English Conversation Course

Shogi – Game of Generals Shogi board Everybody knows game of chess, but do you know many Asian countries have their own versions of the game? Some are quite surprising. For example, in the Chinese one there are no horse pieces. Instead there are elephants that are too scared to cross the river that divides the board in half. In this article I would like to present you my favorite version of chess game – Shogi. Game of chess is the battle of two kings. In Shogi game there are two kings as well, but the game is known as Game of Generals, because there are 8 generals pieces at the beginning of the game and you can promote your other pieces to general rank to have even more generals! This is great strategy to keep in mind while you are playing a game, because generals are in most situations much better than unprompted pieces. The generals can be promoted from any piece you want that hasn’t general rank or isn’t a king. The promotion process is much easier than in re...

Crazy tree Crazy tree grows 40 kinds of fruit. How is it even possible and why nobody has documented such strange tree before? You will find answers to those questions after watching the movie below! https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=74&v=ik3l4U_17bI&feature=emb_title 1. Would you like to have such tree in your (future) garden? 2. What do you think about the gardener who is taking care of the tree? Who is crazier? Him or the tree? 3. Do you like gardening overall? Do you find it relaxing?

The (un)normal world. During my free time I have had some loose thoughts that I will share with you. In this post, there will be a lot of mental shortcuts, be aware of that. Given the prevailing pandemic, it is not easy today but I think that we are living in a more pleasant world - taken out of the inequalities of the capitalist world described by Marx, civilization, parabolic tragedy described in the works of Camus as well as lost and at the same time hope for man as individuals described by Hesse. Not bad. It is still a world full of chances for great success and a devastating defeat, chances for true love, or its substitution in various applications and media. Easy to reach the peak of our dreams or a valley of our fears. 1. Machiavelli, in the Prince, writes that it is better to manage people through fear, not love. However, he did not have the opportunity to observe the tools that are used on a large scale today - DEINFORMATION. https://www.google.com/url?sa=i...

Flipped Classroom   Technology and education is becoming more and more integrated every day and with the help of technological tools, new solutions and modern alternatives to traditional teaching methods are being developed. The term "Flipped Classroom" or "Flipped learning" is one of those budding advancements. It first came into use in mid-2000s however the real implementation of it still continues to progress. Flipped Classroom is basically providing the students with the target content online and let them study and prepare before the lesson, then have the activities, discussions or tasks done during class time in the guidance of the teacher.   To start with, there are a great number of benefits of using Flipped Classroom technique for the learners. Firstly, it will help students obtain learning culture. When learners are assigned with the duty of having pre-knowledge about the content of the lesson, they gradually start to gain the culture of learning; in ...

The secret of running your own startup Nowadays Startups are a very hot idea. Running your own business seems to be a pretty thing, doesn’t it? Everyone does startups. I also made a few ones. It took me a while to find the most important factors about running your own business. In this short video, I would like to share with you one of the secrets, that many founders forget during doing their business. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNpx7gpSqbY QUESTIONS: 1. Have you ever thought about running your own startup? What stopped you from doing that? 2. Now there is a Coronavirus, and the world lives differently. After watching this video you know that it’s a perfect time for some new, hot startup, don’t you? Write a minimum two problems that Covid-19 causes which would be nice to solve in your own startup in those hard times.

On Monday 20 th of April something unprecedented happened, crude oil prices has fallen below 0$ per barrel. That means that sellers were actually paying buyers to take contracts off their hands. The price has gone negative for the May contracts in US only, but nevertheless it was the all-time low price for oil in history. But what was the cause, and how is it even possible?! The prices for oil were already low, because of initial lockdowns in China in February, the oil price has significantly fallen down. Everybody was expecting that the prices will rebound quickly as it’s a China story. When cases in Italy started rising, oil prices started to roll over. Prices plummeted further when Saudi Arabia and Russia, were unable to reach an oil production cut deal, this caused oil prices to drop to the lowest since 2008. In April US helped to broker a deal between them, Saudi Arabia and Russia agreed to cut crude oil production for 9.7 million barrels a day, which is more that 20%. Unfort...

Climate change is a fact, everything we do has an impact on our environment. Our consumption habits emit billions of tons of greenhouse gases, that are the main cause of changes in our climate. Our choices in even seemingly unimportant things as what meat we eat for dinner, have a huge effect on our carbon footprint. Production of some types of food is much better for our environment than the others, but what is the worst food for the climate? Here is a short video on this topic: Questions: 1. Are you surprised that this is the „worst” food for our climate? 2. Would you consider to change your eating habits to be more environmentally friendly? 3. What other things we can do to stop climate change?

Ted video:  https://www.ted.com/talks/jim_collins_how_we_re_using_ai_to_discover_new_antibiotics Each of us is already tired of the virus that has been in existence for several months. At the moment we are conducting a difficult fight with him, but whether? technology can help us with this. I think so! Before the pandemic, Jim Collins was involved in artificial intelligence and combined it with synthetic biology. Callins explains how he wants to start the fight with Covid-19 using artificial intelligence Questions: 1.Is artificial intelligence helpful in developing a medicine? 2.What would the plague look like without technology?

What Bicycle should I choose? It's getting warmer and despite the epidemic, we all want to go outside and get some fresh air by walking or cycling. The bike probably everyone knows what it is used for and has certainly tried to ride it more than once. But do you know that a bike is divided into several categories depending on the sport and the terrain in which we ride? I am the owner of a bicycle that is adapted to the mountain conditions (MTB). Below I will introduce you to several types and use them in sport or in the field. MTB At the very beginning we will start with the type of bike that is popular and most often bought. It is a mountain bike designed for riding in harsh conditions. Its basic version is equipped with a front shock absorber that absorbs our jumps and protects against falling. The more expensive models of mountain bikes are equipped with two shock absorbers (one in the back, the other in the front), they are called MTB Full XC. Enduro and ...

We have a difficult time with the COVID-19 virus, and in Poland two weeks ago an action financially supporting the Polish health service was launched. The action was initiated by Taco Hamingway, who nominated various music creators (mainly rappers), and they further nominated various other artists. Polish video which started action The whole action consists of writing and earning 16 lines, where the number sixteen in the name of the action came from. Each creator adds some money and encourages viewers to make donations. Within two weeks, we managed to raise over two and a half million PLN. Interestingly, singers, politicians and other stars including Polish President Andrzej Duda joined the action. After a week of the action, one YouTube creator Krzysztof Gonciarz started the second action, which aims to do exactly the same thing as hot16challange2, but it involves people not associated with rap or music. Mainly players and streamers take part in this second ...

Many people have passions, hobbies and different interests. Most often, our hobby becomes something interesting, although many times people change their passion, because their previous passion turned out to be too difficult or simply boring. Similarly with drawing; many of us think that this is a difficult process or simply claim that they cannot draw. Watch the video above and answer the questions below: Do you think you can draw? Do you think that drawing skills are just drawing or maybe creating creative harmony on a piece of paper or a computer screen? Have you ever managed to draw something that you would like to show off? If so, describe your work.

In today’s reality, it’s really difficult to forget about COVID-19. We are watching and listening to news from various sources about different countries and their current situation economy-wise, social-wise, health-wise. There is one country that reacted very quickly and successfully to the current situation. Here is a short movie prepared by Vox channel on YouTube that depicts how South Korea reacted to the virus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE-cA4UK07c&list=PLJ8cMiYb3G5czofUrrizDiyC_yNLOe_CF 1.        How do you view this movie? Did you know about South Korea and their quick reaction to the Coronavirus? 2.        How are you spending your time during lockdown?