Welcome again!
Welcome to the TP Podcast!
Welcome to the TP Podcast!
Adrienne Rich wrote "On Secrets, Lies & Silence", a collection of essays of great interest from a feminist point of view. It's been translated into Spanish, too. But today we are going to learn about one of her poems, "Song", about a different kind of loneliness people can feel. Enjoy!
Listen to this poem!
Read it here!
Welcome!
Here is some useful language for making requests and responding to requests. You should combine this with our episode devoted to saying thank you.
Welcome to the TP podcast!
I love this poem. It’s so mysterious, and so honest. I don’t know what it means. I just know it means something mysterious and daily and beautiful, plus totally human.
Picture it as a post-it note on a fridge.
Hope you enjoy it!
Listen to the poem.
This Is Just To Say (1934)
by William Carlos Williams
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Copyright © 1962 by William Carlos Williams. Used with permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved. No part of this poem may be reproduced in any form without the written consent of the publisher. (Thanks, New Directions!)
More on this autor at Poets.org
Welcome again! 
Welcome again!
Listen to the poem.
Comment the poem at the Dakota in Spain blog.
Read about its author on the TP webpage for Dian Million.
Read here the poem:
The Housing Poem
by Dian Million
Minnie had a house
which had trees in the yard
and lots of flowers
she especially liked the kitchen
because it had a large old cast iron stove
and that
the landlord said was the reason
the house was so cheap.
Pretty soon Minnie's brother Rupert came along
and his wife Onna
and they set up housekeeping in the living room
on the fold-out couch,
so the house warmed and rocked
and sang because Minnie and Rupert laughed a lot.
Pretty soon their mom Elsie came to live with them too
because she liked being with the laughing young people
and she knew how the stove worked the best.
Minnie gave up her bed and slept on a cot.
Well pretty soon
Dar and Shar their cousins came to town looking for work.
They were twins
the pride of Elsie's sister Jo
and boy could those girls sing. They pitched a tent under
the cedar patch in the yard
and could be heard singing around the house
mixtures of old Indian tunes and country western.
When it was winter
Elsie worried
about her mother Sarah
who was still living by herself in Moose Glen back home.
Elsie went in the car with Dar and Shar and Minnie and Rupert and got her.
They all missed her anyway and her funny stories.
She didn't have any teeth
so she dipped all chewable items in grease
which is how they're tasty she said.
She sat in a chair in front of the stove usually
or would cook up a big pot of something for the others.
By and by Rupert and Onna had a baby who they named Lester,
or nicknamed Bumper, and they were glad that Elsie and Sarah
were there to help.
One night the landlord came by
to fix the leak in the bathroom pipe
and was surprised to find Minnie, Rupert and Onna, Sarah and Elsie, Shar and Dar all singing around the drum next
to the big stove in the kitchen
and even a baby named Lester who smiled waving a big greasy piece of dried fish.
He was disturbed
he went to court to evict them
he said the house was designed for single-family occupancy
which surprised the family
because that's what they thought they were.
Welcome to the TP Podcast!
Listen to Part 1
Read the thank you sentences on this TP link
Read the thank you notes on this TP link
In this episode devoted to useful language we can use in letters (but also when we speak, sure!), I’ll change the procedure. Because it contains mostly drilling (the same structure with changes in some words), I won’t be repeating each sentence twice, just once. However, so that you can practice Functional Translation the second time you listen to this episode, supposing you’re a Spanish speaker, I’ll be saying a similar sentence in Spanish before saying the sentence in English.
This episode has two sections: first, a one-page list of useful sentences to thank people different kinds of things. Then, 6 different thank you notes or letters you could learn to be fluent in! If you wish to write Thank You Notes and Letters please, post them on the TP Forum for corrections or feedback, and let’s see if we can publish them later. Some other day, we’ll publish Part 2 of the Thank you recording (work issues).
Welcome to the TP Podcast! Listen to this episode. Check out the podcast to see the pictures. Here is the text:
It’s taken over 20 centuries for us as societies to start questioning the gender system – those ideas, shaping feelings and attitudes, and ways to relate to each other and organize life within our society which establish that there is a difference in terms of rights and worth between men and women, this is, that there are two kinds of human beings, and that women are second-class people.
Traditions (always based on religious dogmas!) insist on that, cruelly, 
unfairly, irrationally, contradicting the most precious achievement of human understanding: human rights. They exert constant pressure on us so we won’t allow the system to change. But as a species, we’re beginning to realize it’s a system we don’t want, because it is unfair and we could do better designing our lives and our interaction. 
The gender system encourages violence against women because that is part of its foundation, and violence here should be taken in its complex sense, including more than physical violence and the violence society exerts when it ostracizes people just because their ideas or identity do not comply to the mentality prevailing in society. So it’s violent…
* to force people to be what they don’t want to be (e.g. a woman is…, a man is…),
* to force people to lead a lifestyle they don’t want to lead (e.g. being forced to have children or to die because reproductive rights are established by machista people
, who do not value women’s 
lives; or
having to fight for your own and other people’s survival, with no recognition ever, subject to rape and other forms of torture, all just because a bunch of 
immoral and cruel people are taking all the resources and consider other people are there just to be abused in every way), [Sorry, I'm thinking about Africa - heartbreaking] 
* to force people to relate in their private lives to whom they don’t want to relate (e.g. serving as sexual slaves or maids in the home, or being the punch bag for men who think they have the right to beat up women; or being subject to social pressure on their sexual life because machismo does not respect women’s choices in this matter),
* to force people to do what they don’t want to do (e.g. not be able to study, not to have actual 
access to certain paid work and be forced to take up certain other jobs),
t that last year a bill was passed on this – check this out -- some people refuse to use the feminine suffix when they address women. Their violent refusal 
points to the fact of how important language is for our conceptual system and for how we relate to people. Naming implies existence. And if women have started to exist, to be visible in society beyond the roles they were forced into by the gender system, language needs to make that visible).
e use of our intelligence, not through violence. But the world we live in bombs us with images of violence so that we never give intelligence a chance, so that we consider violence unavoidable. Women have fought, and some people in the world have fought, without using violence. Violence is not unavoidable. That’s a primitive idea, based on the conviction that violence is better than using our intelligence. Are we really so little intelligent? The 
human rights movement, including feminism, which is a human rights movement focused on overcoming gender discrimination, has been the most successful nonviolent social transformation so far, bu
t its work, its impact, though greater than ever, is far from being safe, understood by all.
s from their struggle, they get no recognition, and they don’t care, but it’s unfair they are never acknowledged as what they are: people 
contributing to building a truly civilized world. I’d also like to say thank you to all those people who, not considering themselves feminists, do support in their daily attitudes, words, ideas, and actions a world where discrimination for reasons of sex is rejected.
women thinkers, artists, activists... Women’s brains are human brains. It’s that they haven’t been welcome, and that they have been severely repressed, punished. Nothing has encouraged women to perform certain activities and everything has been traditionally against women performing certain activities. Human kind needs to listen to women, too. There’s lots to catch up in terms of listening to women! We people need to listen to men and women who are criticizing all the violence in our systems, because building a better world cannot be done through the use of violence (aren’t you absolutely saturated with all this violence?). It can 
only be done through the use of intelligence. Even if it’s a minority understanding this idea, it’s possible to get our message through, because even though we’ve been trained to see what we believe in, and not what is there, our mind is capable of seeing what is there.
transformative. Don’t let confusion lead your way. Communicate. Rational caring dialogue helps us think better. Let’s make the most 
of our lives by using intelligent freedom, and tender solidarity. All human beings should have the chance to be happy. Use it if you 
This episode is devoted to communicative strategies, fluency and correction in conversations. Sentences are taken from the TP section called “Useful Language - Conversations”. We will deal with all of this parting from the different language functions we need to perform while communicating, such as clarifying and the like. This episode is divided into 3 parts.
Listen to Part 2
Read Part 2. Agreeing, Sitting on the Fence, Showing You Follow and Making Comments to accompany the person who is speaking, Inviting People to Speak
Welcome to the TP Podcast! A few weeks ago, CPG, a fifth year (Y5) student at the state-run language school where we meet up, gave me a little present – The New York Times Magazine, the 15th of jan issue, 2006, which is where I found the story I’d like to read today to you all. It’s called “House of Light and Shadow” and it was written by Nicholas Gage, an author I don’t know and who I had never read before. So it’s been a discovery, and a pleasure! I like the story because it includes childhood memories, dreams, a house in an open landscape, which I imagine very beautiful because it’s in Greece, and it also includes thoughts and feelings you get throughout your life, as you grow older. I really like that.
I hope this inspires you to write about your own childhood memories, so you can practice using the past tenses, including the modals! You could just write short 150-word pieces, and send them to the Talking People Website for publication! (Check out the TP section Your Stuff to read some!) If you do, remember to type in the subject line “TP contribution”.
So, here it goes. Enjoy!
Listen to the story. Read the article.
Her Kind
By Anne Sexton
Listen to this poem
I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.
I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.
I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.
The TP webpage on Anne Sexton
This episode is devoted to communicative strategies, fluency and correction in conversations. Sentences are taken from the TP section called “Useful Language - Conversations”. We will deal with all of this parting from the different language functions we need to perform while communicating, such as clarifying and the like. This episode is divided into 3 parts.
Listen to Part 1
Read Part 1. Asking for Clarification and Getting More Information, Checking for Comprehension
If you’re interested in improving your ability to discuss ideas with people who do not think like you do, please check out this TP website section: Speaking – Discussions. It is true we cannot do much when people refuse to listen or insist in interpreting we’re hurting them with our words, especially when these are critical thinking. We cannot do much in what does not depend on us. But we can try to develop a constructive attitude and approach to discussions, and also some useful skills. These notes are based on workshops on problem-solving, negotiation and nonviolent communication, and on the application of their contents in communicative language lessons.
Our upcoming episodes are:
Part 2. Agreeing, Sitting on the Fence, Showing You Follow and Making Comments to accompany the person who is speaking, Inviting People to Speak
Part 3. Defending a Position, Disagreeing & Challenging a Position,
Problem-solving, reaching an agreement, moving on, recapitulating
Post your questions and comments here, or on the TP Forum. Thanks for listening. Have a nice day!
Hi everybody!
Listen to lots of questions which will help you to make small talk! Read them on the TP website.
Send in your answers, or post them here, so that we can do a second recording with that, too!
This audio includes some language tips, too: on the New Year’s Resolutions I mention one of the uses of “will” and the good context for practicing comparatives here, then I comment the use of the present perfect + “ever” in the UK and of the past simple + “ever” in the USA. Finally, there’s this language note, on the use of How …? &What … like?
With this audio we're pushing our section of Useful Language a bit further, to include... letter-writing!
Why record audios of that? Well, you can learn to read the language we may use in letters. In this way, you'll remember it better. You'll probably consolidate your speaking skills and you are likely to improve in terms of not making certain kind of grammar mistakes -- those "silly mistakes" you always make and that you keep not fixing because you insist in NOT proofreading your work!!! ;D
If you don't know J.D. Salinger, listen to this story. It's a good way to start - it records a key moment in his life and to understand his work. If you already know him, and enjoy his literature, you'll love this story. It's lifelike - daily, undaily, warm and softly funny, very sweet, endlessly sad and tragic.
Check out the Talking People webpage dedicated to Salinger.
Welcome to the Talking People Podcast, an experimental project of talkingpeople.net. We're reaching the 50 subscriptions so thanks for that! We're happy to be of use!
Listen to the second poem we wanted to read, "Wild Geese", by Mary Oliver, from her book "Dreawork". Hope you enjoy it!
Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
If you love literature, you are welcome to visit the Literature section at Talking People.If you have comments on the audio quality of the TP episodes, please post under each episode. Thanks so much!
I put together some useful language for grammar teams. Send in your sentences, so that we can expand this list. I am going to read each sentence twice, so you can listen first and then join me saying the sentence!
You can listen here, and you can read the sentences in the audio here, at the TP website.
Half of this audio is me talking about the writer Leonora Carrington first, and then comes her story "The Debutante," so you can listen to it in two 5-minute sessions!
Listen here.
A Litany for Survival
by Audre Lorde (from The Black Unicorn)
Listen here.
For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children's mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours:
For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother's milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.
And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak
we are afraid our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive
More on Audre Lorde at our Talking People website, in the Literature section.
Hi there!
If you haven't subscribed, listen here.
This is the Talking People Podcast, which we will devote to audios and their transcripts on useful language, or with poems and stories.
Here is our site, Talking People.
Thanks for listening. Enjoy!
