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ENGLISH CAFÉ – 67

TOPICS

In the News: pretexting, stay the course, The Colbert Report, if that’s anything to

go by, color vs. hue, contribute vs. attribute, the die is cast

_____________

GLOSSARY

pretexting – getting information about someone else by not telling the truth, such

as pretending to be that person over the phone or giving a false reason for

asking for information

* There was an article in the newspaper about a woman who tried to steal

people’s money by using pretexting to get their banking information.

to stay the course – to continue in the same way; to keep doing something even

though it is difficult

* The treatment for his illness hasn’t work so far, but the doctors want to stay the

course in order to give the treatment more time to work.

to mock – to mimic; to pretend like someone else to make fun of that person; to

laugh at someone in an unkind way by talking or behaving like them

* Stop mocking the way that old man walks! It’s cruel and it’s not funny!

satire – using humor (such as telling jokes) to make fun of someone or

something, usually related to politics or news topics

* Some of the best satire about the President is in this magazine’s political

cartoons.

parody – pretending to be someone or something in an exaggerated (more than

it really is) way to be funny

* At the school show, the students sang a parody of the school song that some of

the teachers didn’t like.

political pundit – a person who knows about politics and who is often asked for

their opinion

* I’m tired of turning on the television and seeing the same political pundits each

week.

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ENGLISH CAFÉ – 67

loudmouth – a person who talks too much in an way that causes other people to

be annoyed, angry, or hurt

* I wish Dan wasn’t such a loudmouth when we go drinking in bars.

if that’s anything to go by – if that is an indication; if this is true, then...

* If our company’s January earnings are any to go by, we’ll be making more

money this year than in any previous year.

color – what one’s eyes see when light is reflected off a surface, such as red,

yellow, blue, green, pink, and orange

* I can’t remember your favorite color. Is it blue or green?

hue – small differences in color; smaller divisions within a color

* This sweater is the same color as that shirt, but it’s the wrong hue. It’s too dark.

to contribute – to give something so that something else can be achieved; to

give a part of what is needed to complete something

* We won’t make the deadline for our school magazine if we don’t find enough

students to contribute articles and stories.

to attribute – to give someone or something credit for something; to say that

someone has produced something or is the owner of something

* When the team captain was interviewed after winning the game, he said that he

attributed their win to the hard work of the players.

the die is cast – some decision or action has been made that has determined

the future and cannot be changed

* Once you told your daughter that she could have a pet, the die was cast. You

can’t change your mind now.

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these materials on another website or distributing them in any way is prohibited.

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ENGLISH CAFÉ – 67

WHAT INSIDERS KNOW

“I Have a Dream” Speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American “civil rights” (the right of citizens to

have freedom and equal opportunities) leader until his death in 1968. His most

famous speech was given in Washington D.C. during a “march” (a group of

people walking together in protest) for equal rights. He is considered one of the

greatest public speakers in American history. This speech, which contains the

words “I have a dream,” is considered one of the greatest U.S. speeches ever

given.

The most famous parts of the speech are these two sentences:

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true

meaning of its creed : "We hold these truths to be self-evident : that all men

are created equal."

To “rise up” means to stop being willing to be told what to do and doing it. A

“creed” is a set of beliefs that someone has, and “self-evident” means to be clear

to everyone without needing any explanation.

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they

will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their

character.

In this sentence, Dr. King is saying that he hopes that someday in the U.S.,

everyone will have an opinion about other people based on how those people

behave and what they believe in, and not based on what race they are.

Dr. King is one of the most admired people in American history. He and his work

is honored every year with a national holiday on the third Monday of January.

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these materials on another website or distributing them in any way is prohibited.

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ENGLISH CAFÉ – 67

COMPLETE TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to ESLPod.com's English Café, number 67.

This is ESL Podcast's English Café, episode 67. I'm your host, Dr. Jeff

McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in

beautiful Los Angeles, California.

On today's Café, we're going to have a new segment in our Café, something

we're going to call “In the News,” and as always, we will answer your questions.

Lets get started.

To get the most of these podcasts, you should download the Learning Guides

that come with each episode. If you go to our website at eslpod.com, you can

find out more information.

I mentioned in Café number 66, our last Café, that we were going to try some

new things on the Café, and today is another one of those new things. We're

going to have a part of the Café every so often called “In the News,” where we

talk about some vocabulary that is popular in the news in the United States. This

is a little difficult to do sometimes because, of course, the news changes every

day, but we will try to pick some words or expressions that are popular and have

been popular at least for a few months, so that if you do read the newspaper -

and we have a lot of people who have emailed us asking us to talk a little bit

more about news vocabulary - this, we hope, will help.

In this episode, we're going to talk about two words, or a word and an

expression, that have been popular in the past few months in the United States, if

you read the American newspapers. One of them it is pretexting, “pretexting.”

This word comes from pretext. As a noun, a pretext is sort of like an excuse - a

reason that you tell someone you are doing something, but it's not the real

reason - it's not the true reason. For example, you see a beautiful woman and

you want to talk to her, you go over to her and you ask her what time it is; that is

a way of starting the conversation. Asking her for the time is a pretext to get to

talk to her, the real reason. By the way, if you do that, make sure you're not

wearing a watch!

I said that pretext is a noun, and if you look it up in a dictionary, you will see the

definition. But, there's a new use of this word as a verb. As a verb, to pretext

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ENGLISH CAFÉ – 67

means to get information about someone else by lying - by not telling the truth.

For example, you call up the phone company and you pretend to be someone

else - you lie and say, “Oh, this is Brad Pitt calling. I'm trying to get Jennifer

Aniston's telephone number,” even though you're not Brad Pitt. So, lying to get

information - giving someone false information in order to find out more about

them - that would be to pretext.

The reason this has been in the American news is that one of the big computer

companies in the United States - I don't want to give their name...well, okay,

Hewlett-Packard. Hewlett-Packard has been accused of - people have said that

they have done something wrong, in this case, accused of this technique,

pretexting, to get information about some of their own members of their

company.

The United States Congress - the federal government - recently passed a law

saying that this was illegal - to call and get information by using a pretext - by

pretexting. So, that is a term that you may see in American news reports.

Another term - an expression - that has been in the news, really, for the last year

or so is stay the course. Stay, “stay,” the course. Let's talk a little bit about

where this expression comes from, and then I'll tell you what it means in the

American news today.

The verb stay, here means to keep or to continue. The course, here, is the

direction that you are moving. So, stay the course means continue moving in the

same direction that you are moving right now - continue going in the same

direction.

The expression actually comes from, originally, the 1980s. Ronald Reagan, who

was then the president of the United States, back in 1983, was running for re-

election. American presidents are elected every four years, and you can be

elected twice.

So, he was getting ready to run for the presidency in 1984. He came up with this

expression - well, probably someone who works for him invented this expression

to mean that people should continue with him as president - that they should not

change the policies that Ronald Reagan had started. The idea was that he

wasn't finished yet, and so you needed to vote for him again so that he could

continue doing what he was doing.

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these materials on another website or distributing them in any way is prohibited.

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