English Conversation Course

In every workplace, there are three basic kinds of people: givers, takers and matchers. Organizational psychologist Adam Grant breaks down these personalities and offers simple strategies to promote a culture of generosity and keep self-serving employees from taking more than their share. 1.    Are you a giver, taker or matcher? 2.   Is being a taker a bad thing for you? Why? 3.   How can we prevent givers from getting poor performance ratings? https://www.ted.com/talks/adam_grant_are_you_a_giver_or_a_taker

If you are a gamer or you love watching someone else playing computer games, surely you have heard about Fortnite: Battle Royal. This co-op sandbox survival game developed by Epic Games had a premiere a year ago and during this time it has over 45 million users. Fortnite has simple rules and pretty, cartoon graphics which makes it pleasant to watch. It’s dedicated to people of all age. Ok, but what is it about? I could describe it by saying: the last man standing wins. At the beginning of each game, you are dropped from the purple flying bus and land on the ground using the parachute. In the hands, you’ve got the pickaxe which can be used to deal the damage to an opponent or to harvest materials from walls, trees, cars etc., to build your own structures. The map is full of items such as bandages, weapons, shields etc. Like many other battle royal games, the whole action takes place in the habitable island. To make the game more dynamic, the living a...

Have you ever heard about such a thing like game jam? The name is meant to resemble musical jams - when a  group of friends hang out in their basement to improvise and create music just for the sake of fun and exploration. But instead of (or sometimes, in addition to) guitars and microphones, game jammers bring their computers to the party. The game jam traditionally takes ca. 48 hours (Friday-Sunday) and during this time participants are supposed to create a completely new game from scratch. Usually there are no restrictions towards technologies and equipment used so one can get really creative and experiment with new ideas. Jammers in their natural habitat [1] Game jams gather people from many different disciplines: programmers, musicians, graphic designers etc. It’s important to cooperate and share your knowledge and skills , so that you can create unique experience. Team sizes vary from lone wolfs up to even 10 people with different level of experience: beginners ca...

We often don't think about the passing time. Sometimes, when we talk with our friends we argue which event happened earlier, or we realize that our memories of shared experiences, for example  from high school stories, are flawed. The same goes with our perception of the timing of historical events. Let's watch this interesting video from a great educational channel called "Kurzgesagt" - it will help us organize our picture of past events and distances between them. Questions: 1. Do you feel that your high school years happened years ago or do you feel like it was yesterday? 2. Do you think that the internet was a good invention - does it speed up our development or does it make us waste too much of our time? 3. Did any of the information from the video surprise you in any way?

The brain-changing benefits of exercise We all know that physical exercise is one of the key factors to keep our body in a good shape. Most people also claim that after doing some workout they are feeling better and they have more energy. Have you ever wondered why a physical activity impacts our mood and mental performance? In this video, a neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki describes key parts of the human brain and explains the processes which take place in it when we are doing exercises. She describes short-term effects like immediate increase of levels of neurotransmitters like dopamine or serotonin, which  boost our mood and enable us to shift and focus attention more effectively as well as improve our time reaction. What is even more interesting, long-term effects actually change brain’s anatomy and functioning. Physical activities contribute to the production of new brain cells and increase volume of hippocampus - major component of human’s brain -  which leads to im...