English Conversation Course

Week 10 [12.12 - 18.12] Just you and the whole world   When it comes to traveling to another city or country, the last thing that comes to mind - to travel solo. Vacationing in a group of your friends seems to give much more fun. But sometimes the circumstances don't allow you to find the company for a trip. In this case you shouldn't stay at home. You can try to travel alone. This is a great experience that has its advantages and disadvantages. So, Pros: 1. You don't need to compromise. When traveling alone, you don't have to be torn between someone's desires and wishes for travel. Go to the best show? Visit an old castle? Sit up all night in the pub? Choose what you wish and do it! Wake up and go for a walk when you want, go only to those places that are interesting for you, not adjusting to other people. 2. You don't need to wait for anyone. Everyone has their own pace of life, one can get up in the morning and freshen up for 10...

Romance in the 21 st century – a few words about online dating. As the pace of life accelerates, people try to save time on everything, including interpersonal relationships. Along with the development of the Internet, it was only natural that someone used it to revolutionise people's dating. Going on a date, thanks to dating portals and applications is now easier than ever – one only needs an account and connection to the Web. According to statistics, more than one third of American couples who got married between 2005-2012 met on the Internet. http://www.datingtrainers.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/559.jpg It is difficult to point out the first online dating website, but over the years this branch of industry has become a global phenomenon. Currently there are approximately 8,000 dating platforms world-wide and every year this number becomes bigger and bigger. There are not only ordinary websites which help finding a suitable husband or wife, but also portal...

How smart is a smart TV? Over the last years computers have gradually become more and more popular as the source of knowledge and, especially, entertainment, thus eclipsing television sets which once used to be one of the most luxurious products available. With time TVs have become bigger and bigger; then they have become flatter and flatter; now, in order to be able to compete with computers, they are becoming smarter. Today the market is being swooped by smart TVs. What is it, though, that makes them so “smart”? The first characteristic that one may think of is naturally the ability to connect to the Internet , however this is just the tip of the iceberg. Smart TVs have an embedded capability to access various online features, such as social media sites and Video on Demand services. Therefore, depending on its brand and model, a TV may allow the use of Facebook, Twitter, possibly Skype, and more importantly Netflix, YouTube or Vimeo. Furthermore, the user is also allowed to...

Religion has served as a backbone for civilizations since time immemorial. They serve as spiritual hubs and have continued to influence life, politics and society. In this presentation I would like to show you a couple of religions that aren’t well known but have a considerable number of followers as well as some parody beliefs. Last Thursdayism is a belief or rather a philosophy that the whole universe was  have been created last Thursday (or by implication, on any other given date and time). Under Last Thursdayism, all people, planets, fossils, every memory you have (even those before last Thursday), stars were all formed at the time of creation in a state much older than they are. It doesn’t really have any followers or rituals but proving it wrong is impossible. It’s not falsifiable, which means that it can’t be shown to be false. If you bring an argument “Last Thursdayism is false because I have a photo that was made 2 months ago. I wouldn’t be able to do that if the worl...

We all have experienced déjà vu (from French, literally „already seen”). Those moments when where the current situation feels like it has happened before. You can’t pinpoint when it happened or how it has become so familiar. There’s no reliable way to cause it in people’s minds heads;  it’s difficult to scientifically study déjà vu. We know that humans don’t experience déjà vu until they are at least 8 or 9 years old. It’s most frequent in your teens and twenties and as you get older it tapers off.  One theory states that déjà vu is an error between long and short-term circuits in the brain. The information we gather from our surroundings might be incorrectly transferred from short to long-term memory. So if we experience something new – which is currently in our short-term memory – it feels as if we already experienced it the past. There is also something known as Presque vu – “tip of the tongue”. This is what happens when you are familiar with something. You know you kn...

    https://animalcorner.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/toco-toucan-2.jpg Toucans. Many of us only saw one in a picture or in a zoo. Perhaps a few have been lucky enough to travel to their habitat and see one there. But what are those majestic creatures? Toucans are birds most commonly found in forests of Mexico, Paraguay and Argentina. They are relatively small, black and yellow, with very sharp claws allowing them to hold tightly to trees. Their size varies; some toucans weight as little as 130 g, and some as much as 680 g. Toucans diet was a mystery for scientist for the longest time. At first they were thought to be carnivores. Their long beaks have small outwards-pointing spikes that resemble fangs, which led scientists to believe that it must have been used for hunting prey. It was proven false: while toucans do eat meat, it’s usually bugs or very small animals. Most of toucans diet consists of various fruit. http://images.fineartamerica.com/imag...

Pizza – we all eat it, we all love it. It’s constantly in top 3 of the most beloved kinds of fast food. Some say that there is no such thing as bad pizza. But have we ever stopped to think about it? Where does it come from, when was it created, what is it really? http://fabrykaobiadow.ipr.pl/attachments/Image/pizza.jpg Earliest pizzas were created way before Italy even existed, back in Neolithic age. The first flatbread created by mankind was hard and tasteless, so our ancestors found a way to add flavour to it by baking it with other ingredients, like meat of hunter animals, herbs or roots on top of it. In ancient Greece common people added olives and herbs to their baked bread, as well as the most important pizza ingredient – cheese. In Persia, 6th century BC, it was common to eat pizza with cheese and dates. Modern pizza was created in Italy. It was there where it became common to add tomatoes to pizza, leaving cheese on top and adding herbs, mostly garlic, salt and b...