Table of contents for No 451 in Speak Up

En este número presentamos una pequeña pero significativa selección de entre los miles de castillos que aún se conservan en Escocia. Ya sea en ruinas o reformados y convertidos en museos u hoteles, estos castillos son uno de los mayores reclamos turísticos del país y merece mucho la pena visitarlos. Desde un punto de vista histórico, pero también arquitectónico y artístico, incluso paisajístico, los castillos son unos artefactos fascinantes. Construidos en una ubicación geográficamente ventajosa y con unas vistas espectaculares —si bien por lo general la belleza del entorno no era el motivo de su emplazamiento—, los castillos representaban poder y dominio, pero también defensa frente a la agresión externa, así como sumisión y opresión de la mayoría de la población al servicio del señor del castillo (y que representaba…

TECHNOLOG SPEAK UP IN CLASS Lithium (Li) is a naturally-occurring1 chemical element and one critical to the clean energy transition. Rechargeable lithium-ion2 batteries power3 the most-used electronic devices4 on the planet from portable electronics to electric vehicles and cell phones. Lithium can also store5 significant amounts of energy from solar and wind power. PROPERTIES The name lithium is derived from a Greek word meaning ‘stone’, a reference to where it comes from. A silvery6-white metal, it is so light it can float on water and so soft it can be cut with a knife. It ignites7 on contact with water and burns with a bright red flame, and lithium fires are extremely difficult to put out8. Along with hydrogen and helium, lithium was one of the three elements produced in…

In the heart of London, surrounded by skyscrapers1, is the magnificent St. Paul’s Cathedral, an Anglican place of worship2 designed by celebrated architect Sir Christopher Wren. The building is 158 metres wide and 111 metres high, and its gigantic dome3 is one of the world’s largest4. It was built in the late 17th century on the site of a church largely destroyed in the Great Fire of London. At its completion, in 1710, the new cathedral had cost £1,095,556 (around £174 million today)! OLD ST. PAUL’S St. Paul’s stands5 on Ludgate Hill, the highest point in the City of London. In 104, Pope Gregory, Saint Mellitus and Saint Augustine arrived from Rome and established a Catholic cathedral there. In 1087, a more stable cathedral was constructed that stood for almost…

SPEAK UP IN CLASS On 17 June 1972, night security guard Frank Wills noticed1 a piece of tape2 stuck3 to the latch4 of a basement5 door at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. He removed6 the tape, which was holding the door open, but on his next round it had reappeared. In response to his call, two policemen in plain clothing7 turned up8 and caught five men in the act of an apparent robbery. THE POST Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, two young reporters at The Washington Post, picked up9 the story and refused to let it go10. With the help of an anonymous informant they called Deep Throat, and with the guidance and backing of their senior colleagues, Bernstein and Woodward began to uncover an earth-shattering11 truth. With…

Until the age of eighteen, when she moved to Montreal, Canadian author Miriam Toews lived in a small religious community on the eastern edge1 of the Canadian prairies2 with her parents and sister. Although the community’s rules were rigid and patriarchal, her parents encouraged3 their daughters to develop their creative skills4. Toews took a degree in film studies at the University of Manitoba and later studied journalism. She worked on radio documentaries and only began writing fiction when her younger daughter started nursery school5. THE PRAIRIES Religious fundamentalism, familial bonds6 and mental health are among the themes Toews explores in her novels. She wrote her debut book Summer of my Amazing Luck (1996) while still a freelance journalist. The geographic area of her childhood7 also plays a prominent role. The…

Kevin was having a bad day. It was March 2023 and he’d just failed1 another exam at the university in London where his father was forcing2 him to study finance. Kevin didn’t want to go to university, he didn’t want to study finance and he didn’t want to work at his father’s bank one day. He didn’t want to work anywhere, and why should he? His family was rich and that meant he was rich too. He stopped at the notice board3 to see where the next party was. He needed to go to a party and forget all about the exam, and his father. But another notice got his attention. It said, “Trip of a lifetime4, all expenses5 paid!” and had a phone number. “Trip of a lifetime,” thought…

ARTÍCULOS POR NIVELES DE DIFICULTAD Todos nuestros artículos se presentan con un código de color para indicar el nivel de dificultad del inglés empleado de acuerdo con la Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. A2 PRE-INTERMEDIATE B1 LOWER INTERMEDIATE B2 UPPER INTERMEDIATE C1 ADVANCED C2 PROFICIENCY GLOSARIO ADAPTADO Encontrarás el vocabulario más relevante de cada artículo indicado con un número en el color correspondiente a su nivel de dificultad y su traducción en el glosario adjunto. G in and tonic is arguably1 Britain’s favourite drink GLOSSARY 1 arguably: posiblemente 2 to skyrocket: dispararse VERSIÓN DIGITAL Adicionalmente, puedes suscribirte a Speak Up Digital, la versión digital de la revista Speak Up. Con ella podrás acceder a todos los artículos, audios y ejercicios directamente en nuestra app, disponible para Android y…

TOP BRITS SPEAK UP IN CLASS Jane Austen is one of the most important writers in the world. She wrote just six books in her brief life — she died aged forty-one — but it was enough to ensure1 her worldwide fame. The English novel as an art form had arrived just a few decades before her birth in 1775, with works by writers such as Daniel Defoe and Henry Fielding, but novels only became modern with her books, with their realistic treatment of normal people living ordinary2 lives. MIDDLE-CLASS LIFE In her novels she depicted3 in superb prose for the first time the ordinary life of England’s middle classes. Austen’s funny, cleverly4-observed novels have remained critical and popular successes for over two hundred years. The daughter of a rector5,…

PLACES SPEAK UP IN CLASS The city of London once had an iconic landmark1, famous around Europe for more than six hundred years, which disappeared almost two hundred years ago. Old London Bridge, dating from 1209, and lined2 with insecure-looking wooden houses providing3 homes for more than five hundred people above the waters of the River Thames, was the longest inhabited4 bridge in Europe. ROMAN BRIDGE The first bridge over the Thames, made of wood, appeared in Roman times. Bridges were regularly rebuilt over the next thousand years, destroyed by fires and even a tornado. Then, in 1176, work began on a new, revolutionary, stone bridge connecting the City to Southwark5, which was completed in 1209. A miracle of engineering, the bridge crossed a wide6, powerful tidal river7. It served…

Texans commemorate a special event in their history on 2 March. It is the date on which they became an independent republic, before joining1 the United States. For a short period of time, Texas was a country in its own right2. Previously, it had been part of Mexico, which was a relatively new nation. Mexico separated from Spain in 1821 and included the large state of Tejas. CIVIL WAR It was a sparsely-populated3 region, far from the capital, Mexico City. The Mexican government encouraged4 people to move there to develop the area. Stephen F. Austin brought around ten thousand Anglo-American settlers5 to Texas, more than tripling the population. Many of the colonists were armed men who did not like paying taxes, did not speak Spanish and did not observe Mexican…

Scotland has an estimated two thousand to three thousand castles. Many were built during the medieval period, when Scotland was in near-constant conflict with England. They were constructed to defend against invaders, and to control the local population. Some were used as royal residences, some as administrative centres. Many are now in ruins, but others have been restored as visitor attractions or even places to stay. Here is a selection of the finest castles in Scotland: 1. Dunnottar Located on a rocky headland1 on the northeastern coast, Dunnottar Castle is a ruined medieval fortress that has played a significant role in Scottish history. A popular tourist destination for its dramatic views over the North Sea, the castle ruins are spread out over 1.4 hectares and surrounded by steep cliffs2 on…

CURRENT AFFAIRS In their 1974 book All the President's Men, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein recount their investigation into the 1972 Watergate break-in and the revelations that followed. On the 50th anniversary of the event, the veteran reporters pay homage1 to the unsung2 heroes who helped them defend American democracy: from security guard Frank Wills, to major media figures such as Walter Cronkite, to their superiors at The Washington Post. There, editors3 Benjamin Bradlee and Barry Sussman provided essential guidance. Most critical, however, was the support of Katharine Graham, The Post’s valiant4 publisher5. Bernstein gives an example of how Graham stood up for6 them when the government tried to use legal means to confiscate their notes, and reveal their sources7. Carl Bernstein (American accent): The guard downstairs said: “There’sasubpoena server8…

Born in 1924, in New Orleans, Truman Capote was a novelist, scriptwriter1 and pioneer of New Journalism, an influential style of non-fiction writing incorporating literary techniques and a subjective viewpoint. After producing a series of acclaimed novels — Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948), The Grass Harp (1951) and Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958) — Capote decided to try something different. He described In Cold Blood as a “non-fiction novel”: a blend2 of interviews and research with fictionalised scenes and dialogue.Capote wanted to understand why some people choose to kill. MIDDLE OF NOWHERE The author spent six years researching and writing his book, aided3 by his friend Harper Lee (author of To Kill a Mockingbird4). His precise prose explores the lives and deaths of those impacted by a brutal multiple murder in…

CULTURE For decades Time was the biggest and most influential news magazine in the world. In a century of life, it has coined1 or popularised many neologisms, including ‘socialite2’, ‘televangelist’, ‘pundit3’, and ‘tycoon4’. It was the brainchild5 of two Yale graduates in the 1920s, whose idea was to summarise the whole of the news, making it accessible and digestible for smart6,busy people. A NEW IDEA Henry Luce and Briton Hadden founded the media company Time Inc. in 1922. They decided to publish a weekly magazine called Facts, but settled on Time instead. At first the men worked laboriously, going through7 piles of local papers and selecting what they saw as important news. The first issue of Time appeared on 3 March 1923. Thanks to a mailing campaign, it found a…

Pink Floyd’s album “The Dark Side of the Moon”, fifty years old this month, is a cultural landmark1, one of the most famous records of all time. But how did an LP covering conflict, greed2, death, mental illness and the need for human empathy become a classic, iconic record, remaining on the US Billboard charts for 741 consecutive weeks and selling forty-five million copies? CONCEPT ALBUM “The Dark Side of the Moon” is a real concept album, genuinely thematic, and not just a number of arbitrary songs. Roger Waters (bass guitar and vocals), wrote the lyrics: about the stresses and pressures of life, touching on wealth, armed conflict, wasted3 lives, mortality and madness — expressed as the dark side of the moon. The songs represent good and bad, or in…

HISTORY Texas was an independent nation for just under1 a decade, after which it was annexed to the United States. Professor Emilio Zamora, of the University of Texas at Austin, has an endowed chair2 on Texas history and specialises in Texas and Mexican-American history. He talked to Speak Up about this turbulent period, starting with one of the key drivers for Texas to seek3 separation from Mexico. Emilio Zamora (American accent): Slavery has already been prohibited in most of the Latin American nations, including Mexico. What Texas does with the insurrection that it seeks (the slave owners are very influential) they seek to protect the institution of slavery. Once Texas becomes independent, they re-institute slavery, suggesting that slavery was a cause — one of several causes — of the Texas…

NOW LET’S REVIEW THE VOCABULARY! Aye is a Scottish word for ‘yes’. Scotch and Scottish are adjectives to describe something or someone from Scotland. In general, ‘Scottish’ (or ‘Scots’) means ‘of or from Scotland’, while ‘Scotch’ tends to be used to describe whisky (particularly by Americans). Scottish people can feel offended if they are described as ‘Scotch’. Scottish, Canadian and Japanese varieties are generally spelled3 whisky. American and Irish varieties are spelled with an ‘e’: ‘whiskey’. When you say something that might be considered rude4, you can clarify that you did not mean to insult anybody by saying, No offence. Bonnie is a Scottish word for ‘pretty’. Loch is a Scottish word for ‘lake’. Wee is a Scottish word for ‘small’. Bairn is a Scottish word for ‘child’. Dreich is…

Everything Everywhere All at Once, the action comedy starring Michelle Yeoh as an unsuspecting1 launderette2 owner who battles evil by connecting with different versions of herself in parallel universes, heads into this year’s Oscar race the title to beat. As well as nods3 for Yeoh and her supporting co-stars Jamie Lee Curtis, Stephanie Hsu and Ke Huy Quan, the film is up for4 picture, director (for Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert), costume design5, editing, original song, original score6 and original screenplay. Yeoh’s nomination makes the Malaysian star the first Academy Award best actress nominee to identify as Asian. Hard on its heels7 are The Banshees8 of Inisherin, Martin McDonagh’s black comedy starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as former friends on a small Irish island, and All Quiet on the…

In 2003, while still with R&B group Destiny’s Child, Beyoncé released her debut solo single, the addictive Crazy In Love. A collaboration with her future husband, the rapper Jay-Z, the song’s signature1 horn2 riff was sampled from a minor 1971 hit by the Chi-Lites called Are You My Woman (Tell Me So). Initially, the singer dismissed3 the sound as “too retro”, but producer Rich Harrison managed4 to persuade her that it would be a hit. He wrote the song in just two hours, after Beyoncé arrived at the studio looking dishevelled5 and told him “I’m looking crazy right now”. Harrison played all the instruments on the track. The lyrics are almost completely in the present simple and are about a girl falling in love6 for the first time. Her friends…

Anumber of English idioms are all to do with communication: ‘to drop someone a line’ means to write to someone, while ‘to keep someone posted’, or ‘to touch base with someone’ means to keep someone up to date on a specific subject, or in general. The idiom ‘to spill the beans’ has another connotation, that of revealing something that should be kept a secret! While this colloquial expression was first recorded in 1919, its origins may be much older. In the ancient Greek process of voting, votes were cast by placing one of two different coloured beans in a vase (usually a white bean meant ‘yes’, and a black/brown one meant ‘no’). If someone literally spilled the beans, the election results would be revealed prematurely. A good example of the…