Table of contents for No 486 in Speak Up

To say that this wonderful lake is grand1, beyond description, is to give an idea of its magnificence. Everyone gazes2 at it in almost tearful astonishment3.” With this quote4, the Crater Lake Institute provides a sense of the beauty of Crater Lake, which is the deepest lake in the US. Situated in Crater Lake National Park in Oregon, the lake is around 1,949 feet (594m) deep, and is known for its magnificent deep blue color and the clarity of its waters. A BALANCING ACT About 7,700 years ago, the volcano Mount Mazama experienced a massive eruption that caused the summit5 to implode. Debris6 and lava collapsed into the emptied7 magma chamber, and this created the caldera that then filled with water to form Crater Lake. Unlike most lakes, Crater Lake…

Millions of miles from Earth, a robotic probe1 collected samples2 from an asteroid named Bennu in 2018. Now NASA scientists are studying those samples, which are suggesting new possibilities about the origin of life. AS OLD AS TIME Asteroid Bennu is named after the ancient Egyptian mythological bird Bennu, a symbol of the Sun, creation, and rebirth. It is about five hundred meters wide and is technically a rubble pile3 asteroid. This means that it’s not one solid rock but a collection of rocks and debris4 held together5 by gravity and electrostatic forces. These rocks and debris were originally part of a much larger asteroid that formed in the outer Solar System about 4.6 billion years ago — when our Solar System came into being6. INGREDIENTS FOR LIFE Bennu was discovered…

People love to complain1 about small talk2. Some say it’s “painful”, “dishonest” and “a chore3.” Some of my own friends have called it “boring” and “exhausting.” A 2016 Wired magazine article titled “Small talk should be banned4” argued that idle5 chit-chat6 “does not build relationships and does not make us happier”, but persists because “we actively seek the lowest common denominator.” Instead, the authors suggest deeper conversation topics, such as: “What is your relationship with God?” or “What is something you fear in life?” I’m here to say, respectfully: all of this is wrong. First, I find the anti-small talk position arrogant, marked by a sense that the holder7 is more thoughtfully8 and deeply engaged9 with life than everyone else. When I was in middle school10, I knew a kid who…

Emily Brontë (1818-1848) spent most of her short life in the village of Haworth in northern England, surrounded by moorland1. Though she wrote stories and poems from a young age with her siblings2, Wuthering Heights is her only novel. It was published (initially under the male pseudonym Ellis Bell) in December 1847 when Brontë was twenty-nine. She died very soon afterwards of tuberculosis, just three months after the death of her brother Branwell. PRIMAL PASSION At the centre of the story are Cathy and her adopted brother Heathcliff, who grow up on the moors in an isolated house called Wuthering Heights. ‘Wuthering’ is an old Yorkshire dialect term meaning ‘windy’. As teenagers, Cathy and Heathcliff’s feelings for each other become intense and passionate, perhaps even obsessive. They spend their days…

Bob reached the top of the ladder1 just as dawn appeared on the eastern horizon. The air was ice cold and frost gleamed2 on the wooden planks of the scaffolding3. He was glad of his gloves. Bob always arrived before the other builders so that he could hide his knapsack4. He never talked much to the other workmen on any site, but this time it was worse. Jem, the gang leader, was a cocky5, belligerent man, who had taken against6 Bob and used him as the butt of his jokes7. He’d twice hidden Bob’s knapsack and Bob was sure that Jem had taken his best chisel8. The other builders also resented9 the compliments Bob received from the Master Mason. Bob opened his knapsack and took out his tools, slotting the…

In early medieval1 Europe, in regions formerly2 conquered by the Romans, ordinary people3 in their everyday speech spoke a vernacular language that became more and more distant from the Latin used by the Church and in formal writings. Romanised populations started to speak the so-called romanice, a Latin adverb meaning ‘in the Roman (vernacular) way’ or ‘in the Romance language,’ alluding to the emerging local languages derived from Latin: a language that ordinary people could actually understand, unlike4 formal Latin. Over the centuries, this spoken language clearly departed5 from Latin and changed from region to region: these languages would later become Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese or Romanian, among others. WESTERN ROMAN EMPIRE The linguistic phenomenon of the evolution from Latin to Romance vernaculars took place across the entire Western Roman…

George Orwell is one of the most important writers in world history. The author of two of the most famous novels of the last hundred years, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, he was described by The Economist as “perhaps the 20th century’s best chronicler of English culture.” Orwell was born Eric Blair on 25 June 1903, in India, to a British colonial civil servant1. Educated at Eton, he joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma before resigning2 to become a writer. He immediately started to explore the poor parts of London, dressed like a tramp3. Poverty was an obsession. Moving to Paris, he took menial jobs4 for two years. He adopted the name George Orwell for his book Down and Out5 in Paris and London (1933), which described his experiences. SUPERB…

When the first season of the Netflix series Bridgerton premiered on Christmas Day, Amanda Vickery sat at home with her three daughters and watched every episode. This was in 2020, in the midst of England’s lockdown, and Vickery remembers thinking, “Thank goodness1 for this escape.” That Vickery could lose herself that way is a particular compliment2 to Bridgerton, an enflowered3 fantasy adapted from the Regency-set romance novels of Julia Quinn. Vickery, a professor at Queen Mary, University of London, is a historian. And Bridgerton, a show in which empowered women swoon4 to orchestral versions of Ariana Grande, takes a rather liberal approach to history. Watching at home, Vickery did not imagine that she would ever work on Bridgerton, but for the third season she served as its historical consultant, succeeding…

Emerald Fennell’s breakthrough1 as a writer and director came in 2023 with the film Saltburn, which was one of the most streamed films of that year. Australian actress and producer Margot Robbie and fellow countryman2 Jacob Elordi were both involved with that project too: Robbie as a producer and Elordi playing a leading role as the aristocratic Felix Catten. Saltburn is a black comedy thriller that tells the story of a working-class Oxford University student who is invited to spend the summer with the family of fellow student3 Felix Catten. The film contains graphic scenes of sex, drugs, suicide, and poisoning. So, it should be no surprise that there’s plenty of graphic sex and violence (sometimes both together) in Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights. BLACK OR WHITE? These graphic scenes…

Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, better known as Bad Bunny1, has become an icon on the global music scene and a symbol of pride for Puerto Rican people around the world. The singer made history at the 2023 Grammy Awards when his fourth album “Un Verano Sin Ti” won Best Música Urbana Album and became the first Spanish-language album ever nominated for Album of the Year. In January 2025, he released “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS”, a deeply personal and political project recorded in Puerto Rico. The album blends2 reggaeton with traditional island sounds like plena, jíbaro, salsa, and bomba, and explores themes of cultural identity, political resistance, and nostalgia. NUYORICAN True to form3, Bad Bunny used the release date4 of this album to make a political and cultural statement5. While albums…

So, artificial intelligence has taken the burden off the customer service department. Yes, the AI agent has reduced the workload a lot. I understand we had some initial hiccups? Yes. It can handle standard enquiries1, but anything complex or out of the ordinary can cause problems. What happens if it can’t resolve an issue? Then it escalates2 the enquiry to a human agent. But it’s getting better, right? Yes. Machine learning means it can deal with most calls now. The answers are also getting more detailed and accurate3. What’s the resolution rate at the moment? It’s 65 per cent, which is very good. Do we have any feedback from our customers? Yes, they really like the live chat function. Average ratings are four out of five4. Great. Given it’s success,…

In 2019, a metal detectorist unearthed1 an exceptional find2 in a field in Warwickshire, central England: a dazzling3, heart-shaped pendant4 made of 24-carat5 gold, dating back to the 16th century. Inscribed with the intertwined6 initials ‘H’ and ‘K’, the artifact was made to celebrate Henry VIII’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon. According to specialists, it is a very rare piece of history. THE TUDOR BACKGROUND Henry VIII, who was king of England from 1509 to 1547, is well-known for having six wives in an obsessive quest7 to have a male heir8, and Katherine of Aragon was his first conquest. Katherine was a Spanish princess who was previously married to Arthur, Henry’s older brother and heir apparent9 to the throne. When Arthur died suddenly in 1502, Katherine became engaged10 to Henry…

Back in 2015, when the UK was part of the EU, the city of Bristol in the south-west of England was awarded1 the title of European Green Capital. Ten years on, the city has been included in a list of the twenty most eco-friendly travel destinations, compiled by global travel site Big 7 Travel. Bristol is also the UK’s first Cycling City, the UK’s second Gold Sustainable Food City and a fair-trade2 city. With all these green accolades3, it is no wonder4 that the city is home to a number of organisations with an environmental focus. Sustrans, a sustainable transport NGO5, and the Soil6 Association, a charity working to revolutionise farming, eating practices, and the use of natural resources, are just two examples. GREEN SPACES AND PATHS So what is…

rage bait noun → online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media account. Even if you’ve never heard the expression before, you’ve likely come across1 ‘rage bait’ online. This is the word that, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, captures last year’s zeitgeist, or “the general mood or quality” of this particular period of history, “as shown by the ideas and beliefs common at the time.” GRRRRR! So what is ‘rage bait’? ‘Rage2’ means intense anger, and ‘bait3’ is something used to attract prey4. If you want to catch a fish, it helps to put a tasty worm5 as bait on your fishing hook6. The…

Love is a predominant theme of almost all musical genres, particularly pop music. A 2018 study found that 67.3 per cent of chart hits from 1960 to 2010 were about the emotional happiness or torment associated with this multifaceted emotion. With tales of undying1 devotion or of the anguish of a broken heart, bards have used romantic serenades since songwriting began to pull at listeners’ heartstrings2 with a subject that almost everyone can relate to. We list a selection of the greatest love songs to help with your English and to fill your heart! A2 PRE-INTERMEDIATE 1. Something, The Beatles (1969) Hailed3 by Frank Sinatra as the greatest love song of “the last fifty or one hundred years” (although he mistakenly attributed it to principal Beatles songwriters John Lennon and…

Emmily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights has inspired more than twenty film adaptations and several TV miniseries, from Hollywood classics to international versions in Hindi, French, and Japanese. Each one explores a particular angle of the story’s passion and revenge, but only Peter Kosminsky’s 1992 film attempts to address1 the whole plot2, from the childhood of the protagonists Cathy and Heathcliff, right through to3 the next generation. William Wyler’s Wuthering Heights (1939) This American adaptation stars British actors Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff and Merle Oberon as Cathy. It was filmed in California and has the vibe of a classic Hollywood romance, with the dirt4 and violence of the Yorkshire moors5 played down6. Cathy’s line7 to Nelly Dean: “Nelly, I am Heathcliff,” is a classic cinema moment. Luis Buñuel’s Abismos de pasión…

George Orwell (1903-1950) began his writing career in the early 1930s documenting the plight1 of the poor and the unemployed in England in articles, essays2 and books. In 1936, he moved to Barcelona to fight for the Republicans against Franco’s Nationalists in Spain’s Civil War. A convinced socialist, he was horrified by the murderous activities of Stalinist communists in Barcelona, and recounted his experiences in his memoir, Homage to Catalonia (1938). The rise of fascist and communist dictatorships, and his time in Spain, were the inspiration for Animal Farm: A Fairy Story3. POLITICAL ALLEGORY Animal Farm is a powerfully-written attack on totalitarianism, specifically Stalinism, in the form of a political allegory. It has a quintessentially English setting, a traditional farm. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, many people in…

UNIT 1 Page 8 B1LEVEL A Romance Story SOLUTIONS PAGE 74 1.1 VOCABULARY ► Match numbers ( 1 - 9 ) and letters ( a - i ) to obtain expressions used in the article. 1.2 TRUE OR FALSE? ► Read the article and decide whether the following statements are true ( T ) or false ( F ). 1.3 SPOT THE MISTAKE! ► Some of the following words contain a spelling mistake. Find them and rewrite the words correctly. 1) intrestingly ............................................................................ 2) Portugueise ............................................................................ 3) cortly ............................................................................ 4) relationship ............................................................................ 5) brodly ............................................................................ 6) chivallry ............................................................................ 7) knigth ............................................................................ 8) vernacular ............................................................................ 9) extension ............................................................................ 10) maravellous ............................................................................ 11) everyday ............................................................................ 12) medioeval ............................................................................ UNIT 2…