EC126_Guide.pdf

English as a Second Language Podcast

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ENGLISH CAFÉ – 126

TOPICS

Famous Americans: Grandma Moses; GED Tests, since versus from, is to do

(something), calligraphy versus penmanship

_____________

GLOSSARY

folk – related to something that is traditional and popular among ordinary people

from a certain area, especially in the country

* American folk music is often played on guitars, fiddles, and banjos.

rural – related to the country; not urban or suburban

* I grew up in a rural area where our closest neighbors were cows, not people.

sporadic – intermittent; happening occasionally or often, but not on a regular

schedule

* The professor is frustrated with his students’ sporadic attendance.

to pick apples – to go to a place where there are many apple trees and use a

ladder to collect the apples

* They always go to pick apples together as a family in the fall.

naive – not sophisticated; simple; without very much real-world experience

* Ola is very naive and always believes whatever people tell him.

primitive – not modern or sophisticated; related to an early way of life that no

longer exists in today’s society

* In primitive societies, women carry their babies on their back most of the day

and those babies rarely cry.

Moses – a biblical Jewish leader who led the Israelites out of Egypt when God

parted the Red Sea

* According to the Bible, God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, or laws, that

all people are supposed to follow.

postcard – a small, thick, rectangular piece of paper with a photograph on one

side and room to write a message and address on the other side, so that it can

be sent through the mail without an envelope

* Please send us a postcard from Fiji!

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English as a Second Language Podcast

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ENGLISH CAFÉ – 126

equivalency – same; having the same value, importance, or purpose as

something else

* My language teacher told me that living in a foreign country for one year has

the equivalency of six years of studying a language in one’s own country.

dropout – a person who stops going to school before graduating, or who stops

participating in an activity before it is finished

* Most high school dropouts make very little money because they don’t have

enough education to get a good job.

home schooling – the practice through which parents teach their children at

home instead of sending them to a regular school

* Research studies show that home schooling does not prevent children from

developing social skills.

is to do (something) – is supposed to do something; is planned or scheduled to

do something

* The magician is to do a very exciting trick in the second half of tonight’s show.

calligraphy – beautiful writing that is made with special pens and inks

* They addressed the wedding invitations with beautiful calligraphy.

penmanship – handwriting; the way that a person writes; the way that a person

forms individual letters and words on paper

* Your penmanship is horrible! I can hardly read what you’ve written here.

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

English as a Second Language Podcast

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ENGLISH CAFÉ – 126

WHAT INSIDERS KNOW

Famous Americans with GEDs

Many high school dropouts “regret” (wish that one hadn’t done something, or feel

bad about something that one did earlier) their decision to stop studying before

they had earned their “high school diploma” (the piece of paper that one gets at

high school graduation). They find that, without a diploma, they are unable to get

good jobs. However, by the time they “make this realization” (have this

understanding), they are often too old to go back to high school.

Fortunately, these individuals can decide to take a test of “General Educational

Development,” or GED. The GED is also known as a “General Equivalency

Diploma” or “General Education(al) Diploma,” but these terms are technically

incorrect. Earning a GED means that the test-taker has high-school-level

academic skills. Passing the GED exam requires getting a “score” (the number

of points earned on a test) that is higher than that of 40% of graduating high

school seniors.

Some of the people who earn a GED are high-school dropouts; others were

home schooled. People who have earned a GED have the equivalent of a high

school diploma, and are able to use the GED to get a better job or “enroll” (begin

participating in a program) in college.

More than 15 million people have earned a GED, and many of them are famous.

American pop singer Britney Spears and her sister, Jamie Lynn Spears, have

GEDs. Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead and Tre Cool of Green Day are two

other famous musicians who have GEDs. Actors Bill Cosby, Christian Slater,

and Michael J. Fox have GEDs, as do Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy’s

restaurant, and even Ruth Ann Minner, the Governor of Delaware!

These materials are copyrighted by the Center for Educational Development (2008). Posting of

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

English as a Second Language Podcast

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ENGLISH CAFÉ – 126

COMPLETE TRANSCRIPT

You’re listening to ESL Podcast’s English Café number 126.

This is ESL Podcast’s English Café episode 126. I’m your host, Dr. Jeff

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

beautiful Los Angeles, California.

Our website is eslpod.com. On it you can find a Learning Guide for this episode,

as well as our ESL Podcast Store, which contains premium courses on business

and personal English we think you’ll be interested in.

On this Café, we’re going to talk about a famous American of the 20 th century,

Grandma Moses – who she was, and why she is famous. We’re also going to

talk about the GED – what that is, who gets it, and why. And as always, we’ll

answer a few of your questions. Let’s get started.

Our first topic today is Grandma Moses. Grandma Moses was the name of a

famous American painter of the 20 th century. Her real name was Anna

Robertson. She was born in September of 1860; she died 101 years later, in

1961. She’s known as Grandma Moses because she started painting when she

was in her 70s. She is usually “cited,” that is, she is usually produced as

evidence of how it is possible to start at something at a late age – at an older

age, and still be good at that thing.

Grandma Moses was famous for her pictures of rural life in the United States.

When I say “rural” (rural), I’m talking about outside the city, in the country where

there are farms and fewer people. Grandma Moses was sometimes called a

“folk artist.” “Folk” (folk) often refers to popular, perhaps not as sophisticated

kind of art, although that doesn’t necessarily mean that it isn’t very sophisticated.

It’s a phrase – an expression we use to talk about traditional, often rural, art

forms. Certain kinds of folk music, for example, are created by and sung by non-

professional musicians, although there are now professional musicians that play

folk music.

Grandma Moses had what one writer described as “sporadic periods of

schooling” when she was young. “Sporadic” (sporadic) means not very frequent

– not on a regular basis. She may have gone to school one year, and then the

next year not. This was not uncommon, especially for those that lived in rural

areas of the United States in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries.

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

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ENGLISH CAFÉ – 126

Grandma Moses, who, of course, was called at that time Anna Robertson,

married and lived in Virginia and then moved to New York. Her husband died in

1927. After her husband died, she moved to her daughter’s home in 1936, and it

was then, after she had “retired” – after she had left her normal work on the farm

– that she began to paint.

Initially, she copied what were called “illustrated postcards.” A “postcard” is

something you send someone that has a picture or a painting, usually of a place

that you are visiting. These illustrated postcards were her first subjects; she

would copy them. Eventually, however, beginning in the early 1940s, she started

painting scenes from her own childhood – when she was a child, pictures such

as “Apple Pickers.” People who “pick apples” are people who take the apples

and remove them from the tree. She also had a famous painting called

“Catching the Thanksgiving Turkey.” Thanksgiving, you may know, is a

celebration each year where it is very popular for people to eat turkeys; this was

a painting about someone on a farm catching the turkey for Thanksgiving.

These paintings by Grandma Moses gradually became more famous, and by the

early 1940s she had exhibits and shows in different parts of the country.

Throughout her time as a painter, she painted more than 2,000 paintings. Her

style is sometimes called a “naive” style. “Naive” (naive) usually means innocent,

but also, perhaps, uneducated, or not very intelligent, someone who doesn’t

understand everything very well. Later, art historians called it “American

Primitive,” meaning it had a certain popular folk quality about it.

She became very famous in the late 1940s and 1950s. In the early 1950s, she

appeared on one of the most famous television programs of that time, called See

It Now , by a journalist named Edward R. Murrow, who’s considered one of the

finest journalists of the 20 th century on television.

Grandma Moses died in 1961. As I mentioned earlier, most Americans, when

they think of Grandma Moses, think of the possibility of starting something later in

life, and being able to do well at it. I personally find this encouraging, since there

are many things that I would love to learn how to do, including painting. Right

now, I’m working on the violin, which I’m not very good at. Fortunately, my wife

has a good set of earplugs to put in her ears so she doesn’t hear me! Maybe I’ll

be like Grandma Moses someday.

You may wonder why they called her “Grandma Moses.” I think part of the

reason is that Moses lived a very long time. Moses is a character – a person

from the history of the Jewish people, who was “instrumental,” that is, he was

These materials are copyrighted by the Center for Educational Development (2008). Posting of

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

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