[Music] hello English Learners welcome back to another Advanced lesson with us here at English pod my name is Marco and my name is Erica So today we're bringing you another Advanced lesson and this time it's kind of historical like the name suggests we are listening in as a president says goodbye to the nation uh before he steps down from his role as president now actually this dialogue is very much based on presid President Eisenhower's fwell speech oh okay so a pretty pretty famous now we have to tell you that we did change the speech a
little bit right yeah just a little bit to make it a little bit more understandable but it's basically what he said to the nation back in 1969 all right now um I will as well tell you that this is a pretty hard dialogue it is very hard because the structures are a little bit complicated and even to a certain point a little bit poetic right mhm so why are we taking this this speech as our dialogue what are we going to learn from this well we're going to learn some structures and some words that you
can use maybe on a resignation letter or maybe in a celebration you want to thank peep for coming okay um so we're going to learn some pretty difficult vocabulary but also learn some really useful structures like you said you could use in a resignation letter or even in a formal speech of your own exactly now this presidential farewell speech is divided into two parts so today we're going to do part one and then next time we'll finish the speech with part two so let's listen to President Eisenhower as he says goodbye to the nation and
we'll come back just in a little [Music] bit good evening my fellow Americans 3 days from now after a century of service to our country I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as in a traditional and solemn ceremony the authority of the presidency is vested in my successor this evening I come to you with a message of leaking and farewell and to share a few final Thoughts with you my countrymen like every other citizen I wish the new president and all who will labor with him godspeed I pray that the coming years will be
blessed with peace and prosperity for all our people expect their president and the Congress to find essential agreement on questions of great importance the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of our great nation my own relations with Congress began on a remote and tenous basis when long ago a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point I then had the pleasure of building more intimate relationships with Congress during the war and the immediate post-war period finally we have progressed to the mutually interdependent relationship we've had during these past 8 years wow
so uh Eisenhower is a pretty good speaker isn't he a good speaker and well he said a lot of really nice things when he was saying goodbye yeah pretty inspiring I thought really inspiring and as we said there were a couple of different and difficult words and phrases so why don't we start right now with language takeaway language takeaway well eisenh Hower said that in 3 days he shall lay down the responsibilities to lay down the responsibilities all right lay down something basically we understand the the the verb to lay down right to put it
down to put to put it on the ground right now he's using it with responsibilities which is a little bit strange but it's kind of like a metaphor by saying lay down arms to lay down your weapons right and you know what this is a really common phrase that we would hear um especially when we're talking about you know the end of a war or something like that MH to lay down your arms lay down your weapons yeah so here I think Eisenhower is kind of referencing this and giving us a little bit of um
bit of poetry in his speech right so it's not that he's quitting it's not that he's being fired he's just like finishing what he started yes so he's laying down his responsibilities now I think this would be quite an interesting phrase to use for example in a resignation letter right so I would say uh a month from now I will lay down my responsibilities at as manager yep all right so that sounds pretty good now he said he's going to be laying down the responsibilities in a traditional and solemn ceremony all right solemn solemn now
solemn what do what does that mean what is a solemn ceremony well a solemn ceremony would be a serious respectful and a little bit sad ceremony okay so it's a serious matter it's um and it's very respectful right yeah so you might you might say for examp example um uh on the 11th of November when you're remembering the war you might say something like this is a very solemn day very good mhm okay and the authority of the presidency is vested in my successor okay so interesting verb uh wait so interesting word vested vested the
authority vested in my successor very good so this word basically means power that I have by law right so the this power this important power you have is given to you by the law by the president by the country this is a very common word you will hear in a wedding when the priest or the person that's leading the wedding will say by the power vested in Me by the state of California yep I Now Pronounce You hus husband and wife I Now pronounce you husband and wife so he's saying the power that I have
given to me by the state of California I can now make you be married so here Eisenhower is saying the authority of the presidency is vested in my successor so the power of the presidency will be given to his um given to the next next president by law exactly and he also wished the new president and everyone with him he said godp speed all right godp speed godp speed I wish you godp speed now godp speed what does that mean well it's kind of a blessing you know um it it basically means good luck and
good fortune all right and especially in a journey right yeah I think you'd almost only use this when someone's going off on a on a big trip or a journey so um here they're going on the Journey of the presidency right so I wish you godp speed godp speed very good and now let's take a look at our last set of words uh when he was talking about Congress he said that his relation with Congress began on a remote and tenuous basis all right so two interesting words here remote and tenuous now remote we understand
as being far away or distant yeah what about tenuous though but tenuous is kind of unimportant or not really relevant all right so actually this is a pretty high quality um useful and smart sounding words so I think we should hear a few more examples of how it's used example One how can you say the Earth is actually getting cooler that is a pretty tenuous argument example two John believes that Elvis Presley is still alive he's got a tenuous hold on reality example three you're making yourself seem more important than you are the connection between
our company's success and your performance is tenuous at best all right so as we said these are some pretty um pretty difficult words uh that we found in the dialogue but now I want to go and look at some really interesting um formal structures that Eisenhower used here so let's look at those now in fluency Builder fluency Builder all right on fluency Builder today we have three phrases and well starting with the first one I think it's one of the most interesting ones he said 3 days from now after half a century of service of
our country I shall lay down the responsibilities of office all right so what's interesting about this if you take a look at the structure he's saying 3 days from now which is future future mhm and then he makes a reference to the Past after a half century of service okay so we got Future Past and then again future I shall lay down the responsibilities all right so this actually is quite a good structure if you're giving um a farewell speech or even even I could imagine using this at a wedding right how would you use
it in a wedding well I might say uh um 12 hours for now after a long and beautiful relationship this couple shall marry very good so you're making reference to the Future and then a past event or something that's been going on for a while and then future again why don't we do one more example so for example in a resignation letter I can say uh I can say 1 month from now after 30 years of hard work and dedication to this company I shall lay down my responsibility as product manager all right interesting so
we can use it and it's it sounds good it sounds very professional and and very poetic very poetic it sounds nice yeah all right so that's one interesting structure now why don't we go on to this next kind of very uh formal and helpful in a in a very formal speech well uh President Eisenhower said this evening I come to you with a message of leaking and farewell so this evening I come to you with a message of leave taking and farewell so it's a very nice way of saying I'm talking to you today because
I am saying goodbye yes so what I really like about this phrase is the beginning part this evening I come to you with a message of mhm so again let's suppose we're at a wedding if I'm offering a toast or I'm the best man I could say this evening I come to you with a message of love and trust and respect all right or maybe if you're the leader of a company you might might say something like this afternoon I come to you with a message of Hope for the future very good and now the
part when he says leave taking and farewell it's basically saying taking leave or taking like a vacation right yeah and farewell is goodbye goodbye mhm and what about our last phrase uh this is actually a bit of a long one so um I'm going to read it now our people expect their president and the Congress to find essential agreement on questions of great importance the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of our great nation okay great now let's take a look at the first part uh basically he's saying uh the people expect
the president and the Congress to give them answers right well yeah to to agree on on important issues but in the part when he says the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of our great nation yeah and this is the part I want to focus on the wise resolution of which now this is a really wonderful sort of a formal structure so we can see what he's doing here he's talking about the first idea right so the president and the Congress um need to find agreement on important issues right now the wise
resolution of which so he's referring back to that idea uhhuh so the wise resolution of what of the essential agreement on questions of great importance right so really useful structure why don't we hear a few more examples of this example one we now face a great challenge the overcoming of which lead us all to Untold riches and success example two we as a company now face our most difficult months to date the outcome of which will determine our company's future example three the ambitious plan to reduce poverty the start of which was launched last Tuesday
in New York will require a huge investment of taxpayers dollars all right so as you can hear from the examples we have the main idea and then he passes on but then kind of refers back to it again yeah and this sounds quite formal but also quite literary um and intelligent doesn't it yeah it makes it makes you sound well spoken mhm very good this was quite a difficult dialogue with some really um interesting and tricky structures and words so why don't we hear it one more time all [Music] together good evening my fellow Americans
3 days from now after a century of service to our country I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as in a traditional and solemn ceremony the authority of the presidency is vested in my successor this evening I come to you with a message of leaking and farewell and to share a few final Thoughts with you my countrymen like every other citizen I wish the new president and all who will labor with him God speed I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all our people expect their president and
the Congress to find essential agreement on questions of great importance the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of our great nation my own relations with Congress began on a remote and 10 basis when long ago a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point I then had the pleasure of building more intimate relationships with Congress during the war and the immediate post-war period finally we have progressed to the mutually interdependent relationship we've had during these past 8 [Applause] years all right we're back and here with us in the studio we have
Pete the the actor in the dialogue of uh President Eisenhower's presidential farewell speech he's a pretty convincing actor at that not quite so um Pete is going to give us a little bit of insight about President Eisenhower will all right so what can you tell us about President Eisenhower well he started off as a general uh he was an accomplished officer all through the early 20th century and then he was the supreme commander of the Allied expeditionary Force in World War II and so now he's most famous for D-Day he was beating it uh or
he was on the battlefield no he he was he was the organizer he was oh he was like kind of like the the brains behind the operation yeah and I don't know if you want to leave this in but there's a there's a really cool document that he wrote right before the invasion and it said he basically knew that this was going to go one of two ways and he wrote down a script to read in case it failed and he basically said you know I'm sorry to inform you that uh The Invasion did not
go as planned and this has set back our war effort and when the invasion went well he threw that in the trash and then one of his AIDS found that and was like wow this is a historical document and they kept the really yeah so they had the they have the copy alternate history all right so he was a an accomplished General um an amazing uh Warrior um but what about his presidency well at the beginning probably the biggest thing he did was to wrap up the Korean War uh which was a vow he made
during his campaign and then he visited Korea uh obviously the war is still technically on but they did arrange a ceas fire uh Eisenhower built up the interstate highway system which is one of the big reasons that America was able to become economically successful in the 20th century he did it basically so that in case of a war we'd have an easy way of shipping our soldiers and nukes across the country but but it worked well anyways yeah it it it's one of these things that pays a side benefit at least he had to sell
it to the to the to the country that way it's very likely that he didn't intend ever to use it that way but you know you have to heavily like it's like the war onar you got to sell these things you know well and I guess it's had a huge impact um not only on the economy of the states but also like the culture and and the way that um people view the car and its effect on society definitely so pretty influential guy this Eisenhower yeah and a very historical lesson it's just a little bit
of a culture and maybe some insight on American history it's not like we're politically active or anything but um but yeah it was some interesting information there and also well he was was considered to be a pretty good president yeah he's rated I wouldn't say among the top five or so but uh quite accomplished well maybe not the greatest president we've ever seen but uh he wrote a pretty good farewell speech so I think we have that to thank him for all right guys so if you have any other questions or comments you can come
to the website at englishpod do.com and uh you can leave them there for ericao or I okay so thanks for downloading you guys and until next time goodbye bye [Music] the English part audio review listen to the meaning then say the vocabulary word the national legislative body of the United States consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives Congress flimsy weak or uncertain tenuous a hill in Washington DC where the capital building sits and Congress meets Capital Hill serious formal solemn to present as a gift or an honor confer bestow to give some one
the legal right or power to do something vest difficult to accomplish strenuous arduous an economic state of growth with Rising profits and full employment Prosperity a formal statement of agreement resolution use to wish success to someone who is going away godp speed let's try that faster to give someone the legal right or power to do something vest difficult to accomplish strenuous arduous used to wish success to someone who is going away godp speed to present as a gift or an honor confer bestow a hill in Washington DC where the capital building sits and Congress meets
Capitol Hill the national legislative body of the United States consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives Congress serus formal solemn an economic state of growth with Rising profits and full employment Prosperity a formal statement of agreement resolution flimsy weak or uncertain tenuous now say the word and hear it in a sentence tenuous how can you say that the Earth is actually getting cooler that is a pretty tenuous argument tenuous John believes that Elvis Presley is still alive he's got a tenuous hold on reality tenuous you're making yourself seem more important than you are
the connection between our company's success and your performance is tenuous at best vest with the powers vested in me I Now pronounce you husband and wife vest I present you with a key to our city by the powers vested in me as mayor of this great City vest the power to declare war is vested in the Congress solemn we are here today on this s and tragic day to say goodbye to an inspiration and a friend Michael Jackson solemn yum por is a traditionally solemn Jewish holiday that focuses on self-reflection and self-improvement solemn every year
September 11th is a very solemn occasion As Americans remember the victims of the World Trade Center attack resolution it is Paramount that Democrats and Republicans come to a resolution for the economic stimulus plan resolution how will President Obama find a resolution for Health Care reform that will benefit everyone resolution I've made a resolution to stop smoking and lose 20 pounds this year godp speed we wish you godp speed may you return from your journey safely God speed godspeed when you are fighting for our country know that your family is proud of you God speed it's
time for me to go out and experience life from myself goodbye and godp speed [Music]
