Natural disasters

Click here to see some vocabulary.

How to talk about natural disasters.



Watch a video about natural disasters and what can cause them.

Listen to two people talking about extreme weather in Australia in 2009. You can read the script.

Listen and do the matching exercise. The script is at the bottom of the page.

Best audio/video news websites

The best audio/video news and current affairs websites to learn English. The image below is interactive. Click on the icon and read what each website has to offer. 

Cristina Cabal

Television

1. Listen to a conversation and choose the right answer.

2. Is TV a bad influence? Listen and choose the right answer.




Read a text about Reality TV.

Information overload

Listen to the interview and fill in the gaps using between one and four words. Check your answers in comments.

There's an introduction to the interview first.

- According to The Economist, Americans spend over 12 hours a day _______________________ (1)

- Manoush Zomorodi's been exploring this topic and has a project called "Infomagical: Making _______________________ (2) ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­."

- It’s not just journalists, nowadays many people has access to an _______________________ (3).

- There’s a great word to describe this _______________________ (4)(the compulsive desire to check or accumulate news and information); also described as FOMO - _______________________(5).

- The effects of information overload are really just starting to be studied. But when we feel overwhelmed, _______________________(6) go up. Our brains have a finite number of decisions they can make before they get depleted and become less discerning - so this is called _______________________(7).

- There are other consequences. We also _______________________(8) in cycles and what we're finding is _______________________ (9) is a slippery thing.

- When we keep taking in information, we lose the capacity to _______________________ (10) from it.

- According to a preliminary research we only use about _______________________ (11) of the information we take in every day.

- With this project they want to help people become their _______________________(12), to find focus more easily and discover what we're calling the magic of clear thinking.

- So first, when you sign up, you'll be asked to pick one of five _______________________ (13)and then next week, you'll only try to consume information that gets you _______________________(14).

If you sign up to do the project via text, you'll be part of our data set and we'll be measuring what effect  _______________________(15) an information goal has on participants' information overload.

Watch this funny video and answer the questions. Check your answers in "comments".

1. What did Billy use to be like?
2. When did he change?
3. What was Donna?
4. What happened to Sarah?
5. Who does this syndrome affect?
6. What are some examples of exabytes?
7. What does the brain do to deal with this new information?
8. What disappears first? 
9. What happens after that?
10. What does finally happen?
11. How does he describe the syndrome?
12. Is there anything we can do to help Billy?

Click here to read an article with some tips for staying informed without suffering media burnout.

The Media

Click here to review some vocabulary.
Newspaper vocabulary
TV genres
How to describe a TV programme

Click on "media" in contents to do more activities related to the topic.

News reports

Click here to see old posts about the same topics. 

Happy Thanksgiving!