English Conversation Course

How often you were talking  for some time only to find out nobody was actually listening to you? Some people have something in them that focuses attention of people around him and some have problem to get a word in edgeways. Julian Treasure in his presentation tells what you should and should not do while speaking in order to be listened. Questions: Do you have problems in being listened by others often? Which sin you most often commit and which you hate the most? Have you tried similar tips before? Have they worked?

What is it The  International Isle of Man TT (Tourist Trophy) Race  is an annual  motorcycle sport  event that is held on  Isle of Man  in May or June almost every year since 1907 . What makes this event so special? For most of the year 60.67 kilometers of public roads are used with the usual purpose. But for 2 weeks per year roads are closed to let racers compete in one of the deadliest motor races. As of today, the number of deaths is 146. Isle of man Isle of Man is a self-governing British Crown Dependency in the Irish Sea between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland. Biggest sectors of the economy are insurance and online gambling with 17% of GNI (gross national income), while tourism sector is only 0.3%. There is no national speed limit on public roads. History The first Isle of Man TT was held every year starting from Tuesday 28 May 1907 except for two breaks, First World War (1915-1919) and Second World War (1940-1946). A...

Have you ever heard about „cervesario” term? Cervesario is equivalent to somelier but he’s an expert, kiper about beer. There are many aspects that cervesario assesses like variety types of beer, it’s smell, taste, hue, clarity, flavor etc. He has a deep knowlegde how do drink beer, which temperaturę is the best for each type. What do you think? How many certificated experts are in Poland right now? Maybe 100? Nothing more wrong… It’s about 24 cervesarios. But why it’s so hard to get certification? There are 56 sorts of beer, thousands brands and one brand has few propositions of one sort. Let’s imagine how hard is to get knowledge about each of them. In this article I’ll try to describe few, well known types of beer like, IPA, Stout, Bock or Lager. One you have to know is Billing’s Scale (Blg) – it’a scale of sugar content in solution. 1)       IPA style India Pale Ale (extract: 12,2 – 18 Blg, alcohol: 5 – 7,5%) Imerial India Pale Ale (extract: 16,8 –...

Have you ever tried to count how many bottles of beer do you drink every year? Avarage ingestion of beer in Poland is estimated at 98 litres per each adult person. It’s about 196 bottles per year, so statistically we are drinking beer more than two bottles per every 3 days. In case of students, it’s much more because about 1,5 bottle per day. These statistics place our country at 4th position in Europe. It’s impressive, isn’t it? Have you ever tried to brew beer? In this article, I’ll try to explain how to do that and second article will be about most popular beer types. The main ingredient of beer is naturally well known hop but at first we have to grind a malt into the powder. Then we have to pour the powder into a big vat, mix and slowly heat up. The third step of making beer is flitrating obtained extract and transfering the purified liquid into the first barrel called „front barrel”. Extract with hop is boiled in front barrel and slowly cooled down – it’s a main point of bre...

I really don’t like to listen to myself on recordings. I've always wondered why my voice on recordings is different from what I hear on a daily basis. Rebecca Kleinberger in her presentation explains   why there is discord between the sound we hear and which others hear. She also mentions how technology is trying to analyze voice to eg. predict disease like Parkinson or depression. Questions: 1.       Do you like your own voice? 2.       Do you pay attention to other people’s voice? Do you judge them on this basis?

Nowadays much is said about air pollution, traffic jams and accidental deaths. Most of you have certainly heard about the idea of ​​implementing autonomous cars. This problem may seem simple at first glance, but after a deeper reflection we can see that it is quite complicated. At the beginning, as with any standalone device, the question of security and reliability arises. Are we able to completely entrust our health and life to a computer? There are many extreme opinions in this matter. One of the most important aspects that experts are considering is the decision making of the autonomous car. When, for example, a pedestrian runs out on the street - it will hit him or avoid collision, for example, going down to the ditch, endangering the lives of passengers. You must have heard that the first fatal accident happened with the Uber autonomous car, which killed a woman passing in a place that was not intended for that purpose. Many, negati...

I’ve talked to different people and read a lot about marijuana and it’s effects on your health. And in fact, everybody has his own opinion and arguments. And still there is no deep enough and trustworthy studies, that can end these debates. I found a guy who tried to find only real and trustworthy medical studies about marijuana and its impact on human body, and I hope you will enjoy it and find something new for yourself. Questions: 1)Have you tried weed? 2)Do you think it’s bad for your health or not? 3)Do you think it should be legal or not?

We all know that nowadays technologies are developing faster than ever. But do we even realize, how much have we done to entertain ourselves? People started attempt to make some video games almost from the moment computer was invented. And video games industry has quite long history. I don’t want to mention all that boring historical stuff, I just want to quickly show you the progress. One of the most famous and the earliest games was Pong. Kinda simple and boring game. In the next 20 years video games industry made a huge step, games became better, more complicated, and of course, graphic was much better than it had been. Games like Street Fighter, Sonic and Mortal Combat appeared. Probably all of you know what was next, after 90’s. You’ve seen all those games, you played them and video games industry was developing on your eyes, following the development of computers. I would like to point your attention to newest games and those that are not yet available, but wil...

Polish rifle of the future - MSBS Even though AK system is one of the best and most recognizable firearms systems, it’s still over 70 years old construction and frontline soldiers’ weapons must evolve parallel to the everything other in the armies of the world. And from this the idea to create new weapon for Polish soldiers was born. Between 2003 and 2006 there was research to create weapon to change different AK-based firearms with only one modern rifle. Its development started in 2007 at the WAT University in Warsaw and now is included in the future soldier “Titan” personal fight system project. Its official short name is MSBS-5,56, but army named it Grot (arrowhead) to honor the AK general Stefan Rowecki. Weapon itself is produced by Fabryka Broni “Łucznik” in Radom. Two variants of MSBS – above B (bullpup) and below K (classic) The gun by itself is designed to be not only an assault rifle, but to become new Polish Armed Forces standard weapon platform ...

Simple way to improve your neighborhood We are living in the XXI century, and we can access any information on the Internet whenever we desire it, we could buy nearly anything there and work remotely, all inside our homes. But we still need wander around our neighborhoods and cities. And there are still plenty places we could improve. And Jeff Speck has an idea, how we should do it. Link to the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wai4ub90stQ 1.    Do you agree with the Jeff’s arguments? Why or why not? 2.    Do you have any place in your neighborhood, that could be improved? 3.    How would you improve any important place in your area or city?

The internet was conceived in an academic environment. The intentions behind the concept were bold and noble. The ability to connect with others in a blink of an eye quickly disrupted the way we communicate with each other, share information and knowledge. The revolution affected every aspect of our lives. It seemed that democratization of information would only benefit everybody. New, powerful tools were created in order to solve many complex problems, increase our productivity and entertain us. The western civilization has become a so called Global Village with no boundaries with respect to the exchange of thought, culture, money, etc. However, nowadays serious questions are raised with respect to our safety, privacy and freedom itself - because of the internet and social media in particular. Almost everyone leads a double life, one of which takes place in the web. Our personal information, our thoughts, ideas are all stored, processed and used by the government, corp...