Dearest all,
Hope you all had great celebrations with your family and friends at Christmas and New Year!
Hope you are all alive and kicking to a great linguistic start (for my new students) or restart (for my existing ones)!!
To boost your listening comprehension, I invite you all to watch part (30 min) of Barack Obama's last State of the Union address (SOTU) of January 12. This is his last mandate year.
While watching it, please have in mind some questions to guide your comprehension. See below.
I wish you all a great course ! A lot of challenges ahead I hope to give you.
See you in class and here on this blog to build a good linguistic network with your virtual peers.
Count on your participation here.
A little note: for those who want to follow the hot debate between the American Democratic Candidates, here's the link to the last televised one on Jan 17th:
Jan.17th Debate of Democratic Party Presidential Candidates
Enjoy!!
Flávia
1) (the first 10 minutes)
What can you notice about Obama's speech tone: optimistic/pessimistic, agressive/ peaceful, assertive/defeatist, and/or courageous/fearsome?
2) (at 13:51')
What does Obama say about the US economy?
3) (at 15:46')
What does he say about technology and jobs?
4) ( at 15:53')
Obama states that nowadays companies are located everywhere and can face tough competition. According to him, how can this affect workers, company loyalty and wealth concentration? Do you agree? Why?
5) (at 16:42')
How can the following Americans' general belief Everybody who works hard should get a fair shot be affected by the present difficult economic trends mentioned by Obama?
6) (at 17:20')
He referred to a bipartisan (both Democrats and Republicans) reform that was very important. What was it? Do you agree?
7) (at 17:30 till 18:20')
What does he say about high school graduation rates? Also about graduates, teachers for kids and college? How do you see all these past and future measures?
8) (at 19:22 till 20:00')
What is the comment Obama made on retirment that got laughs from the audince? What else did he say about the retirement process?
9) (at 20:15')
What does Obama advise in relation to social security and Medicare health program?
10) (from 21:49 to 22:50')
Obama hypothesizes a case of an American who loses his job. What does he intend to show with this story? Do you think his solutions are a good way to help an unemployed person? Why?
11) (from 23:00 25:00')
Obama refers to lots of conflicts of interest and disagreements between the parties (democrats x republicans) and sectors (private x public). Choose some of them you consider important to the world economy.
12) (at 25:57')
How can you answer Obama's question: How do we reignite that spirit of innovation to meet our biggest challenges? After this question he brings up examples of American breakthroughs - which ones are the best in your opinion?
