English Conversation Course

The Seven Summits are the highest mountain peaks on each of the seven continents. Only approximately 400 people managed to climb all seven peaks. Youngest of them is Jordan Romero who have accomplished this achievement at the age of 15. On attached image, you can notice nine peaks, one of them (Mauna Kea) was placed as a curio but the other one (Mt. Kosciuszko) is sometimes considered as highest mountain of Australia because some people treat Oceania and Australia as separate continents. There is no doubt that Mount Everest is the hardest of those seven peaks and it is due to the fact that: there is a possible presence of avalanches, falling rocks, and solid ice pieces rolling down, there are crevasses which are extremely deep and their top can be covered with snow, the weather up there is changing rapidly and after dark temperature can drop to -40 degrees Celsius without the wind-chill, 8,000 meters above sea level there is an area called “Death zone”, the air contains so ...

Daphna Bavelier is a scientist, who is doing studies on how certain things affect human brain. In this episode of TED talks she is presenting surprising results of an experiment about video games and their impact on a player’s brain, cognitive functions and vision. What is your opinion about video games? Do you play them often or not at all? 1.      Is it true that games affect vision? Does the model of the display of your computer matter? 2.      What practical skills can a person obtain during the playtime? 3.      How much time playing games you find ok? Is twenty hours per week totally fine, or no more than fifteen minutes per day?

             In the year of 1448 Johannes Gutenberg borrowed one hundred and fifty golden coins, a huge amount of money for that time.  Two years later, in 1450 he asked Johann Fust, a rich merchant, for another eight hundred golden coins. By the year of 1455 Johannes’s debt was about two thousand golden coins. Unfortunately, he could never give them back. However, by the end of that year, the first printed book ever, the Gutenberg Bible, was created. Here is, what Pope Pius II said about it in his letter to the Cardinal Carvajal:             “Everything that they wrote to me about this amazing man whom I saw in Frankfurt is true. I have not seen complete Bibles, only a few pages from different parts of the Bible. The handwriting is very neat and legible, not at all difficult to read - Your Grace will read it without difficulty and, indeed, without glasses.” First page of Gutenbe...

Almost everyone has heard about the Placebo effect, but do you know how it works and why is it getting more effective in relation to real drugs? This video will answer these questions and provide you with interesting facts of that phenomenon. Questions 1. Have you ever experienced placebo effect? 2. Do you experience worse effectiveness of drugs than in the past? 3. Do you think that healthcare should include placebo treatment without patient knowledge?

5G is a fifth generation of cellular network and is going to be a successor of 4G that enabled LTE technology with its blazingly fast internet speeds. But why do we need next generation if 4G sufficiently fills the needs of personal users? You see, with the rapid growth of IoT (the Internet of Things) and increasing digitalization of our world, the current infrastructure doesn’t keep up with exponentially growing inter-device communication and right now suffers from vast technical constraints. 5G is going to be a solution to this problem. It will allow to manage almost thousand times more traffic than 4G and at the same time will be almost ten times faster. However, the implementation of such technology is by no means a trivial task, to fulfill the promises researchers must first overcome many issues and meet with technical requirements. Fortunately over the last 2 years we’ve managed to resolve most of these problems and it is expected that 5G will come in late 2020. So what lies...

Cicada 3301 is probably the biggest mystery of the modern internet. It’s a secret organization run by unknown people that has posted a set of puzzles with a purpose to recruit “highly intelligent individuals”. For past few years, Cicada 3301 has raised lots of different questions and conspiracies surrounding real purpose of these puzzles. One of the biggest questions is who is behind all of that? Some people claim that Cicada 3301 is a secret organization run by the US Government which looks for computer security experts with high-level skills in cryptography. Other people have claimed that Cicada is some kind of a cult or religion. Entire communities have been created in order to solve puzzles and find answers to all these questions. Here is the video that explains the story behind this internet mystery: Questions: 1. What do you think? Is Cicada 3301 a real thing or just another internet “rickroll”? 2. Would you like to try to solve them? 3. Who do you think is behind ...

For some people, money management and personal finance are not the most comfortable topics to discuss because not all of us have enough knowledge and experience that give enough courage to talk about money. In fact, almost everything we learn about money comes from routine financial interactions we perform every day or month like paying the rent and bills or creating a bank account or even by just asking or googling simple questions involving finances. Most of this knowledge, of course, comes to us from our parents and if they didn’t know how to manage money properly, which resulted in financial problems than we might also do this wrong because we emulate their financial behavior. It’s really strange that such an important skill which we will absolutely need in our life is never taught by teachers in schools. Of course, the school system is here to be blamed but if you think about this for a second then you start to realize that the system in which people don’t have a proper financial ...

More and more Millennials are approaching the market. Chip Conley , a baby boomer, experienced this generation at Airbnb company and shared his observations on age diversity in the workplace. Do you work in an age-diverse team? If so, what is your experience? Have you ever experienced the generation gap? Do you think Millennials have a positive impact on the market? Present examples. 

Most of us know what SpaceX and who Elon Musk is, but let's say few words for the ones who do not know. Elon Musk is a business magnate and investor. He is also the founder and CEO of SpaceX ,  Tesla ,  Neuralink , Hyperloop, The Boring Company, PayPal and many more. In 2016, he was ranked 21st on the  Forbes  list of  The World's Most Powerful People and in 2018, he has a net worth of $19.8 billion which listed him as the  46th-richest person in the world. That should more or less illustrate you who he is. https://static2.proactiveinvestors.com/thumbs/upload/News/Image/2018_10/757z468_1539783597_elonmusk.jpg What is SpaceX then? Space Exploration Technologies Corporation is a privately held rocket and spacecraft company founded in 2002. What makes it great is that SpaceX has been a disruptive force in the worldwide launch industry because its launch services are less expensive than many of its com...

What makes a great leader? Management theorist Simon Sinek suggests, it’s someone who makes their employees feel secure, who draws staffers into a circle of trust. But creating trust and safety — especially in an uneven economy — means taking on big responsibility. I encourage you to watch the video and answer below questions. Questions: 1. Do you agree with Simon's circle of trust idea? Why? 2. Do you feel safe around your leaders at school and/or work? What do they do to make you feel so? 3. What else could we do as leaders to make our  subordinates feel safe and belong?

Dr. Jerry Harvey narrated this story to be the founder of the “Abilene paradox “theory. Abilene's paradox occurs when a group of people decide together to do something that each individual is opposed to do, but fear of being the single voice to opposing, pretend that they are agree and eager to do that. Abilene's paradox is one of the catastrophes that dictators are hitting in large-scale decisions and giant companies are exploiting employees. The role of democracy / good director is to stop the "Paradox of Abilene" and encourage the citizen / employee to criticize and disagree. 1- To what extent you agree with this? 2- When was the last time you've faced the paradox of Abilene? 3- What are the ways to resist Abilene's paradox in your point of view?

Perhaps, you've met people who are constantly talking about something so-called luck. Regularly, we say we missed a chance or got a chance. Is there really something like luck? How can you be lucky and succeed? Why some people do nothing to succeed? Where did they bring all that good luck from? "I'm miserable", "I'm lucky" and ... maybe you heard these sentences from your friends or family! Those who explain: "My parents and my family are so…!", " I also was not lucky from economics point of view!" "I missed the exam because the questions were very difficult this year", "Unfortunately, my wife is selfish! "," My kids did not miss me! "," In the workplace, the manager discriminates! "and more and more excuses. Although giving a blame for luck, it gives us pseudo peace for a moment, but it also brings us the power to change our fate and situation. Taking all powers away from o...