coffee break english season two episode one [Music] hello and welcome to season two of coffee break english my name is josie and my name is mark and we're delighted that you're here with us today josie tell us what is coffee break english in the coffee break english podcasts we study different texts about many interesting things from around the english-speaking world that's right and you're going to be hearing different voices different english accents from different parts of the world and that will help you understand these different accents in english yes and the texts are at an intermediate level and in each episode we'll be focusing on a different language point perfect well i think the time has come to get started so let's begin our first text let's go for our first text we are traveling over to the united states of america and we're going to be learning about a very important monument there so let's listen to the text [Music] hey mark hello josie i'm kate reporting today from new york and we're going to be talking about the statue of liberty let's begin if you've ever seen the new york city skyline you will recognize the statue of liberty this huge green figure looks over the harbor and is a symbol of inspiration to many americans the statue of liberty was built by the french as a gift to the united states of america and a symbol of friendship between the two countries the idea for the statue was developed around 1870 and the project was managed by eduard rene de la boule the president of the french anti-slavery society the statue was designed by the sculptor frederick bartholdi they decided that the statue should represent one of the usa's most important values freedom over the following years the statue was built in sections and some parts were displayed on their own before the statue was put together for example the giant torch was shown at the 1876 centennial exposition in philadelphia and the head was displayed at the 1878 paris world's fair the frame inside the statue was actually built by gustav fell who is more famous for the eiffel tower the statue of liberty now stands on liberty island in the middle of many other new york islands bartholdi wanted to put the statue here to welcome immigrants arriving by boat to start a new life in america the statue is made of copper so it was originally a golden red color however since it was built it has oxidized giving it the distinctive green color we see today today visitors can go inside the statue and take the lift up to its crown to see some incredible views of new york so if you're ever in the city that never sleeps why not go and visit this amazing monument to freedom [Music] very interesting okay let's go through the text in more detail now so josie could you read each line and we'll talk about the words and phrases in this text of course so the first line if you've ever seen the new york city skyline you will recognize the statue of liberty okay so what is there to talk about in in this first sentence so the first thing that stands out for me is the use of the tense we're using here if you've ever seen here we're using the present perfect tense to talk about our life experiences so something we've done in the past but we don't specify exactly when for example mark i could ask you have you ever seen the statue of liberty yes i've seen the statue of liberty and have you ever seen the eiffel tower yes i've seen the eiffel tower many times and have you ever seen the pyramids ah no i've never seen the pyramids me neither i'd like to me too so notice there uh when you gave a negative answer you used the word never so have you ever i have never the next thing that is interesting to notice in this phrase is the spelling of the word recognize okay so what's interesting about that well you and i mark we're both british we're both scottish so we spell this word r-e-c-o-g-n-i-s-e but do you know how we spell it in the us i think in the us it would be spelt i zed e or i z e recognize exactly so there are quite a few words where the british spelling and the american spellings are different so the american spellings use uh zed or z and the british spellings use an s perfect okay let's keep going then so the next sentence this huge green figure looks over the harbour and is a symbol of inspiration to many americans okay so what do we want to discuss in this sentence so the first words for me is the word huge can you explain to us what this means it means really big very big so it's a huge green figure a huge statue exactly huge the thing to watch out for here is that we must pronounce that h so huge not huge okay you may hear that pronounced slightly differently in different parts of the english-speaking world but we both say huge exactly exactly the next word i think is interesting is harbor again here there's no um arguments about this you must pronounce the h harbor and harbour means port okay now harbor is also one of these words which is written differently in the u. s absolutely right yep so we spell this in britain h-a-r-b-o-u-r but in the u. s we take away that final u and it becomes b-o-r at the end okay and as we go through each time we come across words which have different spellings we'll try to explain those different spellings to help you absolutely let's keep going so the next part of the text the statue of liberty was built by the french as a gift to the united states of america and a symbol of friendship between the two countries okay so what do you want to look at here josie so here we have our first use of the the language point i'd like to focus on in this episode we have the statue of liberty was built by was built by is an example of the passive voice tell us more about the passive voice so the passive voice um is a different way of formulating a phrase it depends on where you want to put the focus we could say here the french built the statue of liberty and that would be an example of the active voice so the french built the statue of liberty that's the active voice but in the passive voice the statue of liberty was built by the french is there a difference in meaning not quite but there is a difference in the emphasis so if we say the statue of liberty was built by the french we are focusing on the statue of liberty that's the most important part of this phrase okay and if we said the french built the statue of liberty then there's more of a focus on the french it was the french who built the statue of liberty and not the italians exactly exactly but here the text is about the statue of liberty so of course the focus is on the statue itself okay and i think we're going to see more examples of this passive construction in the rest of the text we are indeed let's continue on then okay the idea for the statue was developed around 1870 and the project was managed by eduard rene de la boule the president of the french anti-slavery society okay so immediately we have two more examples of the passive in this next sentence so can we talk about them yes so we have another example was developed the statue was developed here we are using the passive because we want to put the focus on the statue again here we don't even mention the development of the statue because we already know it's the french who developed it in this case then there's no buy we don't need a buy the statue the idea for the statute was developed around 1870 exactly yes we already know who did it but in the next example of the passive the project was managed by we do mention who managed this project it was eduard rene de la boule just another thing about the construction of the passive so the way we make the passive is that we take the verb to be and we put it in whatever tense we're speaking in so in this case it's the past simple so we take was the project was the next word is the the main verb the verb which carries the meaning in this case it's manage and we take the past participle of that verb or the third form of the verb in your verb table okay so if there are three forms in the verb table just to to remind us what would those three forms be so in this case for the verb manage we have manage present simple managed past simple and managed past participle okay so we're combining the past participle with the part of the verb to be and in this case in both these cases we are using the the simple past of the verb to be exactly okay is there anything else that you want to look at in this sentence i'm wondering about the date 1870 yes so a lot of people often think it's quite difficult to pronounce uh dates in english because this is a long number but we don't have to say 1870.
we can actually divide that date in the middle and split it into two numbers eighteen seventy and the same would happen with more states so for example we could talk about 2020 or 1651 or 1972. exactly it works for all dates so the final maybe difficult piece of vocabulary in this phrase is anti-slavery we talked about the president of the french anti-slavery society so first of all the word slavery can you explain that to us mark slavery is when people are kept against their will exactly and here we are adding the the prefix anti on the beginning of that word and anti means against so this is a society which is working against the keeping of slaves or they're working for the abolition of slavery that's right let's read the final sentence in this paragraph then the statue was designed by the sculptor frederick bartoli okay we've got another passive in there we have indeed this use of the passive is actually exactly the same as the previous ones we've seen the statue the most important thing was designed by and then we have the sculptor and his name what's a sculptor juicy well a sculptor is someone who makes things makes pieces of art statues out of stone or maybe bronze or some other kind of metal okay right that's the first paragraph let's continue on and listen to the next part okay they decided that the statue should represent one of the usa's most important values freedom okay anything important here i think we can continue here okay over the following years the statue was built in sections and some parts were displayed on their own before the statue was put together right so we've got more passives here the statue was built in sections again the same idea as before we've got the simple past of the verb to be and we've got the past participle of the verb build the statue was built in sections that's right yep so again we already know who built the statue it was the french so we don't need to use the active form here moving on our next passive example some parts were displayed on their own so this is the plural form here some parts were displayed on their own before the statute was put together that's an interesting verb yes put together is what we call a phrasal verb so a phrasal verb is basically a verb made up of two words there are many of these in english for example get up i get up in the morning take off i take off my shoes but this one put together it means to assemble something so before the statue was assembled okay let's continue for example the giant torch was shown at the 1876 centennial exposition in philadelphia and the head was displayed at the 1878 paris world's fair okay so two more examples of the passive let's talk about these ones exactly so here we have the giant torch was shown so here we're using the passive because we don't exactly know who showed this giant torch at this exposition so this is another use of the passive you can use the passive when it's unclear who did an action okay so for example we could say the bike was stolen there we're starting with the bike and we say it was stolen but we don't know who stole it okay and the same really applies to the next part of the sentence the head was displayed at the 1878 paris world sphere it does indeed that's exactly the same use yes okay let's read the final sentence of the paragraph okay the frame inside the statue was actually built by gustav ifel who is more famous for the eiffel tower so we are familiar with the eiffel tower in paris we are indeed and the same person who built the eiffel tower built the frame inside the statue of liberty what's the frame so a frame in this case is a kind of inner support for this statue sort of like a skeleton inside your body to support you but it also has another meaning doesn't it that's right we could put for example a painting or a photograph in a frame that's right okay we're going to take a short break now but we'll be back in just a moment and we'll continue the rest of the text then [Music] each episode of the coffee break english podcast is free and you can use our podcast to help you improve your english but there's more that's right we have a full course available on our website which will help you make faster progress and understand everything much better for every lesson we offer videos bonus audio recordings lesson notes with exercises and vocabulary lists in lots of languages all this is available on the coffee break academy so visit coffee break academy dot com [Music] [Music] welcome back let's continue our text about the statue of liberty josie would you like to read the next sentence okay the statue of liberty now stands on liberty island in the middle of many other new york islands okay anything in particular you'd like to talk about in this sentence from a language point of view not really okay have you ever sailed past liberty island i have i have indeed i did this a couple of years ago we sailed right past the statue of liberty but unfortunately i didn't have the opportunity to go inside and explore the statue of liberty hopefully you'll get the chance to do that someday yeah i hope so okay let's continue bartoldi wanted to put the statue here to welcome immigrants arriving by boat to start a new life in america okay so as immigrants people coming to live in america arrived by boat this would be the first thing that they would see that's right exactly and notice here we're using the word by not because we have a passive as we've seen was designed by was built by but here we're talking about a form of public transport so when you talk about transport we use the preposition by i go buy car buy boat buy plane are there any exceptions to that good question there is one exception which is when you are walking you don't say i go by foot we say i go on foot excellent okay let's continue okay the statue is made of copper so it was originally a golden red color okay anything interesting here yes so here we have yet another use of the passive is made the statue is made of copper here we have the passive in the present simple tense instead of the past simple so before we were saying was built was designed but here we say is made because it's the present simple tense here okay and what is it made of so it's made of copper so copper is a type of metal as it says in the text it is a golden red color metal and the word color perhaps just to mention yes so we've already seen the word harbor earlier in the text so if you remember we said there was a difference in spelling in britain and in the us so this is the same with the word color in the uk we spell this word c-o-l-o-u-r but in the u. s we spell it c-o-l-o-r so no final u there okay so the copper statue was originally golden red but something has happened to that in time let's see what happened in the next sentence yes however since it was built it has oxidized giving it the distinctive green color we see today okay oxidized can you tell us about that so oxidized if we think about this word we have ox at the beginning which is something to do with oxygen so air so if something oxidizes the the oxygen uh affects it and it changes it in some way so in this case the statue of liberty which we all know is green it has been changed to this color by the air over time and it's also interesting to note that oxidized like recognize that we saw earlier has the same spelling change so in the uk we spell that ised and in the u.
s it would be spelled i zed or z-e-d that's right okay let's look at the final paragraph okay today visitors can go inside the statue and take the lift up to its crown to see some incredible views of new york okay what's a lift so a lift maybe our listeners will be more familiar with the word elevator i don't know but a lift is something that you get in and it takes you up um inside a building instead of taking the stairs so in the uk we say lyft and in the u. s it's elevator okay so you can take the lift up to the crown of the statue so that's the the crown of the statue where there is a viewing platform you can see some incredible views of new york let's finish off the paragraph now so if you're ever in the city that never sleeps why not go and visit this amazing monument to freedom okay this is a nice way to refer to new york the city that never sleeps can you think of any other ways we can talk about new york yes the other uh nickname that i can think of is the big apple excellent okay so that is our whole text let's listen one more time to the whole thing and this time hopefully you'll understand everything if you've ever seen the new york city skyline you will recognize the statue of liberty this huge green figure looks over the harbor and is a symbol of inspiration to many americans the statue of liberty was built by the french as a gift to the united states of america and a symbol of friendship between the two countries the idea for the statue was developed around 1870 and the project was managed by eduard rene de la boule the president of the french anti-slavery society the statue was designed by the sculptor frederick bartholdi they decided that the statue should represent one of the usa's most important values freedom over the following years the statue was built in sections and some parts were displayed on their own before the statue was put together for example the giant torch was shown at the 1876 centennial exposition in philadelphia and the head was displayed at the 1878 paris world's fair the frame inside the statue was actually built by gustav aifel who is more famous for the eiffel tower the statue of liberty now stands on liberty island in the middle of many other new york islands bartholdi wanted to put the statue here to welcome immigrants arriving by boat to start a new life in america the statue is made of copper so it was originally a golden red color however since it was built it has oxidized giving it the distinctive green color we see today today visitors can go inside the statue and take the lift up to its crown to see some incredible views of new york so if you're ever in the city that never sleeps why not go and visit this amazing monument to freedom [Music] thank you so let's have a quick review of the passive voice that we've seen today that sounds like a good idea yes so we have three main uses three main reasons to use the passive the first use is when the person who did the action is less important so we make the the thing in this case the statue the subject and we add the person who did this action with the word by for example the statue of liberty was built by the french or the book was written by a british writer okay what about the second use of the passive yeah so the second use it's very similar it's when we already know who did the action so we don't need to mention them at all because it's obvious a good example of this is the man was arrested of course we know that the police are the people who arrest people so we don't need to even mention them the man was arrested is enough and there's also a third use of the passive too there is a third use which we briefly saw in this text this is when we don't exactly know who did the action so we use the passive for example the the torch was displayed we don't know who exactly did this so this is similar to the car was stolen we don't know who stole the car we're probably trying to find out excellent okay well we hope that you've enjoyed this text and finding out a little more about the statue of liberty that's all for this episode of coffee break english if you'd like to find out more and access the written version of the text you can do so at coffeebreakacademy.
