New Year's Traditions Around the World

Barack Obama: African-American

  VOA Learning English presents America’s Presidents. Today we are talking about Barack Obama. He first took office in 2009 and was re-elected in 2012. Because his presidency is so recent, this program will not try to offer a historical perspective. But one part of his legacy is already clear. Obama is the United States’ first African-American president. His father was a black man from Kenya; his mother was a white American from the Midwestern state of Kansas. For many Americans, Obama’s presidency was an important symbol in a country that permitted black people to be enslaved. And, even after the U.S. Constitution officially banned slavery in 1865, African-Americans have been extremely under-represented in the U.S. government.  By 2009, only five African-Americans had ever served in the U.S. Senate – and Obama was one of them. Even many people who did not vote for Obama said his election to the country’s highest office made them proud or hopeful. A public opinion survey immediately after Election Day found that two-thirds of Americans believed that the country’s racial conflicts could be resolved. Early life Obama’s parents met as students at the University of Hawaii. His father had won a scholarship to study economics. His mother went on to earn a degree in math there, as well as a graduate degree. The two married and had a son, whom they named after his father: Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. But the couple soon separated. The older Barack Obama returned to Kenya, where he later died in a car accident. Barack’s mother went on to marry another man. He was from Indonesia. The family moved to Jakarta, and the couple had a daughter named Maya. When Barack was 10, his mother sent him back to Hawaii to live with her parents. She wanted him to get a good education. Barack finished high school in Hawaii, then went on to Occidental College in Los Angeles. After two years, he transferred to Columbia University in New York. There, he completed a degree in political science. But Obama said the best education he received was in one of his first jobs. He worked as a community organizer in Chicago. He helped people who lived in public housing put pressure on the city government to improve their conditions. Obama later said the work showed him how important it was to understand the legal process. So he entered Harvard Law School. Over the next years, Obama worked as a lawyer, wrote a book about his experience as a person of mixed race, and married Michelle Robinson, a woman he worked with at a law firm. She and Barack Obama settled in Chicago and had two daughters, Malia and Sasha. When he was in his mid-30s, Obama began his political career. He was elected three times to the Illinois state senate. After 10 years there, he won a seat in the U.S. Senate in a landslide victory. That same year, Obama attended the Democratic National Convention – the meeting where the party officially nominates a presidential candidate. Obama was not one of the candidates. But the Democrats asked him to make an important speech. In it, Obama famously talked about how his life story was an American story. He said he was confident the U.S. could overcome its divisions and achieve unity. “There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America,” he said. “…There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America. There’s a United States of America.” Only four years later, Obama would be elected its 44th president. I’m Kelly Jean Kelly. Kelly Jean Kelly wrote this story for Learning English. Hai Do was the editor. _______________________________________________________________ Listening Quiz   See how well you understand the story by taking this listening quiz. Play each video, then choose the best answer. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story   perspective - n. a way of thinking about and understanding something firm - n. a business organization liberal - adj. believing that government should be active in supporting social and political change conservative - adj. believing in the value of established and traditional practices in politics and society

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World's First Nuclear Fusion Reactor 50 Percent Complete

At the Geneva Superpower Summit in November 1985, American President Ronald Reagan met with the Soviet Union's General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. The two leaders discussed international diplomacy and the arms race.  Gorbachev proposed to Reagan an idea for an international project to develop fusion energy for peaceful purposes  One year later, international leaders reached an agreement: the Soviet Union, Japan, the U.S., and the European Union would work together to design a large international fusion center. Later, other countries joined the agreement. Some 30 years after Gorbachev and Reagan's meeting, the project is continuing. The facility, named the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER, is often called the most complicated scientific instrument in the world. ITER is being built in southern France. And now, the director of the ITER project says the facility is 50% complete and on track to produce low-cost energy. This energy will come from what is basically a very small star at ITER’s core. Although small, it will burn 10 times hotter than the Sun. Fission and fusion All of the nuclear reactors in the world depend on nuclear fission to create energy. Nuclear fission uses the splitting of uranium atoms to create a lot of heat. The process creates a lot of energy but also dangerous radiation. ITER is different. It aims to use the power of nuclear fusion – the forceful joining of hydrogen atoms to create helium atoms. The fusion process releases a lot of heat but very little radiation. The biggest problem is that nuclear fusion requires conditions similar to the core of a star – although on a much smaller scale. Bernard Bigot is the director of ITER. He describes the extreme conditions scientists must create for fusion to take place: "The plasma will be at 150 million degrees. Very little quantity, very small quantity of matter, only 2 grams of hydrogen but with very high temperature. And we need to confine this plasma in order that is could fuse, which means collide and produce new atoms." Scientists are building electromagnets nearly 300 thousand times stronger than earth's magnetic field. These electromagnets will help keep the superhot plasma in the center of a tube. The job of building ITER is so huge that it requires the cooperation of 36 countries. The European Union is covering 45 percent of the cost. The final price will likely be more than $26 billion. The U.S. covers about nine percent of the total cost. But, proposed budget cuts would reduce U.S. financing by half. However, President Donald Trump has asked his administration to reconsider the budget cuts. If financing is not reduced, the first plasma ignition at ITER may happen as soon as 2025. The current plan is for full power production by 2035. I'm John Russell.   George Putic reported on this story for VOA News. John Russell adapted it for Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section. _______________________________________________________________ Quiz Now, test your understanding by taking this short quiz. ​ ________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story   fission – n. a process in which the nucleus of a heavy atom is split apart plasma – n. a substance that is similar to a gas but that can carry electricity electromagnet – n. a piece of metal that becomes magnetic when an electric current is passed through or near it

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Restaurants to Offer Free Food from Leftovers

  Massimo Bottura is an Italian chef, with plans to open two new restaurants in Paris and Naples next year. But wealthy diners will not be welcome. The food will be free, made from marketplace leftovers and served only to the poor. Bottura’s Refettorio Ambrosiano restaurant in Milan already feeds the poor and homeless.  The restaurant is in an old theater in the outskirts of the city. Chefs at Refettorio cook free meals with leftovers from local shops. They use recipes created by Bottura and other famous cooks. Bottura told the Reuters news agency that he never thought leftover foods were a waste. “Bread crumbs, some overripe tomatoes, brown bananas…they are just opportunities for us…to show what we can do with our creativity.” Bottura started the project to reuse leftovers from the eateries of Milan’s international Expo in 2015. The project receives support from the church foundation Caritas Ambrosiana. Unlike traditional soup kitchens, the guests do not have to wait in a line to receive food. Everyone gets served at tables. This limits the number of daily guests to 96.  But Bottura says the experience can help his guests regain confidence and take back control of their lives. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says about one-third of the food produced worldwide each year is wasted or lost. I’m Jonathan Evans.   Francesca Landini and Agnieszka Flak reported this story for the Reuters news agency. Jonathan Evans adapted it for Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor. _______________________________________________________________ Words in this Story   confidence – n. a feeling or belief that you can do something well or succeed at something creativity – n. the ability to make new things or think of new ideas foundation – n. an organization that is created and supported with money that people give in order to do something that helps society outskirts – n. the parts of a city or town that are far from the center soup kitchen – n. a place that gives food, such as soup and bread to poor people

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New Year Celebrations Around the World

New Zealand, Australia, and surrounding Pacific Islands were among the first places to ring in 2018 with fireworks displays, parties, and other festivities. Nearly 1.5 million people gathered to watch a rainbow fireworks display above Sydney's iconic Harbour Bridge and opera house.

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Everyday Grammar: Sign up, Sign in

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America's Presidents - Barack Obama

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2017: A Year Marked by Disaster, Violence

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College Admissions: Searching for Financial Support

  Higher education in the United States has never been more costly. The College Board is an independent organization that supports the growth of higher education in the U.S. It says that the average cost to attend a public, four-year American college or university has increased more than 300 percent in the last 30 years. Most American colleges and universities do offer some form of financial assistance to their students. However, not all schools offer aid in the same way, and not all students are able receive the same kind of aid, says Loutfi Jarari. He is the associate dean of academic life and director of international recruitment at DePauw University, a private liberal arts college in Indiana. Jirari says there are several types of financial assistance that colleges and universities offer students. There is aid that schools award to students with strong academic records. Schools also give special awards to students who are especially skilled at a sport, musical instrument, or other activity. Jarari says the financial aid process can be complex, no matter what kind of assistance a student is seeking. It demands just as much attention as any other part of the college application process. Students should consider several things before sending in any aid application materials, Jarari says. For example, there are two main types of colleges and universities in the United States: public and private. Public universities are controlled by the states in which they are located. Private schools are independently operated. What does this mean in terms of applying for financial aid? For both domestic and international students, Jarari says, there is a world of difference. He should know; he was once an international student himself. Born in Morocco, Jarari attended one year of college in his home country before finishing his higher education at Southern Illinois University, a public research university. He says most public American universities do not offer any financial aid to international students. That is because those schools have special responsibilities to students living in-state. “State universities have to serve the needs of the students in the state and the students in the U.S. first and foremost,” Jarari told VOA. “They are, of course, very, very open to having international students. But they are not able to give financial aid because they just don’t have that … for international students…Private universities don’t have to follow everything that is dictated by the states.” So, Jarari says, the first step for both domestic and international students should be to ask what a school offers. He suggests contacting schools’ financial aid offices directly. Applicants can get answers to questions they may have about the school’s financial aid availability. Jarari also notes that financial aid offices and admissions offices often work together. Any time an applicant contacts and communicates with a school directly, the school sees it as a good sign.    “When they ask questions…we give them points,” Jarari said. “That is a sign that the student cares about the university, and for us, we use those points to decide admission and also to decide scholarships.” Jirari says that students usually apply for financial aid from a university at the same time that they apply for admission. This is typically in the fall term of their final year of high school. American citizens can apply for financial aid from both the U.S. government and their college or university of choice. They do so by completing a Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. International students must apply for financial aid through one of two other methods. They can use the College Board’s College Scholarship Service, or CSS, Profile. They can also use the International Student Financial Aid Application. Almost all U.S. colleges and universities use at least one of these methods to determine how much aid they will give to students, Jirari says. The main difference between the two is that the CSS Profile costs about $25 for the first school students apply to, and about $16 for each additional school. The International Student Financial Aid Application is free. But Jirari says that neither method is necessarily better than the other. He says that the FAFSA, the CSS Profile and the International Student Financial Aid Application all ask for the same kind of information. That information includes detailed proof of how much money, property and other assets a student’s family possesses. They also ask students to report the number of siblings a student has so schools know if their family is supporting more than one college student. Jirari notes that completing these application materials correctly is very important. For example, students must make sure that all their family’s financial information is reported using the value in American dollars. Otherwise the student risks making it appear that their family is wealthier than they actually are. Also, he says, students must make sure all the documents they provide the school match the ones they use in their visa application. If a student does not tell the full truth on every part of their application, the school can and will find out. That can create serious problems. “I’ve seen so many instances for both domestic and international students where students might try to hide an asset, thinking they will get more scholarship,” he said “But what that causes is for us to see that student is being untruthful. And in a lot of instances we will deny that student.” In the end, schools do not want money to be a barrier to getting an education. They will give as much aid as they feel is reasonable, Jirari says. But students must fully understand how much a college or university costs. He notes that some schools only list their basic costs of attending classes on their websites without including other costs, such as housing. That is another reason why student should ask financial aid officers questions during every step of the process. The student can then compare how much a college or university truly costs to how much aid they are offering.   I’m ­Pete Musto. And I’m Dorothy Gundy.   Pete Musto wrote this report for Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor. How common is it for colleges and universities in your country to offer financial aid? What is the process of applying for financial aid like? We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story   academic – adj. of or relating to schools and education recruitment – n. to find people with the qualities that are right, needed, or appropriate for a company, school, organization, or the armed forces and get them to join application – n. a formal and usually written request for something, such as a job, admission to a school, or a loan domestic – adj. of, relating to, or made in your own country world of difference – idm. a big difference dictate(d) – v. to make something necessary admissions – n. the act or process of accepting someone as a student at a school scholarship(s) – n. an amount of money that is given by a school or an organization, to a student to help pay for the student's education asset(s) – n. something that is owned by a person or company sibling(s) – n. a brother or sister instance(s) – n. a brother or sister

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How Will You 'Ring in the New Year?'

Hello and welcome to the VOA Learning English program Words and Their Stories. Everyone around the world celebrates the New Year differently and at different times. Most people in the U.S. celebrate it on January 1. But they may also observe New Year traditions from other religions or cultures. For example, many Asian cultures celebrate the Lunar New Year. This date changes from year to year. The date of the Islamic New Year also changes from year to year. And in India, each religious group has its own date for the beginning of the year. For example, the Hindu New Year comes in April or May. No matter when you celebrate the New Year, it usually involves thinking about the past year and planning for the year ahead. People have many different ways of ringing out the old and ringing in the new. But why are bells linked to the calendar change? In the Christian and Buddhist religions, bells are often connected with the New Year. The website CatholicCulture.org explains that "bells serve as a beautiful symbol introducing a new year to be spent together as a community of families ..." Another website describes how bells are used in Japan on New Year's Eve. "As midnight approaches, Buddhist temples around the country begin ringing out the old year, sounding the temple bell 108 times." Each ring of the bell stands for each of the earthly desires a Buddhist must try to overcome -- all 108 of them! Even those who aren't religious but are a little superstitious, may ring bells at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve to scare off bad luck. These age-old traditions have given us the phrase "to ring out the old and ring in the new." The English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) made the phrase popular with his poem “In Memoriam [Ring Out, Wild Bells].” In this poem, Tennyson rings out, or says farewell to, the bad, and he rings in, or says hello, to the good. Tennyson wrote this poem for Arthur Henry Hallam. The two students met at Cambridge University and quickly became best friends, both showing great promise as writers. Hallam helped Tennyson publish volumes of his poetry in 1830 and 1832. The friends almost became family when Hallam became engaged to the poet’s sister, Emily. However, before they could wed, Hallam died of a brain hemorrhage. He was only twenty-two years old. To remember his good friend, Tennyson wrote the poem “In Memoriam.” He also named one of his two sons Hallam. Here is Jonathan Evans reading the first part of that poem. Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,    The flying cloud, the frosty light:    The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new,    Ring, happy bells, across the snow:    The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true. Ring out the grief that saps the mind    For those that here we see no more;    Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind. Ring out a slowly dying cause,    And ancient forms of party strife;    Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws. Thanks, Jonathan. And thank you, our listeners, for the time you have spent reading and listening to Words and Their Stories these past twelve months. We here at VOA Learning English wish all of you a happy start to the New Year.   For the New Year, what do you plan to ring out and what do you plan to ring in? Also in the coming New Year, what words, expressions or phrases would you like to learn more about? Let us know in the Comments Sections. I'm Anna Matteo.   All of those who are hither and yonder With love in our hearts We grow fonder and fonder Hail to those who we hold so dear And hail to those who are gathered here And a happy new year to all that is living To all that is gentle, young, and forgiving Raise your glass and we'll have a cheer My dear acquaintance, a happy new year Happy new year   Anna Matteo wrote this story. Kelly Jean Kelly was the editor. At the end of the story, Regina Spektor sings “My Dear Acquaintance (A Happy New Year).” _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story   desire – n. the feeling of wanting something superstitious – adj. of, relating to, or influenced by superstition superstition – n. a belief or way of behaving that is based on fear of the unknown and faith in magic or luck : a belief that certain events or things will bring good or bad luck stroke – n. the sound of a bell being struck (The bell rung at the stroke of twelve.) hemorrhage – n. a condition in which a person bleeds too much and cannot stop the flow of blood frosty – adj. cold enough to produce frost sap – v. to use up the supply of (something, such as a person's courage, energy, strength, etc.) feud – n. a long and angry fight or quarrel between two people or two groups redress – v. to correct (something that is unfair or wrong) noble – adj. having, showing, or coming from personal qualities that people admire (such as honesty, generosity, courage, etc.) mode – n. a particular form or type of something (such as transportation or behavior) manner – n. behavior while with other people

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2017: A Year Marked by Disaster, Violence

  The year 2017 has been a good year for bad news. Media personality Marian Salzman called it a year of “disruption, despair and dumpster fires.” In other words, it has been a difficult year, marked by violence, natural disasters and political disagreement. Gun violence, attacks claim lives around the world The year started off with bad news; a gunman attacked a nightclub in Istanbul, Turkey, during a New Year’s celebration. Thirty-nine people were killed and many more were injured. Vehicles were used as weapons in several major attacks this year. A truck bombing in the Somali capital, Mogadishu claimed hundreds of lives. In June, a truck was also used in an attack in Westminster and London Bridge in London, killing eight people. Similar attacks took place in Stockholm, Sweden, Barcelona, Spain and New York City. In each case, extremists were blamed. Terrorists targeted Egyptian Coptic Christians in two attacks in April. Then, in November over 300 people were killed in an attack on a Muslim place of worship in continuing religious violence in Egypt. In Britain, a suicide attack killed 22 people in a bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester. Shooting violence again left a mark of tragedy in the United States. In November, a man opened fire in a church in rural Texas, killing 25 people. In Las Vegas, Nevada, a gunman aimed at a nearby music concert from a tall hotel building, killing 58 people. The attack was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Storms, fires, quakes leave costly damage Natural disasters were also notable. Three powerful storms struck the Caribbean Sea and the southern United States in a short period of time.   Hurricane Harvey struck the city of Houston, Texas, in August, causing widespread flooding and damage. Two other hurricanes, Irma and Maria, struck Caribbean islands, the state of Florida and the southern U.S. More than three months later, tens of thousands remain without power on the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. Powerful storms also struck the Philippines and Vietnam, bringing with them damage and heavy loss of life. Wildfires proved to be costly and dangerous events. Fires burned large areas in Portugal as well as in the central and southern parts of the state of California. Paths of danger for civilians, refugees Migration and refugees fleeing violence remained a major problem in 2017. Amnesty International estimates that 73,000 refugees from Africa and the Middle East tried to cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe. Two thousand refugees are believed to have died along the way.   News stories brought attention to the situation of ethnic Rohingya people in Myanmar. It is believed that 626,000 people have fled to Bangladesh to escape ethnic violence involving the military in Myanmar. Civil war in Yemen has brought hunger, disease and poor conditions to millions in the country. Saudi Arabia put in place -- and then promised to ease -- a blockade on the country’s seaports and airports. The blockade prevents humanitarian aid from getting to Yemen. Political crisis and change The political crisis in Venezuela continues, as those opposed to President Nicolas Maduro have taken to the streets in protest. Large numbers have fled South America’s most troubled economy in search of jobs in other countries, including neighboring Brazil. In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe was ousted in November after leading one of Africa’s most economically troubled nations for 37 years.   In Spain, efforts by Catalonians to seek independence led to new elections and the ouster of the autonomous area’s president. Pro-independence groups gained a narrow majority in the latest elections. A similar vote for independence by the Kurdish area of Iraq resulted in the central government seizing oil producing areas. The Kurdish president resigned and the area government withdrew the results of the vote. Sharp changes in policies The election of Donald Trump in 2016 brought with it many policy changes for the United States. Trump ordered strong restrictions on immigration from several Muslim-majority countries. He pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement with Pacific area nations. And in June, he said the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, a non-binding deal to limit the rise in world temperatures.   Japan has sought to change its pacifist constitution to permit an expanded military. And South Korea permitted the deployment of the THAD anti-missile system over China’s objection. North Korea has raised tensions on the Korean Peninsula to a new level, with several long-range missile tests and a suspected hydrogen bomb underground explosion. In late November, North Korea tested a missile that is believed to be able to reach any part of the U.S. Sexual wrongdoing accusations top AP’s 2017 news list The Associated Press says the biggest story of 2017 was the wave of well-known and powerful men accused of sexual wrongdoing.   The New York Times published sexual abuse allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein in October. In the weeks since, women and some men have publicly accused others in Hollywood, news media executives, politicians and more of sexual assault or harassment. Among the accused were Kevin Spacey, Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer. Millions of people around the world also used the hashtag #MeToo to tell of their sexual abuse experiences. Minnesota Senator Al Franken and Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore were accused of wrongdoing, each by many women. Franken announced his resignation from the Senate while Moore lost the election. Other U.S. congressmen were also accused; some decided not to seek reelection. And some good news too…   There was cause to celebrate this year in Nigeria, when more than 80 of the young women known as the Chibok girls were released. They had been held for more than three years by the country’s Boko Haram Islamic extremist group. Many of them have renewed their studies by attending the American University of Nigeria. The girls are said to be under the care of the Nigerian government. Other positive developments include the collapse of the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq. And the U.S. economy continued to grow more quickly than expected. Joblessness fell to its lowest level in many years. The good news has many people hoping for a better 2018. You heard from Lucija Milonig, Jill Robbins, Jonathan Evans and Dorothy Gundy. I’m Mario Ritter. T he Associated Press reported this story. Mario Ritter adapted it for VOA Learning English using additional materials. Ashley Thompson was the editor. Dorothy Gundy produced the video. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page. _____________________________________________________________ Words in This Story   disruption –n. something that prevents some activity from going on in the normal way dumpster fires –idiom a very bad situation migration –n. to move from one country or place to another to live without intending to return blockade –n. the act of militarily blocking off a place, city or country to prevent people or supplies from entering or leaving autonomous –adj. having the right to self-government non-binding –adj. not required by law pacifist –adj. not accepting war as a possible solution   hydrogen bomb –n. an atomic bomb that uses hydrogen to increase the power of the explosion assault –n. the crime of trying to or threatening to harm someone physically harassment –n. to annoy or bother in a repeated way  

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Creator of ‘Me Too’ to Start Ball Drop in Times Square

  Around the world in 2017, women and some men used the social media hashtag #MeToo to tell their stories of sexual abuse. To ring in 2018, the creator of “Me Too” will press the button that releases the ball drop in Times Square in New York City. Activist Tarana Burke first used “Me Too” in this way, back in 2006.  More than 10 years later, following the first media reports of sexual abuse by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, American actor Alyssa Milano wrote a message on Twitter. She asked her Twitter followers to write #MeToo if they had experienced sexual assault or harassment. The tweet spread worldwide. A movement was born, one that has seen more people coming forward with their abuse experiences than ever before. Well-known and powerful men in Hollywood, politics, news media and other industries have been accused of sexual wrongdoing. Many have lost their jobs and ended their careers. Milano was quick to give Burke credit for the phrase. And when Time magazine chose the sexual abuse “Silence Breakers” as its 2017 Person of the Year, Milano and Burke appeared together on American television.   Organizers of the Times Square New Year’s Eve event say they chose Burke after looking at some of the year’s major social and political changes. In a statement, Burke said she was “delighted” to take part in the event. “I think it’s fitting to honor the Me Too movement as we close a historic year and set our intentions for 2018,” Burke said. The Times Square New Year’s Eve party is the one of the oldest, biggest and most famous New Year’s celebration in America. The first New Year’s Eve celebration there took place in 1904. The owners of a building on Times Square held that first party on the roof of their building. Three years later, a New Year’s ball joined the celebration. I’m Ashley Thompson. _____________________________________________________________ Words in This Story   hashtag- n. a word or phrase that starts with the symbol # and that briefly indicates what a message (such as a tweet) is about sexual assault - n.  the crime of touching someone in an unwanted sexual way harassment - n. the act of bothering someone in a repeated way delighted - adj. made very happy : full of great pleasure or satisfaction  

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English in a Minute: Off the Grid

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2017 in Arts and Culture: A Woman's Place

  One theme dominated the year in arts and culture: women. Tens of millions of women around the world started the year with protest marches on January 21. The demonstrators called for equal rights and demanded action to end sexism and violence against women. Many of them, especially in the United States, also marched to protest Donald Trump, who had been sworn in as president one day earlier.  ​ The demonstrations took place on every continent on Earth, in hundreds of cities and towns: Paris, France, Belgrade, Serbia; Kolkata, India; Bangkok, Thailand; Lima, Peru and Irbil, Iraq, to name just a few. #Metoo Later in the year, the #metoo movement exploded on social media. First started by activist Tarana Burke 10 years ago, and reignited by actor Alyssa Milano in October, #metoo was a call for women to post about their experiences with sexual harassment, abuse and assault on Twitter, Facebook and other sites. The movement followed accusations of sexual wrongdoing against Hollywood movie producer Harvey Weinstein. He was dismissed from the company he founded as a result. Accusations against other many other powerful men in entertainment, music, news media, politics and business followed. So did job dismissals and other punishment. The continuing actions are popularly referred to as “The Reckoning.” Earlier this month, Time magazine honored the women of the #metoo movement. It named the so-called “Silence Breakers” the Time Person of the Year. Time praised the women for giving “voice to open secrets, for moving whisper networks onto social media, for pushing us all to stop accepting the unacceptable.” Women star in film and television Women and women’s stories moved to the front of film and television, too. In June, the movie Wonder Woman was released. Parents were eager to take their little girls and boys to see a female action hero in a big-budget movie, one that was also directed by a woman. Director Patty Jenkins delivered: Wonder Woman made more than $400 million in ticket sales in the United States. In fact, it was the third-biggest money-maker among the year’s movies. Jenkins was one of many female directors of 2017. Women were in charge of more than 60 films, including Before I Fall, Lady Bird, and Battle of the Sexes. There was also a flood of women on television. In April, the streaming service Hulu offered The Handmaid’s Tale. The television series is based on the novel by Canadian writer and feminist Margaret Atwood. The book describes a dystopian future in which women are forced into single, narrow roles, such as childbearers, wives or cooks. The female rage represented in the show seemed well timed amid the real-world cultural climate women were facing. The HBO show Big Little Lies is a mystery focusing on the lives and interactions of five women in Monterey, California. She’s Gotta Have It, on Netflix, centers on Nola Darling, a sexually free artist living in Brooklyn. Female characters are also leads in HBO’s The Deuce, the CW’s Supergirl and Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Word of the Year Every December, the Merriam-Webster online dictionary names a word of the year, based on the highest number of searches. Merriam-Webster’s 2017 Word of the Year is "feminism.” Online searches for “feminism” increased 70 percent from 2016 to 2017. There were large increases in searches following the Women’s March, during the broadcast of The Handmaid’s Tale and after the release of Wonder Woman. Searches also rose with reports of sex abuse in Hollywood and elsewhere. Merriam-Webster defines feminism as the “theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes” and “organized activities on behalf of women’s rights and interests.”   I’m Ashley Thompson. And I'm Caty Weaver.   Caty Weaver wrote this story for VOA Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor. Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story   theme – n. a particular subject or issue that is discussed often or repeatedly​ dominate – v.  to be the most important part of (something)​; to have control of or power over​ harassment – n. the act of of annoying or bothering (someone) in a constant or repeated way​ assault – n. the crime of hurting someone physically​ reignite - v. to give new life or energy to (someone or something) reckoning - n. the time when your actions are judged as good or bad and you are rewarded or punished​ whisper networks – n. a space where unofficial discussion or report of wrongdoing can take place dystopian – adj. referring to an imaginary place where people are unhappy and usually afraid because they are not treated fairly​ childbearer – n. one who carries and gives birth to a baby  

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'Feathertop,' by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Our story today is called “Feathertop.” It was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Lawan Davis adapted it for VOA Learning English. Here is Shep O’Neal with the story.  The long cold winter was gone at last.  At first the cold nights went away slowly. Then suddenly, the warm days of spring started to come. There was new life again in the earth. Things started to grow and come up. For the first time, green corn plants began to show. They pushed through the soil and could now be seen above the ground. After the long winter months, the crows, the big black birds, were hungry. And when they saw the little green plants, they flew down to eat them. Old Mother Rigby tried to make the noisy and hungry birds go away. They made her very angry. She did not want the black birds to eat her corn. But the birds would not go away. So, early one morning, just as the sun started to rise, Mother Rigby jumped out of bed. She had a plan to stop those black birds from eating her corn. Mother Rigby could do anything. She was a witch, a woman with strange powers. She could make water run uphill, or change a beautiful woman into a white horse. Many nights when the moon was full and bright, she could be seen flying over the tops of the houses in the village, sitting on a long wooden stick. It was a broomstick, and it helped her to do all sorts of strange tricks. Mother Rigby ate a quick breakfast and then started to work on her broomstick. She was planning to make something that would look like a man. It would fill the birds with fear, and scare them from eating her corn, the way most farmers protect themselves from those black, pesky birds. Mother Rigby worked quickly. She held her magic broomstick straight, and then tied another piece of wood across it. And already, it began to look like a man with arms. Then she made the head. She put a pumpkin, a vegetable the size of a football, on top of the broomstick. She made two small holes in the pumpkin for eyes, and made another cut lower down that looked just like a mouth. At last, there he was. He seemed ready to go to work for Mother Rigby and stop those old birds from eating her corn. But, Mother Rigby was not happy with what she made. She wanted to make her scarecrow look better and better, for she was a good worker. She made a purple coat and put it around her scarecrow, and dressed it in white silk stockings. She covered him with false hair and an old hat.  And in that hat, she stuck the feather of a bird. She examined him closely, and decided she liked him much better now, dressed up in a beautiful coat, with a fine feather on top of his hat. And, she named him Feathertop. She looked at Feathertop and laughed with happiness. He is a beauty, she thought. “Now what?” she thought, feeling troubled again.  She felt that Feathertop looked too good to be a scarecrow. “He can do something better,” she thought, “than just stand near the corn all summer and scare the crows.” And she decided on another plan for Feathertop. She took the pipe of tobacco she was smoking and put it into the mouth of Feathertop. “Puff, darling, puff,” she said to Feathertop. “Puff away, my fine fellow.” It is your life.” Smoke started to rise from Feathertop’s mouth. At first, it was just a little smoke, but Feathertop worked hard, blowing and puffing. And, more and more smoke came out of him. “Puff away, my pet,” Mother Rigby said, with happiness. “Puff away, my pretty one. Puff for your life, I tell you.” Mother Rigby then ordered Feathertop to walk. “Go forward,” she said. “You have a world before you.” Feathertop put one hand out in front of him, trying to find something for support. At the same time he pushed one foot forward with great difficulty. But Mother Rigby shouted and ordered him on, and soon he began to go forward. Then she said, “you look like a man, and you walk like a man. Now I order you to talk like a man.” Feathertop gasped, struggled, and at last said in a small whisper, “Mother, I want to speak, but I have no brain. What can I say?” “Ah, you can speak,” Mother Rigby answered. “What shall you say? Have no fear. When you go out into the world, you will say a thousand things, and say them a thousand times…and saying them a thousand times again and again, you still will be saying nothing. So just talk, babble like a bird. Certainly you have enough of a brain for that.” Mother Rigby gave Feathertop much money and said “Now you are as good as any of them and can hold your head high with importance.” But she told Feathertop that he must never lose his pipe and must never let it stop smoking. She warned him that if his pipe ever stopped smoking, he would fall down and become just a bundle of sticks again. “Have no fear, Mother,” Feathertop said in a big voice and blew a big cloud of smoke out of his mouth. “On your way,” Mother Rigby said, pushing Feathertop out the door. “The world is yours. And if anybody asks you for your name, just say Feathertop. For you have a feather in your hat and a handful of feathers in your empty head.” Feathertop found the streets in town, and many people started to look at him. They looked at his beautiful purple coat and his white silk stockings, and at the pipe he carried in his left hand, which he put back into his mouth every five steps he walked. They thought he was a visitor of great importance. “What a fine, noble face” one man said. “He surely is somebody,” said another. “A great leader of men.” As Feathertop walked along one of the quieter streets near the edge of town, he saw a very pretty girl standing in front of a small red brick house. A little boy was standing next to her. The pretty girl smiled at Feathertop, and love entered her heart. It made her whole face bright with sunlight. Feathertop looked at her and had a feeling he never knew before. Suddenly, everything seemed a little different to him. The air was filled with a strange excitement. The sunlight glowed along the road, and people seemed to dance as they moved through the streets. Feathertop could not stop himself, and walked toward the pretty smiling young girl. As he got closer, the little boy at her side pointed his finger at Feathertop and said, “Look, Polly! The man has no face. It is a pumpkin.” Feathertop moved no closer, but turned around and hurried through the streets of the town toward his home. When Mother Rigby opened the door, she saw Feathertop shaking with emotion.  He was puffing on his pipe with great difficulty and making sounds like the clatter of sticks, or the rattling of bones. “What’s wrong?” Mother Rigby asked. “I am nothing, Mother. I am not a man. I am just a puff of smoke. I want to be something more than just a puff of smoke.” And Feathertop took his pipe, and with all his strength smashed it against the floor. He fell down and became a bundle of sticks as his pumpkin face rolled toward the wall. “Poor Feathertop,” Mother Rigby said, looking at the heap on the floor. “He was too good to be a scarecrow. And he was too good to be a man. But he will be happier, standing near the corn all summer and protecting it from the birds. So I will make him a scarecrow again.” Download activities to help you understand this story here. We want to hear from you. Have you ever met someone that later turned to be different from how you first thought of them? Let us know in the comments section or on our Facebook page. _______________________________________________________________ QUIZ _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story   broomstick - n. the handle of a broom pesky - adj. making someone annoyed or irritated pumpkin - n. a large, round, orange vegetable used as food and sometimes as a decoration — often used before another noun scarecrow - n. an object that looks like a person and that is placed in a field to scare birds away from crops puff - v. to breathe smoke from a cigarette, pipe, etc., in and out of the lungs  

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Those We Said Goodbye to in 2017

They made you cry and they made you laugh. Some united a country and others divided its people. Here is a look at some of the well-known people who died in the past year: Chuck Berry and Fats Domino were known as founding fathers of rock ‘n’ roll. Musicians Tom Petty and Greg Allman led their musical groups to the top of popular music charts. Glen Campbell was known for country music and Al Jarreau for jazz. They also were among the well-known musicians who died in 2017, leaving a void in music. Jerry Lewis, Don Rickles and Dick Gregory left their own mark on comedy. But the story of the 1960s could not be told without Hugh Hefner and Charles Manson. Hefner founded Playboy magazine and was credited with helping to start the sexual revolution in the 1960s. The decade ended with Manson becoming the face of evil across America. He directed his followers to kill several people in Los Angeles, including American actress Sharon Tate. Notable political figures also died this year. Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl reunited East and West Germany, a country divided by the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. He helped put Germany at the heart of the European Union. Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega who was ousted by a U.S. military action also died in 2017. Ali Abdullah Saleh was Yemen’s president for 33 years. He stepped down in 2012 during the Arab Spring uprisings that swept through the Middle East. He was killed by the Houthie rebels this year. And Cardinal Bernard Law, the former archbishop of Boston, died at age 86. His failure to stop sexual abuse of children by religious workers brought a serious crisis to the American Catholic church. Fans said goodbye to film and television stars in 2017. Mary Tyler Moore changed how women appeared on television in her popular program “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”  Roger Moore was known for playing James Bond and Adam West played the first “batman” on television. Haruo Nakajima played the role of Godzilla in the original 1954 classic movie. Godzilla has gone on to star in movies for more than 60 years. Other notable people who died in 2017 include: Zhou Youguang, a Chinese language expert who died at age 111. Zhou is considered the father of modern China’s Pinyin writing system. The system uses the Roman alphabet to represent Chinese characters based on their pronunciation. Sumiteru Taniguchi spent his life seeking to stop nuclear weapons. He was burned severely in 1945 when an atomic bomb was used on his hometown of Nagasaki, Japan.   Norma McCorvey was the “Jane Roe” in the famous U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, known as Roe versus Wade. She later became an opponent of abortion. Carl Clark was awarded a medal of honor some sixty years after his bravery during World War II. Clark died at age 100. And Otto Warmbier was an American college student who was jailed in North Korea for more than one year. Warmbier fell into a coma and was released by North Korean officials. He died shortly after his return to the U.S. at the age of 22. I’m Jonathan Evans.   Hai Do adapted this story for Learning English based on an Associated Press report. Mario Ritter was the editor. Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page. _____________________________________________________________ Words in This Story   void –n. an empty space abortion –n. medically ending a pregnancy coma –n. a condition in which a sick or injured person cannot wake up for a long time

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S. Korean President Calls Sex Slave Deal with Japan Problematic

  South Korean President Moon Jae-In said Thursday the country’s 2015 agreement with Japan to settle the issue of sexual slavery during World War II is problematic.   Historians say tens of thousands of women from around Asia -- many of them Korean -- were sent to military brothels to provide sex to Japanese soldiers during the war. In his statement, Moon promised to take measures to meet the victims’ demands. This may put the future of the deal in question, two years after both countries called it “final and irreversible.” Moon’s statement came one day after a state-appointed team found that Seoul’s government at the time did not communicate well with the victims before reaching the deal. The team also said parts of the deal were not made public. That includes Japan’s demand that the South Korean government avoid using the term “sexual slavery.” Japan also wants South Korea to provide a plan to remove a statue representing the sex slaves. The statue sits in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. South Korea agreed to officially describe the victims as “victims of Japanese military comfort stations,” but did not make any clear promise about the statue, the team said. “It has been confirmed that the 2015 comfort women negotiation between South Korea had serious flaws, both in process and content,” Moon said in a statement read by his representative. Even though the past deal was an official promise between the two governments, he is declaring that the deal does not resolve issues over the comfort women. His comments suggest that Seoul may seek a new negotiation of the deal. This would anger the Japanese government. Moon also said that issues over history shouldn’t affect efforts to build relations between the countries today or in the future. Some experts say Moon’s government is not likely to launch a diplomatic dispute with Japan by throwing out the deal. They say this is especially true at a time when the two countries must display unity against North Korea’s growing nuclear threat. Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono said on Wednesday that Japan stands by the deal. He said any attempt to change it would make relations between the countries “unmanageable” and “unacceptable.” When asked whether Moon’s statement means a renegotiation may be needed, Seoul’s Foreign Ministry representative Noh Kyu-duk did not give a clear answer. He said only that his government will seek “sincere and practical” measures quickly to again bring honor to the victims. Under the deal, Japan agreed to provide 1 billion yen, or $8.8 million in payments to the surviving victims. South Korea said it would try to resolve Japan’s complaint about the statue in front of the embassy. The deal received sharp criticism in South Korea, where many thought the government settled for too little. Japan has been angry that South Korea hasn’t taken steps to remove the statue and similar monuments in other parts of the country. It said the countries had a clear understanding on the matter. The deal was negotiated under former president Park Geun-hye, who was removed from office and arrested in March on charges of corruption. Moon promised to redo the deal during his presidential campaign. But he has avoided specific details about renegotiations since taking office in May. South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said government officials will hold discussions with victims and experts before deciding whether to try to revise the deal. I’m Alice Bryant. And I’m Jill Robbins   The Associated Press reported this story. Alice Bryant adapted it for Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor. ________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story   brothel – n. a building in which prostitutes are available irreversible - adj. impossible to change back to a previous condition or state comfort - n. a state or feeling of being less worried, upset, frightened, etc., during a time of trouble or emotional pain flaw – n. a small fault or weakness unmanageable - adj. difficult to deal with or control sincere - adj. genuine or real practical - adj. logical and reasonable in a particular situation monument – n. a building or statue that honors a person or event

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What It Takes - Carol Burnett

00:00:00    ALICE WINKLER: Hi, and welcome back to What It Takes. I don’t usually talk about myself on this podcast, but last week I kind of had a grim one, and I really needed a laugh, so when I was looking through the Academy of Achievement’s archive of interviews for which one I was going to feature next, my eyes landed on a name, and I knew this week was going to be a whole lot better. I’m Alice Winkler, and on this week’s episode of What It Takes, Carol Burnett.   00:00:30    CAROL BURNETT: (TARZAN CALL)   00:00:37    OPRAH WINFREY: "Hattie Mae, this child is gifted," and I heard that enough that I started to believe it.   00:00:43    ROGER BANNISTER: If you have the opportunity, not a perfect opportunity, and you don't take it, you may never have another chance.   00:00:49    LAURYN HILL: It all was so clear. It was just, like, the picture started to form itself.   00:00:54    DESMOND TUTU: There was no way in which a lie could prevail over the truth, darkness over light, death over life. 00:01:02    CAROL BURNETT (quoting CARRIE HAMILTON): “Every day I wake up and decide, today I'm going to love my life. Decide.”   00:01:09    JOHNNY CASH: My advice is, if they're going to break your leg once when you go in that place, stay out of there.   00:01:14    JAMES MICHENER: And then along come these differential experiences that you don't look for, you don't plan for, but boy, you’d better not miss them.   00:01:28    ALICE WINKLER: The Carol Burnett Show was appointment TV viewing in my childhood. It aired for 11 years, starting in 1967, well before the era of Saturday Night Live, well after the era of Sid Caesar. It was modern American television sketch comedy with the lingering flavor of vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley. And it was hosted by a woman — groundbreaking in those days — but mostly it was just endearing and hilarious, and still is, as I can attest after many joyful hours of viewing this week.   00:02:03     Exhibit A, Went with the Wind, one of the show’s many Hollywood send-ups, with Burnett as Starlet O’Hara, making her entrance wearing a gown made of curtains, with the curtain rod still attached.   00:02:19    STARLET O'HARA: What brings you to Terra?   00:02:23    CAPTAIN RATT BUTLER: You, you vixen, you. Starlet, I love you. That-that-that gown is gorgeous!   00:02:30    STARLET O'HARA: Thank you. I saw it in the window, and I just couldn't resist it.   00:02:34     ALICE WINKLER: Carol Burnett’s comedy is largely physical. Her face seems elastic, and she can set you off with a single raised eyebrow. So it’s a shame you can’t see the clips I’m going to play, but when you’re done listening to this episode, go right ahead and pull up the Carol Burnett channel on YouTube. Just don’t expect to get any work done for a few hours if you do. Carol Burnett was inducted into the Academy of Achievement in 2014 and sat down with journalist Gail Eichenthal to talk about her TV variety show, her early days on Broadway, and the complicated childhood that preceded it all.   00:03:14     She was born in San Antonio in 1933, and Carol Burnett is her real name, Carol Creighton Burnett.   00:03:22     CAROL BURNETT: Actually, I wanted to change it at one point to Carol Creighton because I thought that sounded good, but then I realized if I ever was successful, I wanted... A boy in school, his name was Tommy Tracy; I was in love with him in junior high school and high school. I thought, "Well, if I am ever successful, I want him to know," so I kept my real name.   00:03:48     GAIL EICHENTHAL: Did he find out?   00:03:49    CAROL BURNETT: Oh, yes.   00:03:51     ALICE WINKLER: Carol Burnett’s mother harbored her own kind of celebrity dreams. She wanted to be a journalist, the kind that interviews movie stars, so when Carol was just a little girl, her parents left Texas for Hollywood, leaving their daughter to be raised by her grandmother.   00:04:08     CAROL BURNETT: She was a hypochondriacal Christian Scientist. She was a character. She loved me more than anything, and she was my rock. And so I found out years later that she had been married six times, but she only told me about three. I was writing a book, and I did some research, and boy, I found out she was quite the swinger. But, she was — we went to the Christian Science church, and I went to the Christian Science Sunday school, but my grandmother was always complaining about her heart skipping beats, and that, you know, she didn’t know if she was going to live another day.   00:04:56     And so if — see, in Christian Science, you are supposed to, what they call, “know the truth.” And the truth is, there is no sickness; there is no death. There is no — you know, but — so I would be talking about, as a kid — you know, she'd be feeling her pulse and everything, and I would be knowing the truth for her, and then if I didn’t know the truth well enough, she would ask me to get the medicine for her.   00:05:24     ALICE WINKLER: So a bit of a character, who survived on government assistance.   00:05:28     CAROL BURNETT: We were poor, and every week somebody would show up and give us a chicken to fry and also hand-me-down clothes for me to wear. And it was fine, but everybody was — it was the Depression, so everyone we knew on our street and in a block in the area, we were all in the same boat, so it wasn’t like I felt deprived. We ate, and I had clothes, and I went to school.   00:05:59     ALICE WINKLER: She did continue to have a relationship with her parents, though a troubled one.   00:06:04     CAROL BURNETT: My dad was an alcoholic from the get-go, from high school on, but he was like a drunk Jimmy Stewart. Sweet. He was — there was never a nasty, mean bone in his — he just had that disease, and was the kindest, most loving man I had ever known. My mother became an alcoholic a few years later, and so — and then my grandmother and I moved out to Hollywood to be with my mother.   00:06:39     And we moved in the same building, and she was down the hall, and Nanny and I had a one-room, pull-down-bed apartment right facing the lobby of the building, so I'd see my mother, and she — her dreams were shattered. She never really made it. She did get to interview a few of the people, so I remember she had an interview with — she freelanced for a while with Bob Hope, with Rita Hayworth, George Montgomery, people like that.   00:07:10     But she never could hold down a job, and she was frustrated, and she started drinking, and so — but when she was sober, she was a lot of fun. She was beautiful, and my dad was handsome, and they made a gorgeous couple, and they were still friendly after the divorce. But I remember Mama coming down the hall, and Nanny and Mama and I would sit in this little kitchen, and Mama would play the ukulele, and we'd sing. And — yeah, and she had a great ear for music, and she could do harmony —   00:07:46     So I would take the lead. Nanny would do the third-part harmony, and Mama would do the intricate stuff.   00:07:53    GAIL EICHENTHAL: Do you think that unusual childhood set-up shaped you as a comedienne?   00:08:01    CAROL BURNETT: I don't know. I don't know because as a kid I was very quiet. I would — at times my grandmother and my mother would argue a lot, and it was usually over money and liquor because we had no money. Again, we were on welfare, what they called — in Hollywood it was called “relief.” And so we really would — we just waited from — not paycheck to paycheck, but when the relief lady would come and give us some money for the next month, I would sit in the corner when Nanny and Mama would be arguing, and I would draw.   00:08:41     I thought maybe I wanted to be a cartoonist and have my own comic strip, and I created a family that I would draw about, and they were called the Josephsons. My dad’s name was Jody. So it featured the mother, who was Josephine; the father, who was Joseph; the teenage daughter, who was Jody; her kid brother, who was Joey; and their dog was JoJo. And I drew this family that was perfect.   00:09:15     And that was my fantasy, to have this — with the picket fence and, you know, but then when I got to junior high and high school, Mama said, "Look, you should write. You know, no matter what you look like, you can always write." And so I got into journalism, and I was editor of my high school paper and also my junior high school paper, and I thought, "Well, I'm going to major in journalism when I go to college," but that fell by the wayside.   00:09:45     So as far as being — I was raised going to the movies with Nanny. We would save our money, and we would see sometimes six to eight movies a week, double features, second run, and we'd go in and beat the prices, as Nanny would say. If we got in before 12:00 noon or 6:00, it would be less, and in the movies I lost all reality. That was my fantasy, that was my — and the good guys made it, and the bad guys didn’t.   00:10:21     And so I grew up never being cynical because the movies were much — they weren’t as edgy as they are now, you know. So, I mean, okay, Mickey and Judy would go put on a show, and they would wind up on Broadway, and it would all be beautiful and wonderful. So — I'm getting ahead of myself, but I wanted to go to college, and I had good grades in high school, and I had enough grades — good grades — to get me into UCLA.   00:10:56     And Nanny said, "We can’t afford it." Our rent was $30 a month. She had a fit when they raised it to a dollar a day, and the tuition at that time, back in the covered-wagon days, was $43. We didn’t have the money. She said, "Well now, you should go to Woodbury College, a secretarial school, so you can become a secretary and then someday nab the boss."   00:11:29     Yeah, she always said, "You’re only as good as the guy you marry," you know. So that’s why she did six times. Anyway, I said, "No, I really — I know I am going to go to UCLA." I knew it. I saw myself on campus. It wasn’t that I was hoping for it, or wishing or praying. I said, "No, it’s going to happen. I just don't know how." Well, this one morning — it was my chore when I got up in the morning to look out into the lobby. Our room faced the lobby, and there were these pigeonhole mailboxes.   00:12:07     And I could tell if we had a letter in one of those, and I'd run out in my robe, and okay, this one morning there was a letter in our slot. I got it. It had my name typewritten on it, and address, and it even had a stamp, but it hadn’t been mailed. It hadn’t been canceled. Somebody had just stamped it and put it in the mailbox. I opened it up, and out came a 50-dollar bill. I swear, to this day, I don't know who gave it to me.   00:12:44     Nobody we knew had that kind of money. My grandmother didn’t, or she would have said, "Look what I'm doing for you." Nobody in our building — everybody was on relief. That was my tuition, so I got to go to UCLA.   00:12:59     ALICE WINKLER: Burnett wanted to major in journalism, at least in part to fulfill her mother’s dreams, but they had no such major at the time, so she joined the school paper, and to take playwriting courses, decided to major in theater arts English.   00:13:15     CAROL BURNETT: If you majored in theater arts English, or anything, you had to take an acting course, 1-A. You had to take scenery. You had to take costumes. You had to take lighting. You had to take sound and all the English courses and everything else. So I had to take this acting course, and I got into it, and I was terrified, so I picked a scene to do with one of my classmates that I thought would be easy.   00:13:45     It was a scene from Noël Coward's Red Peppers, and I had to have a cockney accent, and so I pretended I was Betty Grable with a cockney accent. And we did it, and I heard the laughs, and I thought, "This is it. I want to, the rest of my life, make people laugh." It was such a good feeling that — I was always quiet in high school, junior high, everything like that. I was kind of a nerd. I had friends, but I was not somebody the football player wanted to date, or I wasn’t that popular gal, you know.   00:14:31     And — but then when they laughed, I felt approval, and I got more confidence, and so some of the seniors at UCLA approached me after they had seen me do a couple of shows and said, "Come sit on the quad and have lunch with us and stuff." So I — all of a sudden I became popular, and it just — it was like food, you know. But the laughter is what did it. Also you're in the now.   00:15:04     You're in the present when that happens. It’s a — it's a total high, a total high when it lands. When it lands and they laugh. Oh!   00:15:16     ALICE WINKLER: Carol Burnett was certainly funny, but she also had a good singing voice, she knew, from those kitchen sessions with her grandmother and mother, but it was at UCLA again that she honed it and learned how to use it to brilliant comic effect.   00:15:32    CAROL BURNETT: Lotfi Mansouri, who was the — you know, the brilliant director of opera, he was a student. He was ahead of me, and he was in the music department, and he said, "You know, there's a musical comedy segment that we do," and he said, "Can you sing?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Would you be one of the nurses in a scene we are doing from South Pacific, ‘I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair’"? I said, "Yeah, I'd like to try that."   00:16:07    So we started rehearsing, and I was so loud they got rid of me, and he said, "No, we don't want you in there. Why don't you do a scene with me from Guys and Dolls where you’re Adelaide, Miss Adelaide?" And I said, "Oh, sing a solo? I don't think so." And he said, "No, it — really, it would be great because it's a comedy song, and she has a cold when she's singing it, so you don't have to sound really great. You can be sniffling and, you know, all of that." She sings, "A person can develop a bad, bad cold," and sneezing and all of that, so if I hit a clam, a bad note, I would chalk it up to the fact that she had a cold.   00:16:49    MUSIC: ADELAIDE’S LAMENT   00:16:49     In other words              Just from waiting around For that plain little band of gold A person can develop a cold   You can spray her wherever you figure The streptococci lurk You can give her a shot For whatever's she's got But it just won't work If she's tired of getting that fish-eye From the hotel clerk A person can develop a cold   00:17:20     ALICE WINKLER: The version you're hearing is not from her college production but from an album Carol Burnett recorded in the '70s of Broadway musical comedy numbers. It was on Broadway, after all, that she first made a splash starring in Once Upon a Mattress. Back at UCLA, Broadway wasn’t just a dream. It was, in her mind, a forgone conclusion.   00:17:42    CAROL BURNETT: I remember saying to Nanny, "I want to go to New York. I want to go to New York. I want to be on Broadway like Mary Martin or Ethel Merman." So I'm in the musical comedy workshop, and our professor would grade us on doing scenes, and I was working on a scene from Annie Get Your Gun.   00:18:08    And we were invited — there were nine of us in the class — to a party in San Diego. Our professor said — and it was in his honor, and his wife. They were going off on a trip to Europe or something, so it was a black tie affair in San Diego, very posh, and he said, "All of you kids come down. Do your scenes as entertainment for the party." So we did, and I’m at the hors d'oeuvres table after we did our scenes, and I'm stealing hors d'oeuvres to put in my purse to take home to Nanny.   00:18:47     And there's a tap on my shoulder, and I turned around, and there's this gentleman and his wife, black tie. She's in a gorgeous grown and everything. He said, "We really enjoyed you." You know, I said, "Well, thank you so much." I thought I was getting busted for, you know, swiping the hors d'oeuvres. So — and he said, "We really enjoyed you," and so forth. He said, "Well, what are your plans? What do you want to do with your life?"   00:19:09     And — oh, and this was what I told Nanny before this. I said, "I see myself in New York. I don't know how, but I know I’m going to..." So this gentleman says, "Well, what do you want to do?" And I said, "Well, someday I want to go to New York and be in musical comedy,” you know. And he said, "Well, why aren’t you doing that?" I said, "Well, you know, I’ve got to save up." He said, "I'll lend you the money."   00:19:38     And I thought it was the champagne talking, you know, and all — and he said, "Now be in my office" — gave me his business card — "a week from Monday, and I'll lend you the money to go to New York." Got down there. He was, at the time, a millionaire — which would be a billionaire today — in the shipping business, and somebody had given him a start, so he's paying it forward, and he wrote out a check for $1,000.   00:20:18     Now, as I say, we could barely afford the $30-a-month rent, so that’s like — he said, "The stipulations are: You use this money to go to New York. If you are successful, you pay it back to me, no interest, in five years. You never reveal my name. And if you are successful, you must promise to help others out."   00:20:47     So evidently someone had staked him to a claim, and I found out later that he had helped some young man open a restaurant, or a filling station, or something, you know. It wasn’t just theater. So I went home, and Nanny saw all that money because I cashed it in the bank, and she's all, "Oh, my God. Oh, my God." She was feeling her pulse and everything, you know. She said, "Well, what we can do with — " I said, "I have to go to New York."   00:21:18     So I quit school after my sophomore year, and my buddies, my school chums, gave me a party, a going away party. And they said, "What are you going to do, Carol?" I said, "Well,” and here again, I said, "Well, okay, my first show will be a Broadway show directed by George Abbott," who was the director of musical comedy at that time and for years before.   00:21:50     GAIL EICHENTHAL: And years after.   00:21:51     CAROL BURNETT: And years after. And that’s what happened. My first show was directed by George Abbott, Once Upon a Mattress.   00:21:59    WINNIFRED: And so, young Prince Valdair, after having slain the dragon Fafner, rescued the princess Griga, and together they mounted his horse, Triga, and rode off to the castle Vunderbar, where they were married and lived happily ever after.   00:22:21     Well, I'm glad.   00:22:25    MUSIC: HAPPILY EVER AFTER   00:22:25    They all lived happily, happily, happily, Ever after              The couple is happily leaving The chapel eternally tied As the curtain descends There is nothing but loving and laughter              When the fairytale ends              The heroine's always a bride   00:22:48    ALICE WINKLER: Carol Burnett’s rise to fame wasn’t quite that easy, though. She first spent a couple of summers doing summer stock theater in New York State. One of those was a place called Tamiment in the Poconos, where Once Upon A Mattress was developed. The other was Green Mansions in the Adirondacks. There, Carol Burnett would work with Sheldon Harnick, who wrote Fiddler on the Roof; Larry Kert, who played Tony in the original West Side Story; Lee Adams and Charlie Strouse, who wrote Bye Bye Birdie; so an amazing pool of talent and a crucible for any aspiring actor.   00:23:25     CAROL BURNETT: Green Mansions was the toughest because we did — Sunday night was a variety show. We were off Monday, but we were rehearsing for Tuesday night, which would be play night, Wednesday night was opera night, Thursday night we were off rehearsing for Friday and Saturday, which were original musical revues. We never really had a full day off for ten weeks, but we got paid $500 for the whole summer.   00:23:53     ALICE WINKLER: A lot of money in 1955, but getting that major role back in New York City still took a lot of work and perseverance. And then...   00:24:03     CAROL BURNETT: I had been auditioning for Rodgers and Hammerstein at the time, who were going to take a show down to Florida, Babes in Arms, and I had many callbacks about it. And it looked like I was going to get the part, and then they were going to break it in in Florida and bring it back to Broadway. And the director wanted me, but they thought they needed to go with a name, so I didn’t get the part. And I — oh, I was devastated because I thought I had it.   00:24:41     And I was raising my kid sister at the time. We were in New York, and I was kind of crying, you know, and she said, "Sissy, we always say, the old cliché, ‘One door closes, another opens.’" After that sentence, the phone rang. I picked it up, and it was Bill and Jean Eckart, who were producing this little show called Once Upon a Mattress. And she said, "Could you come down and audition for us?"   00:25:09     I got on the subway, went down that same day, auditioned, got home. The phone was ringing. I got the part, and it was George Abbott. You know, it was Off-Broadway, so I was getting a big break, you know. I had auditioned a lot before I got my break. And I guess I had a good attitude, because sometimes it would be between me and another girl, and she would get it, and I would say, "Well, you know, it’s her turn. Wasn't my turn. My turn will come."   00:25:54    So I was — the only time I was really disappointed was when it really was so close with Babes in Arms. Otherwise, if I didn’t make it, I said, "Well, it’s not my turn yet." So Mattress was my turn.   00:26:07     ALICE WINKLER: And then it moved to Broadway, and then it was Carol Burnett’s turn to try television. TV star Garry Moore and his producers had seen her in Mattress.   00:26:17     CAROL BURNETT: But what happened was Garry was — he had a successful variety show on Tuesday nights, live, and Martha Raye had been scheduled to be a guest — wonderful comedienne — but she got sick. And it was a live show, and she had bronchitis, and Garry — they called me on Sunday, and they said, "Could you come and learn the show for Tuesday night?" "You bet." So I was over there like Roadrunner.   00:26:45     And I learned the show, and I brought a sketch with me that I had done at Green Mansions with Bernie West, so we had a sketch that we could perform, but I learned all of her musical numbers and everything. And Garry explained to the audience afterwards that I had just come in, you know, and the audience was so terrific, the studio audience, and I was just crying, I was so happy.   00:27:10     And then backstage I got a phone call from Martha Raye, who was so sweet, and she was croaking, her voice was croaking. And she sent me roses, and we became good friends, and she was on my show several times, you know. And so after I did that, they then thought, "Well, maybe we could — " So the following September they offered me the part of being a regular performer on Garry’s show, and I leapt at it. And I preferred it, actually, to Broadway.   00:27:43     GAIL EICHENTHAL: Why?   00:27:44    CAROL BURNETT: Because it was like doing a little Broadway show every week but changing it, so that you would have new challenges, and you weren’t doing the same thing eight times a week the way you do on Broadway.   00:27:57     ALICE WINKLER: Here she is on The Garry Moore Show in 1962, playing Supergirl, who by day is a nerdy, sniffling gal name Clara Clean who works at the newspaper.   00:28:10    SCOOP SCANLON: Supergirl! Supergirl! Oh, Supergirl, you saved my life. I'll do anything to repay you. Anything!   00:28:18    SUPERGIRL: Anything?   00:28:20    SCOOP SCANLON: Anything.   00:28:20    SUPERGIRL: Good.   00:28:23    SCOOP SCANLON: What do you want me to do?   00:28:23    SUPERGIRL: Well, there's a little girl who works here in your office. I think her name is Clara Clean?   00:28:29    SCOOP SCANLON: Yeah.   00:28:29    SUPERGIRL: Well, I think it would be a wonderful idea if you'd take Clara Clean out to dinner and then for a little friendly smoochy.   00:28:37    SCOOP SCANLON: That drip?   00:28:39    SUPERGIRL: Then you won't do it?   00:28:40    SCOOP SCANLON: I should say not.   00:28:42    SUPERGIRL: I'm sorry to hear you say that, Scanlon. (PUNCHES SCANLON)   00:28:43    SCOOP SCANLON: Ohh!   00:28:49    (TARZAN YELL)   00:28:52    ALICE WINKLER: Who knew that Carol Burnett started doing her famous Tarzan yell years before she got her own show? But anyway, the point is, Carol Burnett was smitten by television. Her successful run on The Garry Moore Show led not only to her first marriage, to one of the producers, but it also led to an Emmy Award-winning TV special she did with her good friend Julie Andrews, taped at Carnegie Hall. And then when fortune once again cracked open a window, she heaved it open and jumped on through.   00:29:22    CAROL BURNETT: It was a fluke. After I was leaving The Garry Moore Show, I signed a contract with CBS for ten years, and there was a clause in the contract that has never been before and certainly won’t be afterwards, that if within the first five years of the show, if I wanted — if I wanted — to do 30 one-hour shows on television, variety shows, they had to put it on whether they wanted to or not.   00:30:00    Well, I said, "I'll never want to do that. I can’t be a host of a variety — " I never thought it. So five years were coming up, you know, and it was the last week that that clause could work, the fifth year, and my husband and I had just put a down payment on a house in Beverly Hills, and I had a baby, two babies, and we said, "Maybe we ought to push that button."   00:30:28    So I picked up the phone and called New York, and I got one of the vice presidents of CBS on the phone, and he said, "Merry Christmas, Carol” or “Happy New Year," and it was that week. I said, "Well, I'm calling because I want to push that button." And he had no — he said, "What? What button?" And I said, "Well, you know, where I can do — " And he said, "Oh. Well, let me get back to you."   00:30:51    So I am sure he got a lot of lawyers out of Christmas parties that night, called me back the next day, and he said, "Oh yeah, I see, Carol, you know, well, variety, it’s a man’s game. It’s Gleason. It’s Milton Berle. It's Sid Caesar. It’s Dean Martin." He says, "You gals, I mean, it’s not for — you know, we’ve got this great sitcom we'd love you to do called Here’s Agnes." Can you just picture it? "Here’s Agnes!" I can just see it now.   00:31:29    And I said, "No, variety's what I love. Music. I want a rep company, like Sid Caesar had. I want dancers. I want singers. I want guest stars. I want to do sketches. I want to do different characters." And they had to put it on, and they didn’t want to.   00:31:48    And they thought we would bomb. I didn’t know what — if we — but all I knew is we had 30 shows, pay or play, you know. And then it was 11 years.     00:32:04    ALICE WINKLER: Eleven years of one of the greatest shows in the history of television, one that influenced a couple of generations of comics, women in particular, who revered her. Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig, women who grew up watching and who, like their comic hero, learned that a woman could be host, could have her own show, could be her authentic self, could be boss, and at the same time be a generous ensemble member. That ensemble!   00:32:36    For most of the show’s run, Tim Conway, Harvey Korman, and Vicki Lawrence. They genuinely looked like they were having the time of their lives.   00:32:45    CAROL BURNETT: I don't like the term “second banana.” That’s a term used as someone who supports the, quote, star. Ours was a true rep company. There were no second bananas. There were sketches that we did where Harvey would shine, where Tim would shine, where I would shine, where Vicki would shine, so it was a rep company.   00:33:09    ALICE WINKLER: And another member of that rep company was the live studio audience. One of the signature features of The Carol Burnett Show was the Q&A she would do, without the blacked-out teeth, the wigs, or the kooky Bob Mackie costumes with sewn-in sagging boobs and voluminous butt pads. She never knew what she’d be asked during the Q&A, so it was improv.   00:33:31     If she ended up with egg on her face, so be it, and that let viewers watching at home, as well as in the studio, connect with her and fall in love with her. But when the show started in 1967, that Q&A was risky.   00:33:46    CAROL BURNETT: So, the first show, I went out and I said, "Uh, any questions?" You know — and first of all, I was afraid nobody would ask anything, and then I was afraid they would. But it started to catch on after we were on for about three or four weeks, and people came ready, you know, to ask questions and do things.   00:34:08    So it became a lot of fun because it was total improv, but the audience was my partner.   00:34:15    GAIL EICHENTHAL: Did you study improv?   00:34:17    CAROL BURNETT: No. I didn’t study anything. It was just doing it.   00:34:26    What sets me off laughing when I look back in that direction? If you'd all turn around back there, see those glass partitions?   00:34:35    That's the booth, and what makes me laugh —   00:34:42    They're all drunk!   00:34:43    They're back there going, “Yoo-hoo!”   00:34:46    So I laugh.   00:34:46    MALE VOICE: Would you come get us some more ice, please?   00:34:50    ALICE WINKLER: Another regular feature of The Carol Burnett Show was the guest star. The most famous actors, musicians, and comedians of the day came on and joined the ensemble for one night of ridiculousness. Robin Williams, Ella Fitzgerald, Julie Andrews, Burt Reynolds, Betty White, Charo, the Jackson Five, the list goes on and on. Sometimes they joined Carol for a song.   00:35:11    Here she is with Maggie Smith. You know, The Prime of Miss Jean Brody, Dowager Countess Violet Crawley on Downton Abbey. Yes, that Maggie Smith, circa 1974.   00:35:23    MUSIC: YOU’RE SO LONDON   00:35:23    You're so Dinah              You're so Gloria Steinem              And I'm so Margaret Mead              You're so tie-dye              You're so Dacron and denim And I'm so English tweed Wherever you go you belong   No, you're wrong, wrong, wrong You're so Scrabble You're so chess You're so checkers And I'm so hide-and-seek   You're so hoedown You're so Charleston, so Lindy And I'm so cheek-to-cheek You're coyotes   (HOWL)   And prairie dogs And I'm so birds-and-bees   You're so ruffles, so petticoats And I'm so BVDs! Face it, Maggie!   00:36:17    ALICE WINKLER: The sketches on The Carol Burnett Show were mostly scripted and rehearsed, but Burnett wanted to keep the feeling and pace of live theater, so once they started taping, she told interviewer Gail Eichenthal, it was “game on.”   00:36:30    CAROL BURNETT: I didn’t want to keep them waiting because, again, they're our partner, and they feed us with their laughter. So if they're bored, sitting there, waiting for costume changes and scenery changes, we're going to lose them. So I used to have a bet with the stagehands that I could do a skin-out change —   00:36:51    GAIL EICHENTHAL: What is that?   00:36:51    CAROL BURNETT: That's strip down, get changed, put a wig on, change makeup, everything, you know, before they could change the scenery and move it, so that we really — so we did it, like, as if it were a live show. So if something would go crazy, we kept it in. You know, unless the scenery fell down and knocked one of us out, you know.   00:37:14     But that’s why sometimes, you know, Tim would go off on a roll, and poor Harvey, we didn’t know what Tim was going to do, so we just rolled with it.   00:37:28    GAIL EICHENTHAL: Sometimes you cracked up.   00:37:29    CAROL BURNETT: Oh, yeah, and it was honest. It was never on purpose. See, so many of us who did our show came from live theater, so it was like, okay, you’ve got to really be thinking on your feet. So — and just go with it. The audience loves it when something like that happens. You know, although Harvey — and all of us — we prided ourselves on being trained theatrically, but there were times you just couldn't — it was like giggling in church or the library.   00:38:02    TIM CONWAY: I was at this freak show one time, and I saw these Siamese elephants.   00:38:13    They were joined at the end —   00:38:21    They were joined at the end of their trunks, like that.   00:38:26    And this trainer would make them stand up on their back feet, like that, and they had their trunk stretched, like that.   00:38:32    Then this little monkey would come out —   00:38:35    Walk out there and dance the merengue right out there.   00:38:40    Kind of felt sorry for them. They couldn’t go like the other elephants when they go...   00:38:46    All they could do is just blow and go...   00:38:51    ALICE WINKLER: You can’t usually hear the giggling when Tim Conway goes off script and sends them over the edge, but trust me if you’ve never seen the show, you can see the others shaking, suddenly turning heads to the side or coughing into a hand, trying to stifle a guffaw. These were some of the show's most memorable moments, the mistakes that made the whole thing more perfect. Carol Burnett has always been willing to let the seams show, and that is one of the reasons she's so close to so many people’s hearts.   00:39:23    She allowed us, her fans, to see her real self, on-screen and sometimes off, in good times and in very, very bad.   00:39:32    CAROL BURNETT: The lowest of lows, of course, was when I lost my daughter Carrie. You never get over that, but you learn to cope, and she was terrific, and she had a mantra. She was very talented, and when she was ill in the hospital for the last time, I was going to see her, and the nurse — one of the nurses stopped me in the hall. She said, "I have to talk to you about your daughter." I said, "What?"   00:40:04    She said, "I can’t — I went into the room the other day." She said, "She is always smiling. She is always up," you know, and so forth. And I said, "Carrie, how can you always be so cheerful lying there like that?" You know? And she said, "Every day, I wake up and decide, today I'm going to love my life." “Decide” is the key word. “Today I am going to love my life.” Oh, Sachi?   00:40:33    SACHI: Yeah?   00:40:34    Could you get me my purse? I have another thing I want to read. It's over here on the couch. I am never without this. Thanks, sweetheart. This is a quote from Carrie about art.   00:40:54    CAROL BURNETT: "The legacy is really the lives we touch, the inspiration we give, altering someone’s plan if even for a moment and getting them to think, rage, or cry, laugh, argue, walk around the block dazed. I do a lot of that after seeing powerful theater, but more than anything, we are remembered for our smiles, the ones we share with our closest and dearest, and the ones we bestow on a total stranger who needed it right then, and God put you there to deliver." That was my girl.   00:41:36    GAIL EICHENTHAL: Does laughter help get you through that?   00:41:37    CAROL BURNETT: Oh, sure, sure, and I know that's what she would want.   00:41:42    ALICE WINKLER: Carol Burnett, still laughing and still making other people laugh. In 2013, she won the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, and as of the recording of this podcast, Carol Burnett is just shy of 83 and is touring the country with her one-woman show. It includes plenty of audience Q&A. I’m Alice Winkler, and this is What It Takes from the Academy of Achievement. Follow us on Twitter. Our hashtag is #WhatItTakesNow. And do us a favor — go to iTunes or wherever it is you get this podcast, and give us your feedback.   00:42:20    Funding for What It Takes comes from the Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation. Thanks for listening.   END OF FILE

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English @ the Movies: 'Gear Up'

The movie "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows" is a cartoon about turtles who are action heroes. Our English @ the Movies phrase we are talking about is "gear up." What does that mean? Listen and find out.

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December 29, 2017

A look at the best news photos from around the world.

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Learn 10 Separable Phrasal Verbs

Welcome back to Everyday Grammar from VOA Learning English. Today we return to a very common verb form in English – phrasal verbs. You will find one phrasal verb in every 192 words of written English. They will make your English sound more natural once you begin using them correctly. In an earlier program, we explained how and why English speakers use them. Today we look at some often-used phrasal verbs. This type of phrasal verb allows a direct object to come between the verb and the preposition or adverb. As you will hear, there is a special rule that learners should know about when using these 10 phrasal verbs. The structure of phrasal verbs As you know, a phrasal verb is a phrase with two or more words: a verb and a preposition or adverb or both. We call the preposition or adverb a particle when it combines with a verb. Here are two examples:        "Please put the lamp on the desk."        "I think you're putting me on." In the first sentence, on is a preposition showing the position of the lamp. In the second sentence, on is an adverbial particle. Put on is a phrasal verb meaning "fool" or "trick" in this sentence. An important point is that a regular verb+preposition combination has two meanings. A phrasal verb, that is, a verb+particle, has a single meaning within a sentence. Many phrasal verbs have a number of different meanings in different situations. Yet the meaning of the verb+particle can usually be expressed with a single Latin-based verb. Here are two sentences with the same meaning: "They tore down the old building." "They demolished the old building." The verb tear has its own meaning, and so does the preposition down. They can combine with other words when they are alone. But as a phrasal verb, tear down, they have one meaning: "destroy." In 1987, U.S. President Ronald Reagan visited West Germany. He told a crowd in the divided city of Berlin, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Separable phrasal verbs Now for the tricky part. You know that some verbs are transitive, which means they have a direct object. When such verbs appear as phrasal verbs, an object can either separate the phrase or follow it. Here’s an example.        "I decided to throw out my old jeans."        "I decided to throw my old jeans out." Both of these sentences are correct. The object of the phrasal verb throw out is jeans. You can use a pronoun instead of jeans and ask,        "Are you sure you want to throw them out?" However, you cannot ask, "Are you sure you want to throw out them?" Here, the pronoun them must appear between the verb and the particle. Finding the frequent phrasal verbs In recent years, language experts began to use computers to examine a large collection, or corpus, of written and spoken language. When researchers look for phrasal verbs, they find that many deal with an activity. They also find a few verbs combine with many particles. Among the most common verbs are come, put, get, go, pick, sit and take. These combine with the adverb particles up, out, in, on, off, and down to make up a group of very useful phrasal verbs. Now, let’s look at transitive phrasal verbs. See the list at the end of the article. The verb get is part of many phrasal verbs. For example, we use get up to mean "to wake oneself up" or "to awaken someone." For example: "My son loves to sleep late. I got him up on time to catch the bus this morning." Remember, the pronoun has to come between the verb and the adverb, so we cannot say, "I got up him." Notice how the Norwegian group A-ha uses a separable phrasal verb two ways in their song, "Take On Me." Which one is correct in formal grammar? I'll be coming for your love, OK? Take on me, (take on me) Take me on, (take on me) I'll be gone In a day or two Remember, singers and poets have the right to use language as they please. For Learning English Everyday Grammar, I’m Jill Robbins. And I’m John Russell. Now it’s your turn. Write a sentence that uses a separable phrasal verb and we will give you feedback in the Comments Section.   Dr. Jill Robbins and Adam Brock wrote this story for Learning English. George Grow was the editor. ______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story   transitive - grammar, of a verb. having or taking a direct object adverb – grammar. a word that describes a verb, an adjective, another adverb, or a sentence and that is often used to show time, manner, place, or degree preposition – grammar. a word or group of words that is used with a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase to show direction, location, or time, or to introduce an object object - grammar. a noun, noun phrase, or pronoun that receives the action of a verb or completes the meaning of a preposition corpus – n. a collection of writings, conversations, speeches, etc., that people use to study and describe a language   Here’s our list of 10 useful phrasal verbs: Phrasal Verb Meanings Example put on wear, produce, fool, pretend That cannot be true. You must be putting me on. put off postpone, disturb The report is due today. Stop putting it off and turn it in. put down criticize, write Her boss was always putting her down so she resigned. give up surrender, stop trying Your singing is beautiful – don’t give it up. give away give, offer That radio station gives turkeys away for Thanksgiving. give back return, restore I got so much help from the town, I want to give something back. get off leave, finish, send Please get the letter off to them today. get up awaken, rise Mom had to get us up every day for school. pick up collect, lift, learn, bring, clean I picked the living room up before our guests arrived. take on assume, fight The union took on the huge oil company.

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