DO English 20/07

Do you speak British or American English?

Choose the word or phrase you would naturally use in each scenario. At the end of the quiz, tally your answers to see if you lean more towards British or American English.

1. You need to throw away some trash. Where do you put it?

   • a) Rubbish bin

   • b) Trash can

2. You’re writing a message and need to indicate the end of a sentence. What do you call the punctuation mark?

   • a) Full stop

   • b) Period

3. You have time off school/work. What do you call it?

   • a) Holiday

   • b) Vacation

4. You’re about to ride a metro train in a city. What do you call it?

   • a) The Tube

   • b) The Subway

5. You need to fill your car with fuel. What do you call it?

   • a) Petrol

   • b) Gasoline

6. You’re wearing shoes designed for sports. What do you call them?

   • a) Trainers

   • b) Sneakers

7. You’re attending university. What do you call it?

   • a) University

   • b) College

8. You’re eating French fries. What do you call them?

   • a) Chips

   • b) Fries

9. You need to organize your day on paper. What do you call it?

   • a) Timetable

   • b) Schedule

10. You’re watching a football game. What do you call the sport?

    • a) Football

    • b) Soccer

Results:

Mostly A’s: You lean towards British English! Your vocabulary and expressions are more commonly used in the UK.

Mostly B’s: You lean towards American English! Your vocabulary and expressions are more commonly used in the USA.

A Mix of A’s and B’s: You have a blend of both British and American English in your vocabulary. This makes your English versatile and adaptable to various English-speaking contexts.

News In English

International IT Outage

A recent global IT outage, initiated by a cybersecurity update from Crowdstrike, caused significant disruptions across various sectors, including travel, banking, and healthcare, with 4000 flights cancelled yesterday. The update led to widespread system malfunctions, leaving many users facing the dreaded "Blue Screen of Death" on their Windows computers. Microsoft's identification of the issue as a "third-party issue" suggests the complications arose from external software interactions rather than inherent flaws in Microsoft’s own systems. Despite these disruptions, Apple and Linux users remained unaffected, highlighting differences in how various operating systems handle updates and security measures.

The incident underscores the world's increasing dependency on remotely managed devices and the vulnerabilities that come with such reliance. Experts warn that while immediate fixes may be implemented, it could take considerable time before all affected systems fully recover and return to normal operations. This situation brings to light the critical importance of robust cybersecurity practices and the potential widespread consequences when these systems fail.

Key Words

1. Outage: A period when a service is not available.

2. Cybersecurity: Measures taken to protect a computer or computer system against unauthorized access or attack.

3. Blue Screen of Death: An error screen displayed on Windows computers following a system crash.

4. Third-party issue: Problems caused by software or services provided by an external company.

5. Dependency: A state of relying on or being controlled by someone or something else.

How this Youtuber learned English alone and for free

Ruri Ohama is a Japanese 🇯🇵 Youtuber with over 1.4 million subscribers. In this video she breaks down how she learned English.

She says the key way she did this was by watching content in English.

This is her guide:

Step 1: Choose what to watch.

Pick something that interests you and that you want to watch.

step 2: Watch the video in normal speed, with subtitles if you want

Watching with subtitles can help you understand what’s happening in the video.

step 3: Watch videos without subtitles for at least 1 hr each day

This helps you with your listening and prepares you for real life conversation.

step 4: Read in English

Reading can be a good way to learn vocabulary and grammar in context without studying.

step 5: Speed up videos to 1.25x or 1.5x

When you’re comfortable or you’re watching something you know well, increase the speed to really practise your listening skills. This can be good practise to make sure you’re able to understand people who talk quickly in real life or have an accent you’re not used to.

step 6: Repeat the above

If you do this consistently, you will make significant progress! Just keep trying.