Talk is Golden by KanTalk.com

Housewives read Good Housekeeping; CEOs read Fortune, which covers the global business and heavyweight executives the way that People magazine does with the entertainment industry and celebrities. It not just about reporting fortune-making; it’s also about glamorizing it.

Even if you are not an aspiring CEO, or find the business is boring in general, the Fortune magazine is still a great bet to get you familiar with the business world in English. In its video reporting, you may learn how Bill Gates is different from you and me, and how women CEOs break the glass ceiling.

You can dig out more gems from its video collections.

The Olympic athletes are in their final preparations to get ready for the world’s biggest sport event in Beijing. The residents of Beijing are practicing English hard to welcome the athletes from all over the world. Are them ready?

If you are in a hurry before going aboard, she offers a few suggestions to speaking the language of the country you are going. We all know it comes handy in some circumstances.

The Associated Press (AP) is all about speed. In the print media, it’s usually AP that first breaks the story. It stations the reporters everywhere, and they get the concise stories on the wires quickly. In the era of the satellite dish and cable, however, AP is not fast enough. The minutes after something unusual happens, the live scene shows up at the 24/7 cable channels, and people glue their eyes on the tube from that moment on.

If you can’t beat them, join them. AP started the Online Video Network two years ago so that it could put out the latest stories in the video form. It retains one signature of its print media–speed, so much so that sometimes it presents just the “raw material”, the footage without editing and reporting.

You can watch the AP’s video report for free at its channel in YouTube. It churns out at least a dozen of the clips everyday.

An old joke goes like this: if you speak two or more languages, you are multilingual; if you speak only one, then you are an American. The U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama took on the issue of language education in the U.S. today.

Yes We Should.

Reported in the Korea Times, the singles can gain a tremendous advantage in the dating scene when they speak English well:

“I like men speaking good English. It makes them look sexy, intelligent and very competent,” said Yang Mi-kyoung, a 24-year-old who works for a fashion goods company. “They also look very confident and I feel I could proudly introduce him to anyone,” she added.

……

Most replied that fluent foreign language speaking skills made their date eligible and competent, while some said the quality is important because they themselves do not have it. Both men and women thought being able to speak other languages is a basic attainment for everyone. Some said they want their counterpart to teach their future children English.

(for the whole article, click here)

An advice to those desperate Korean singles who are not good at a foreign language: fake it like this guy until you tie the knot.

After weather, sport is the most frequent topic that people talk about in the social events. Talking about weather is mostly for ice-breaking, and the lines are always lame (”Beautiful day, isn’t it?”, “Sure it is. I hope it will rain a bit.”)

Talking about sport, however, is a lot more fun, especially on the sport that you are passionate about. But it’s hardly a breeze for non-native speakers to talk about sport. The game rule nuances and slang make the sport English sound like a whole new language by itself.

ESPN is a great place to get you up to the speed. Its website offers many fresh video clips on the major sport events and stars. Watch often and you will be able to talk about sport with ease. (Warning for the side effect: you might talk faster and louder than you used to be, too)

It sounded a lot like Queen English years ago; now it’s Kiwi.

The best way to explain verb is to act it out:

Slate is the pioneer of the web-only magazine. It’ll have a paragraph, if not a chapter, in the history book some day, when the school kids ask what it was like to read a magazine on paper. In its seventh or eighth incarnation now, Slate covers politics and culture with a distinctive style. It becomes a must-read for many.

Last year it started Slate V to dedicate on video reporting. The sounds and images add new dimensions to its distinctive style. These videos are great treats for English learners. You will never get enough out of its Dear Prudence video column. From its a-letter-from-reader, narrated with animations and answered by “Prudence”, you will know how to deal with a crush, or handle a wild dog.

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