Assignment III_Listening for English News

1. Why are there so many homeless people living on the streets in the United States?

I think there are multiple reasons result in so many homeless persons living on the streets. The most one is regarding to the economic problem of the whole country. Since the economic depression has been spreading all over the world, many people who lose their own job, and it’s difficult for them to find a new job. The family issue might be one reason. Parents don’t usually live with their children, they might live alone. Once they got sick or ran out of money, and their children don’t want to take care of them, the only way they can survive is to live on the streets begging for money. And the other one reason that so many homeless living on the streets might be their personal problem, some of them have the capability to get a job taking care themselves, but they don’t really want to. It’s much easier to beg money on the streets than earning money by themselves.

2. What is the government’s responsibility, if any, to the homeless?

I think the government surely has responsibilities for taking care of the issue of homeless. Since the homeless might caused by the economic problem, government should take effort to improving our economy. To provide more opportunities for work to people, and reduce the amount of the worker who came from other countries. To set up an agency for those homeless who don’t have the ability to take care themselves. To reduce health insurance for those sick aging people. Some of those homeless are miserable for dumping by their own family, our government should be kind to them and try to build up some plans to try to help them.

3. How can the homeless with alcohol, drug, or mental health problems be helped?

It’s really difficult to prevent alcohol, drug and mental health problems for the homeless. They are everywhere. It’s hard to control their number, where they would go and what they usually do everyday. If we don’t really put attention on their alcohol, drug and mental health problems, they might affect other normal citizens in the country. I think the best and easiest way is to watch them all the time. We can set up an organization similar as the police station, and send people to patrol every where the homeless usually hang around. It would cost a lot of manpower and time, but I think that’s the way we could directly observe the behavior of those homeless. Under our observing, they wouldn’t have chance to have illegal trading of alcohol and drugs, and once they become ill such as having mental health problem, the people who watch over the homeless could take them for medical treatment right away.

Assignment II_Listening for English News

Q: If you lived near this mountain, what information about volcanoes do you think you would need to know? What questions might you want to have answered?
A: If I lived near the Mount Saint Helens, the best thing I want to know is what will happened to the mountain. I would really concern about the safety of my family and the whole area near the mountain. I want to know what might happen in the near future. Will it explode? Will it spew out magma? Will it cause an magnitude earthquake? Will it destroy my home? Will it kill the citizen who lives close to her? I need to make sure how bad damage it would result in once the volcano starts to be active. Then I could take some action to prevent those damage, such as moving to somewhere else.

Q: Why do you think that so much attention is being given to the activity at Mount St. Helens?
A: Since Mount St. Helens has been inactive for such a long time, people surely would be surprised about it’s recent explosion. Mount St. Helens once had a nine-hour eruption on May 18th, 1980, caused 57 people died and the shipping channel of the Columbia River blocked 70 miles away. Since it had been made such a huge damage to people, it’s nature for people to concern about the volcano. People are afraid of being hurt by the damage that caused by the volcano again.

Assignment I _Listening for english news

1. Have you or anyone you know ever been to a psychic, fortune-teller or card reader? If so, what happened?

A friend of mine have been to a fortune-teller for asking if she could marry to her current boyfriend. She had been broken up with so many guys, because of that she doesn’t think any of them are her Mr. right. But the current guy seems special to her, so she wants to know if he is the one and could marry him. But the fortune teller gave a negative answer, and told her that the right one might appear in the nearly future. My friend still date with the guy who she thinks is really special to her. Maybe she doesn’t really believe in what the fortune-teller told her.

2. Do you think they are all fakes, or do you think some of them really have special powers? Explain.

No, I don’t think they are all fakes. I have been to fortune-teller a few times. Some of them would told something that happened to me before, and what they told are truly happened. I was really surprised about that, because what they mentioned are things that I haven’t tell others before. How could they know about that? I think that maybe some of them really have special power. The special power is to see your past life and predict your future thing. I don’t know why. But maybe there are some people who have the gift to know lots of things.

3. Would you feel safer going to one that is licensed by your city? Why or why not?

Yes, I would feel much safer going to the fortune-teller who is licensed by the city. Once the fortune-teller is licensed by the city, His or her identity will be notified and stored by the government or some public organization. Their behavior would be under control. They might keep their behavior proper in order not to get punished. For that reason, they would not dare to cheat their client so openly, and we as a client would be safer.

Learning English is never ended up.

By taking Mrs. Yeh’s course, I find that learning English is not as simple as I thought. It needs a lot of skills, attention and patient. It not just reading and remembering those vocabularies and grammas.
There are many ways to help you to understand the contents when you are reading a news. Trying to focus on the keywords and trying to find out the words’ meaning by guessing from the whole paragraph. Trying to make sense of the whole news want to express.
Learning English is just not that easy. Wish one day I could speak English with the pretty accent and body gesture like Mrs. Yeh.