The Home Shopping Network (HSN) meets the needs of one demographic group: those people who are couch potatoes and love shopping at the same time. With a simple studio and an army of the enthusiastic hosts, HSN brings the goods to the shoppers’ living rooms and lures them to buy.

You might resist hard and try not to call the toll-free number to order, which the host urges you to do every other minute. But you should embrace a golden opportunity of learning; HSN is the best place to acquire the tens of thousands of English nouns, not the useless abstract nouns, but the names of the everyday items you consume.

You can either watch it live at HSN’s website, or see the clips at its channel at YouTube.

The U.S. government just launch a website (http://www.usalearns.org) to help non-native adult speakers learn English. According to the site:

The Project U.S.A. Learns was an outgrowth of a project that was conceived by the U.S. Department of Education (ED), Office of Vocational and Adult Education, Division of Adult Education and Literacy (DAEL).  Core funding for U.S.A. Learns was provided by ED.  Additional funding for U.S.A. Learns was made available by the California Department of Education, Office of Adult Education.

DAEL promotes programs that help American adults get the basic skills they need to be productive workers, family members, and citizens.  The major areas of support are Adult Basic Education, Adult Secondary Education, and English Language Acquisition.  These programs emphasize basic skills such as reading, writing, math, English language competency and problem-solving.

The contents and lessons are free.

The Discovery Channel started out as an educational programming in cable TV. It leads you to discover and explore all sorts of fascinating stuffs, like popular science (how bubblegum is made), animals (wild lions, deep sea sharks, and awesome dinosaurs), history (Inside Hitler’s Bunker), and more. In the recent years it also added some reality-based programmings.

“Entertain Your Brain” is the one of the Discovery Channel’s tag-lines. It might as well be “Entertain Your Ears” for English learners, as the varieties of its materials are great to improve your listening comprehensions. Here is the video section at its website that offers a lot of video clips off its various programs.

It lets you watch the full episodes of some of its programs online, but you need to download a player first.

From the New York Times:

Study Abroad Flourishes, With China a Hot Spot

The people–the nameless mass–have little to do with what is reported in the People magazine. Nobody cares to read about average Joe, unless it’s the one with celebrity status–Joe The Plumber. Covering celebrities relentlessly is what the People magazine is famous for.

Apparently, the people never get enough of celebrity news, which drives People the No. 1 selling magazine on newsstand every week. The traffic to its website, People.com, is heavy, too, particularly the Video section. It lists all the video clips under nine different “channels”.

You should probably spend more time at the channel of “They Said What?” than of “Who Looked Hot“.

Mixing investigative reporting, tough television journalists, and magazine-style of storytelling together, 60 Minutes is the most-watched TV news magazine for many years. It sets the golden standard of TV journalism covering the serious news.

In its current format, every episode consists of three 13-minute long stories–each narrated by one of its star reporters–and a short commentary by Andy Rooney in the end. The stories are centered around the current affairs, controversial social and business issues,  and news-making people.

Set your 60 Minutes clock ticking at the CBS News website or at the Yahoo News.

In a few days, either Barack Obama and John McCain will be the next president of the United States. You might not care who wins, but you can learn a great deal of English from them.

Political campaigns are about communications. The candidates use all means–TV and radio ads, live debates, stump speeches in rallies, door-to-door talks–to present their positions and to persuade the voters. In the presidential elections like this one, the candidates and the teams behind them perform the communication craft in the highest art form.

Visiting the multimedia pages of Obama and McCain (also available in the YouTube Channel), you’ll have plenty to watch two candidates talking about the wide range of issues, and–no surprise–attacking to each other. Such great show only comes along once in four years. So take in as much as you can.

Rock knows how to hit his opponents hard with his fist; he does even better to his love with his words.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z5OookwOoY