American Psychologist, Schacter argues that the time machine of the brain is really a virtual reality simulator. Our memories are designed to flexibly imagine the future, Schacter says, but not to record the past verbatim — so they are inherently prone to predictable errors, which experiments reveal.
Misremembering happens to us all the time, Schacter says, because our minds rely on patterns to reconstruct memories — and the patterns often lead us astray. Routine behaviors, called “schemas” by the psychologist Frederic Bartlett in his classic “Remembering” (1932), distort our memories by making us assume events happened the way they usually do. For example, we may “remember” that we biked to work today because we ordinarily do, when today we actually drove. Our memories are also biased by our emotions.
“Positivity bias” is an example of such a memory distortion. Since we have a tendency to remember emotionally charged events, our memories are crowded more with emotional events than with ordinary things from our daily lives — and these tend to be biased toward the positive, while negative memories slip away. In a recent study with postdoctoral researcher Karl Szpunar, Schacter showed that when people are asked to imagine positive, negative, and neutral future scenarios, they forget the negative ones faster than the others. That study, subtitled “Remembering a Rosy Future,” was published in the journal Psychological Science in January.
We typically underestimate the length of time that something will take, or the likelihood of future events, because our memories are often weak on the most common (hence most likely) events in our past. We remember the emotional moments, the fun or scary or sexy ones, and forget the daily drives to work and lunch-table conversations. This leads us to predict the future inaccurately, because we misremember a richer past. Schacter thinks a malfunction in this system may be to blame for mood disorders like depression and anxiety — where simulations of the future are repetitively negative, and hammer home a distortedly negative worldview. His lab plans to follow up on this line of research.
Memory is inherently constructive, Schacter says: We remember by rebuilding the past from bits and pieces — and the same ability helps us imagine the future. The hippocampus, long considered the seat of memory in the brain, Schacter posits, is actually a “simulator” — the part of the brain responsible for creating movies in the mind, whether they are memories of yesterday, plans for tomorrow, or imaginings from a book or an article we read. In all cases, our minds draw from a store of memory details to build episodes.
Read the story on the Harvard website
Objective Proficiency p 143. Pride. Vocabulary
Positive:
- Look up to somebody: to admire or respect somebody. E.g. He looked up to his older sister and cousins as an example and was influenced by their ways and the music they listened to.
- Have a good head on your shoulders: to be a sensible person. E.g. John has a good head on his shoulders and can be depended on to give good advice.
- Sober: /ˈsəʊbə(r)/ serious and sensible. E.g. He is honest, sober and hard-working.
- Sobriety: /səˈbraɪəti/ the fact of being sensible and serious. E.g. She was a model of sobriety and honesty.
Negative:
- To look down on sb/sth: to think that you are better than somebody/something. E.g. She looks down on people who haven't been to college.
- To look down your nose at sb/sth: (informal, especially British English) to behave in a way that suggests that you think that you are better than somebody or that something is not good enough for you. E.g. He looked down his nose at them. He criticized and screamed at employees. He publicly humiliated any employee who made a mistake.
- Go to your head: to make you feel too proud of yourself in a way that other people find annoying. E.g. Don't let all this praise go to your head.
- Pretentious: /prɪˈtenʃəs/ trying to appear important, intelligent, etc. in order to impress other people; trying to be something that you are not, in order to impress. E.g. That's a pretentious name for a dog! It was just an ordinary house—nothing pretentious. He's so pretentious!
- Haughty: behaving in an unfriendly way towards other people because you think that you are better than them. Arrogant. E.g. a haughty face/look/manner. He replied with haughty disdain.
- Scornful: showing or feeling scorn. E.g. He was scornful of such ‘female’ activities as cooking.
- Scorn: a strong feeling that somebody/something is stupid or not good enough, usually shown by the way you speak. E.g. She was unable to hide the scorn in her voice.
- Pour/heap scorn on somebody/something: to speak about somebody/something in a way that shows that you do not respect them or have a good opinion of them. E.g. He heaped scorn on the government's handling of the economy.
- Disdainful (of somebody/something): showing disdain. E.g. She's always been disdainful of people who haven't been to college.
- Contemptuous: /kənˈtemptʃuəs/ feeling or showing that you have no respect for somebody/something. E.g. The company has shown a contemptuous disregard for Henry's complaints. He was contemptuous of everything I did.
- Contempt: /kənˈtempt/: the feeling that somebody/something is without value and deserves no respect at all. E.g. She looked at him with contempt.
- Obsequious: / əbˈsiːkwiəs/ trying too hard to please somebody, especially somebody who is important. Servile . E.g. an obsequious manner. Smiling obsequiously.
- Servile: /ˈsɜːvaɪl /wanting too much to please somebody and obey them E.g. Parents have no right to demand servile obedience from their children
- Crawl (to somebody): (informal, disapproving) to be too friendly or helpful to somebody in authority, in a way that is not sincere, especially in order to get an advantage from them. E.g. She's always crawling to the boss.
- Creep (to somebody): (British English, informal, disapproving) to be too friendly or helpful to somebody in authority in a way that is not sincere, especially in order to get an advantage from them. E.g. They creep to the boss and claim good work by somebody else as their own and shift any blame to somebody else.
- Suck up (to somebody): (informal, disapproving) to try to please somebody in authority by praising them too much, helping them, etc, in order to gain some advantage for yourself. E.g. I never sucked up to my teachers, and I'm not going to start now.
- Butter sb up: to say nice things to somebody so that they will help you or give you something. E.g. Stop trying to butter me up! He's always trying to butter up the boss.
- Creep: a person who is not sincere but tries to win your approval by being nice to you. E.g. He's the sort of creep who would do that kind of thing!
- Crawler :a person who tries to get somebody's favour by praising them, doing what will please them, etc. E.g. Don't be such a crawler.
- Brown-noser (offensive); arse (Br E) /ass (Am E) kisser/licker (offensive); Butt licker/kisser (less offensive): a person who is too friendly to somebody in authority and is always ready to do what they want. E.g. He is a butt kisser who just wants to be told he's a "good boy."
- Teacher's pet a person who is given special attention by somebody, especially in a way that seems unfair to other people. Favourite. E.g. She's the teacher's pet.
- Brazen: open and without shame, usually about something that people find shocking. Shameless. Sp. Descarado. E.g. She had become brazen about the whole affair. His brazen admission that he was cheating. She had brazenly admitted allowing him back into the house.
- blatant: (of actions that are considered bad) done in an obvious and open way without caring if people are shocked. E.g. a blatant attempt to buy votes. It was a blatant lie.
- flagrant /ˈfleɪɡrənt/ (of an action) shocking because it is done in a very obvious way and shows no respect for people, laws, etc. E.g. In flagrant disobedience of her father, Ivy stayed out all night.
- barefaced
/ˈbeəfeɪst/ showing that you do not care about offending somebody or
about behaving badly. Sp. descarado. E.g. a barefaced lie/ liar. The
company's claim that profits had jumped by ten per cent was obviously a
barefaced lie. John was at the pub last night bragging about his
goal-scoring again – but we all know he's a barefaced liar. Listen to BBC Learning English
Objective Proficiency p 138. Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man. Extra Listening
Listen to the audio on NPR
Dashiell Hammett and "The Thin Man"
Dashiell Hammett's "The
Thin Man" represented a new kind of
crime fiction which was about murder but which was also (1) …………..- ………….. and
funny.
The Thin Man was extremely
popular and (2) ……………… five sequels.
Richard Layman has been
involved in the publication of two novellas and the stories have been in his
(3) …………. /……….. for over twenty years.
MGM expected The Thin Man to
be another of the (3) ……-………../ …………… that they were usually involved in.
MGM had to ask Hammet to get
involved in the second series because they didn’t believe they had the talent
to do it (4) …………- ……….. .
In the second movie “After The
Thin Man”, Nick Charles and Nora return
to San Francisco, find a body and get involved in a murder investigation
despite the fact that they have (5) …………. / ………… crime.
As this murder is somehow
linked to Nora’s family, Nick Charles can’t (6) ………… / ……….. from it.
During the reading from the
story, one of the reporters suggests that Nick is no longer retired from being
a detective and is in fact, working (7) ………………. .
Hammett knew that his special
talents would be well received in Hollywood after he heard the first (8) “…………. “.
What made Hammett’s scripts different from the screenplay was
their (9) ………….. .
Joseph Breen was the (10)
…………….. / ………… of the Motion Picture Association.
The character of Nick Charles
spent most of his day drinking alcohol but his character seemed to improve with
(11) ………… / ……….. .
It would seem that this
capacity for alcohol was also a characteristic of Hammett and for this reason
he (12) …………….. this quality in Nick Charles.
MGM became disillusioned with
Hammett because of his habit of never appearing at the (13) ………………… /
…………… and also because he was a member
of the communist party with a (14)
………….. - ………….. / ……………… .
Hammett himself became sick of
the (15) …..…………… of the protagonists of his scripts.
After MGM paid a huge sum pf
money for the rights to his characters, Hammett wrote that no other writer had
ever produced a more (16) ………………. / ……………. set of characters.
KEY
Dashiell Hammett and "The Thin Man"
Dashiell Hammett's "The
Thin Man" represented a new kind of
crime fiction which was about murder but which was also (1) ……light……..- ……hearted……..
and funny.
The Thin Man was extremely
popular and (2) ……spawned………… five sequels.
Richard Layman has been
involved in the publication of two novellas and the stories have been in his
(3) ……file ……. /……cabinet….. for over twenty years.
MGM expected The Thin Man to
be another of the (3) …six…-…week……../ ……wonders……… that they were usually
involved in.
MGM had to ask Hammet to get
involved in the second series because they didn’t believe they had the talent
to do it (4) ……in……- ……house….. .
In the second movie “After The
Thin Man”, Nick Charles and Nora return
to San Francisco, find a body and get involved in a murder investigation
despite the fact that they have (5) ……sworn ……. / ……off…… crime.
As this murder is somehow
linked to Nora’s family, Nick Charles can’t (6) …back……… / …off…….. from it.
During the reading from the story,
one of the reporters suggests that Nick is no longer retired from being a
detective and is in fact, working (7) ……undercover…………. .
Hammett knew that his special
talents would be well received in Hollywood after he heard the first (8) “……talkie……. “.
What made Hammett’s scripts different from the screenplay was
their (9) …sexuality……….. .
Joseph Breen was the (10) ……appointed………..
/ …censor……… of the Motion Picture Association.
The character of Nick Charles
spent most of his day drinking alcohol but his character seemed to improve with
(11) ……each…… / ……sip….. .
It would seem that this
capacity for alcohol was also a characteristic of Hammett and for this reason
he (12) …invested……….. this quality in Nick Charles.
MGM became disillusioned with
Hammett because of his habit of never appearing at the (13) ……appointed…………… /
………time…… and also because he was a
member of the communist party with a
(14) ……long…….. - …term……….. / ……commitment………… .
Hammett himself became sick of
the (15) …exploitation…………… of the protagonists of his scripts.
After MGM paid a huge sum pf
money for the rights to his characters, Hammett wrote that no other writer had
ever produced a more (16) …insufferably……………. / …smug…………. set of characters.
Transcript
This is WEEKEND EDITION from
NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. Dashiell Hammett's "The Thin Man" invented
a new kind of crime fiction. It was hard-boiled, but also light-hearted, funny,
with a hint of homicide. Nick and Nora Charles and Asta, their wire-haired
terrier were rich, witty and in love, when America was in the middle of the
Depression and often depressed.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "THE
THIN MAN")
MYRNA LOY: (as Nora) How they
expect a woman to still have any mystery left from that after living in a place
like this for three days, I don't know.
WILLIAM POWELL: (as Nick) Darling,
you don't need mystery. You got something much better, something more alluring.
LOY: What?
POWELL: Me.
LOY: You?
SIMON: They also drank a lot -
Nick and Nora, not Asta, though he got an occasional leftover slurp. "The
Thin Man" was made into a popular motion picture, starring William Powell
and Myrna Loy and a wire-haired terrier, which spawned five sequels, including
"After the Thin Man" and "Another Thin man." And although
the screenwriting couple of Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich usually completed
the screenplays, the MGM studio needed the stories and characters that only
Dashiell Hammett could write. Now, for the first time, the stories of
"After the Thin Man" and "Another Thin Man" have been
published as novellas - "The Return of the Thin Man." They have been
edited and published by Richard Layman, who joins us now from the studios of
SEETV in Columbia, South Carolina. Richard, thanks so much for being with us.
RICHARD LAYMAN: Thank you for
having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
SIMON: Where have these
stories been?
LAYMAN: They've been in my
file cabinet since 1981 roughly. Before that, they were in the archives at the
legal office of MGM in Culver City.
SIMON: Tell us about these
writing contracts that Hammett would get from MGM. I don't know if that kind of
thing is done any more in Hollywood.
LAYMAN: After "The Thin
Man" was first produced in 1934 by MGM but it was a B-movie. It was done
on a $250,000 budget, and MGM expected it to be just another of the, you know,
six-week wonders that they routinely produced. In fact, the movie was a big
success. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and
it made the studio a lot of money. So, they decided immediately that they
needed a second story in the series. They didn't have the talent to do it
in-house, they didn't believe, so they went to Hammett.
SIMON: Let's try and set this
up, the story, 'cause once again in this story, Nick Charles and Nora have
sworn off crime solving, but they come home to San Francisco, find a body and
get dragged back in. What happens?
LAYMAN: Well, Nick Charles is
always reluctantly pulled into a murder. This time, the murder has associations
with Nora's family, so he can't back away from it.
SIMON: Let's hear a reading
from "After the Thin Man."
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Reading)
They arrive at the house and they go up the front steps. Nora: Last one in bed
is a sissy. They run into the house pulling off clothes. From the living room
to meet them come Asta and the reporters they left at the Hall of Justice, the
reporters asking questions. The police suspect Mrs. Landis. What connections
did Pedro Dominguez have with the Landis killing, etc., etc.? Nick insists he
knows nothing about it and has nothing to say as they go back into the living
room winding up with: I'm going to give you boys one drink apiece and then put
you out. One of the reporters asks, well, answer another question for us and we
won't print it if you don't want us to. Is it true that you actually didn't
retire as a detective but are working undercover? Nick, starting to pour
drinks: No, it's not true, but don't print it, because I don't want my wife's
relatives to know that I'm living on her money.
(LAUGHTER)
SIMON: What do you learn by
working with Hammett words about Hammett dialogue?
LAYMAN: Oh, Hammett was a
master of dialogue and that was why it was so important to MGM. You know, when
Hammett was first attracted to Hollywood, he heard the first talkie and he knew
that the talents that he had were in demand in Hollywood, and indeed they were.
You know, Hollywood had gone from a formula by which action advanced a plot in
the days of the silent movies to a formula in which dialogue and character
advanced the plot. And the two things that Hammett did superbly was develop
character and write dialogue.
SIMON: Were the screenplays,
the stories that he wrote, darker than the movies that got made out of them?
LAYMAN: In some respects, they
were darker. But the big difference that you see between the Hammett story and
the produced movie has to do with the drinking and the sexuality, but
especially the sexuality. It was a time in which the Motion Picture Association
had developed a code of decency. A character named Joseph Breen was the
appointed censor. When he saw Hammett's scripts, he must have had fits of
apoplexy.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "THE
THIN MAN")
LOY: (as Nora) Now, how many
drinks have you had?
POWELL: (as Nick) This will
make six martinis.
LOY: All right. Will you bring
me five more martinis?
SIMON: Nick Charles drank from
morning to midnight and seemed to grow more charming and clever with each sip.
Was that true of Dashiell Hammett?
LAYMAN: It was indeed. You
know, there was a famous photo session of all of the former writers for Black
Mask magazine. Raymond Chandler was also a Black Mask writer. And this photo
that was made in, what, 1935, 1936, one of the only known photos of Hammett and
Chandler together. Afterwards, Chandler wrote to someone saying that Hammett
had had at least 12 drinks during the time that they worked together and didn't
show the least effect from them.
SIMON: And so that's a quality
with which he invested Nick Charles.
LAYMAN: Yes, it was. Nick
Charles is, in many respects, like Hammett, just as Nora is, in many respects,
like Hammett's girlfriend Lillian Hellman, to whom "The Thin Man,"
the published book, is dedicated.
SIMON: Why did the studio
eventually get tired of Dashiell Hammett?
LAYMAN: The studio got tired
of him for two reasons, I think. First of all, because of his, quote,
"irregular habits."
SIMON: Irregular habits meant
regular drinking.
LAYMAN: Regular drinking. He
had a reputation for not showing up at the appointed time, often because he was
drunk, sometimes because he had been out partying all night and just didn't
feel like getting out of bed. But more important than that, Hammett was, at
that time, becoming political active and he was involved in the Screenwriters
Guild, a unionization effort of the screenwriters, to force the studios to give
the writers credit and money for the work that they did.
SIMON: And he'd also been at
least briefly a communist.
LAYMAN: No. It wasn't briefly
- it was a long-term commitment. He was a member of the Communist Party,
card-carrying. He apparently joined the party in about 1935, at about the time
he was - just before the time he was writing after "After the Thin
Man." And he remained a member of the party, you know, for the next, what,
two decades.
SIMON: How did he grow to feel
about this franchise that he'd created?
LAYMAN: I think he was fed up
with Nick and Nora Charles. Not fed up - he was tired of them pretty early on
and he was fed up with the studios for the exploitation of the characters that
he saw. Just before he finished the last draft for "Another Thin
Man," MGM bought all rights to the characters Nick and Nora Charles and
Asta so that they could develop the series without him. They paid $40,000 for
those character rights. And Hammett wrote to Lillian Hellman just after that:
There may be better writers than I am, but nobody ever created a more
insufferably smug set of characters than the Charleses, and they can't take
that away from me, even for $40,000.
SIMON: Richard Layman. He's
edited two stories by Dashiell Hammett, featuring the beloved characters, Nick
and Nora Charles and the little dog Asta...
(SOUNDBITE OF DOG BARKING)
SIMON: They're published under
the title "The Return of the Thin Man." Richard, thanks so much for
being with us.
LAYMAN: Thank you.
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