Fluency News: Acontecimento no Brasil em inglês

Hello, everyone!

Sejam bem-vindos e bem-vindas a mais um episódio da nossa série de podcasts, o Fluency News!

Aqui, você vai treinar a sua escuta e ficar por dentro do que está acontecendo no mundo. Já que essa semana tem sido difícil e cheia de histórias tristes, decidimos trazer algumas notícias interessantes e divertidas, tudo em inglês! Ao longo do episódio, nós também adicionamos explicações em português das coisas que achamos que precisam de mais atenção, assim você não perde nenhum detalhe! Parece que estamos cercados de notícias ruins, então criamos este episódio como uma fuga desse cenário. De qualquer forma, você vai praticar inglês e a sua linguagem jornalística com a gente!

No episódio desta semana, nós começamos falando sobre a lista de indicados ao Oscar e conferimos a história de um menino de 16 anos na Índia que está mandando muito bem no xadrez. Depois, a gente conversa um pouco sobre uma nova descoberta a respeito de como a prática de cantar está conectada ao nosso cérebro e, por fim,te recomendamos alguns filmes para assistir em março.

Nós temos uma página de dicas de inglês no Instagram, vá conferir! @fluencytvingles

Toda semana temos um novo episódio do Fluency News, não deixe de escutar!

See you!

Este episódio foi escrito por Alessandro Ladelfa.

TRANSCRIPTION

What is up, guys! How are you doing today? I’m Scott Lowe, and you’re listening to Fluency News, Fluency Academy’s news podcast series. Here we share some of the world’s most relevant stories of the week, and we learn a bit more about unique structures and expressions of the English language with some explanations in Portuguese for you to get the most out of this episode.

Before we get started, let me just remind you to visit fluencytv.com. There, you’ll have access to the transcript of this episode and all of our sources and you’ll also find over a thousand free lessons, in many different languages! How good is that?

Alright folks, now let’s get down to business.

Now I’m gonna start with a question: do you like movies? Well, the 94th Academy Awards, AKA the Oscars, is taking place on 27 March and has finally released the full list of nominations.

Olivia Colman, who won best actress in 2019 for The Favorite, is competing in the same category this year for her role in The Lost Daughter. Jessie Buckley, who plays her character’s younger self, is also in the running for best supporting actress.

Will Smith moves into pole position for his performance as the ambitious father and tennis coach in King Richard, which also picked up a nomination for his young co-star, Aunjanue Ellis, as best supporting actress.

Lady Gaga has been nominated for her role in Ridley Scott’s true crime drama House of Gucci in almost every preceding awards lineup, but was absent in the real list of nominees.

Well, actually the list of nominees for best actress contains Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye), Olivia Colman (The Lost Daughter), Penélope Cruz (Parallel Mothers), Nicole Kidman (Being the Ricardos) and Kristen Stewart (Spencer). On the other hand, for best actor, we’ve got Javier Bardem (Being the Ricardos), Benedict Cumberbatch (The Power of the Dog), Andrew Garfield (tick, tick … BOOM!), Will Smith (King Richard) and Denzel Washington (The Tragedy of Macbeth).

Last year’s mid-pandemic ceremony was an experimental, socially distanced affair held at Los Angeles’s Union Station, which saw record-breakingly low TV audiences tuning in. And details of this year’s event are quite different from what we expected.

Several major Academy Awards will not be presented on the air during this year’s Oscars in an effort to present a more streamlined and television-friendly broadcast. Eight honors will instead be awarded during off-air parts of the show and then edited into the telecast. The Oscars recognize 23 categories in total, but the show has been criticized for being long-winded and its ratings have struggled in recent years.

The awards that will be handed out earlier in the ceremony and won’t be part of the live broadcast are for documentary short, film editing, makeup and hairstyling, original score, production design, animated short, live action short and sound. The ceremony will start one hour before the on-camera portion begins in order to work out the changes. Nominees in the awards categories that will be awarded prior to the show were informed of the overhaul during a Zoom call on Tuesday.

That’s because last year’s ceremony was the least-watched in the history of the awards, with a small amount of viewers ( 9.23 million) tuning in to watch “Nomadland” win best picture, a 51% drop from the 18.69 million viewers who switched on the previous year’s Oscars. That’s the reason why the Academy made a decision to dramatically adjust the March 27 telecast, a move that will almost certainly expose the group to controversy and criticism.

“We realize these kinds of changes can prompt concern about equity, and we ask you to understand our goal has been to find a balance in which nominees, winners, members, and viewing audience all have a rewarding show experience,” Academy President David Rubin wrote in a letter that went out to the group’s membership.

What about you? Anyhow, if you want to take a look at the full list of nominations and want to find out where you can watch these movies before the ceremony’s kickoff, visit our portal fluencytv.com. There, you’ll find a link that takes you to the full list and another one that takes you to an online page where you can find out where to watch the nominations.

Nessa notícia, vimos que a premiação do Oscar de 2022 será feita diferente já que algumas premiações não serão realizadas ao vivo. Uma das razões para essa mudança, como aponta a notícia, é que o número de telespectadores diminuiu drasticamente no último ano. Em uma passagem da notícia temos a seguinte frase: the show has been criticized for being long-winded. A palavra long-winded é usada para darmos característica a alguma coisa que é muito longa e entediante. Ou seja, um filme longo e entediante seria a long-winded movie. Um texto longo e entediante seria a long-winded text. Sabia desse adjetivo?

Well, switching the topic a bit. Now let’s talk about how India is emerging as a chess powerhouse.

“I just want to hit the bed,” Pragg said early on Monday after defeating Magnus Carlsen, the highest-ranking chess player in the world, at the Airthings Masters, an online rapid tournament.

The frail-looking 16-year-old boy from India’s southern city of Chennai is no stranger to success. At 10 years old, the boy became the youngest International Master in the history of the game. Two years later, in 2018, he had become the world’s then second-youngest chess grandmaster.

Now the prodigious teenager had achieved his “biggest dream” by becoming only the third Indian to trump the 32-year-old Norwegian grandmaster. He has already attracted worldwide attention. “At an age when boys would trade an arm and a leg for endless hours of gaming, he has perfected the art of stillness and focus in a sport that’s anything but a teen favorite,” Susan Ninan, who covers chess for ESPN India, noted in a presciently titled 2018 article, The boy who could be king.

Before the pandemic, Pragg spent 15 days a month on the road, traveling around the world for tournaments. Like many others of his generation he took up chess inspired by Viswanathan Anand, who revolutionized the sport in the country. Today, India has seven players ranked among the top 100 in the world. Anand, 52, is still ranked highest (16) among the seven.

But for now, Pragg is in the chess spotlight – again. “He believes he is at the beginning of his journey and he has a lot more to achieve,” his coach said. “You will hear more about him in the future”.

Você já tinha escutado a expressão an arm and a leg? Ela pode ser usada em vários contextos, mas, geralmente, podemos pensar como equivalente no portugues à expressão “custar os olhos da cara” ou “custar um rim”. Ou seja, podemos usar ela para falarmos, de uma forma informal, que algo é muito caro. Porém, aqui nessa notícia, essa expressão foi usada de outra maneira. Na passagem “ “At an age when boys would trade an arm and a leg for endless hours of gaming”, essa expressão foi usada para passar a ideia de que o jovem jogador de xadrez está na idade em que meninos, no geral, fariam de tudo para passar horas jogando no computador, mas, mesmo assim, Pragg foca nos seus estudos sobre xadrez. Então, é muito comum de você ver an arm and a leg sendo usado como “os olhos da cara”, quando falamos de preço. Mas, aqui, foi usada como um intensificador, como o nosso fazer de tudo para.

Do you know when you’re listening to your favorite singer and their songs hit you on another level? Would you say it happens because we have feelings for them or because we’re hard-wired to experience that sensation? Well, a recent study shows that there’s part of our brain that responds selectively to the sound of singing.

Researchers say they have found particular groups of neurons that appear to respond selectively to the sound of singing. Writing in the journal Current Biology, a team of scientists in the US report how they made their discovery by recording electrical activity in the brains of 15 participants, each of them had electrodes inserted inside their skulls to monitor the changes.

The team recorded electrical activity in response to 165 different sounds, from pieces of instrumental music to speech and sounds such as dogs barking, and then processed them using an algorithm.

With that data, they found out that some neurons respond only to speech or respond more strongly to music. However, they also revealed populations of neurons that appear to respond selectively to the sound of singing, showing only very weak responses to other types of music or speech alone.

Sophie Scott, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London who was not involved in the research, welcomed the study. “The singing voice is the only musical instrument that almost everyone is born with, so one might expect us to have a rather different relationship with human song, relative to other kinds of music,” she said.

Dr Ediz Sohoglu, a cognitive neuroscientist at University of Sussex, said the findings were striking. “One of the interesting questions that arises is why the brain has evolved or been shaped by experience to develop such specialized neurons. Why not just use the same neurons in a multi-purpose fashion to process more than one type of sound?” he said.

“One possibility is that having specialized neurons helps a listener to focus on certain sounds in noisy environments. For example, if I am listening to my favorite singer in a concert, I might find it easier to ignore the loud conversation behind me.”

Oh, and if you wanna read the whole study, on our portal, fluncytv.com, there’s a link that takes you to the article. It’s worth reading!

O phrasal verb to find out é usado para falar descobrir alguma coisa, encontrar a resposta, achar a solução. Esse é um dos phrasal verbs mais usados no dia a dia em inglês. Para usarmos ele no passado, temos que ajustá-lo para found out que é como encontramos nessa notícia: With that data, they found out , que significa, Com aqueles dados, eles descobriram que. Anota aí esse phrasal verb porque ele merece! Sempre vemos ele por aí em músicas, séries, vídeos, textos… everywhere!

As we began today’s episode talking about movies, I’d like to share with you some movies that might be considered the best ones to be watched in March.

The first one, of course, Robert Pattinson’s first outing as The Batman which is promised to be different from everything we’re used to seeing with the other Batmans. So, save the date because The Batman is gonna be released internationally on 4 March.

Another interesting one might be The Lost City, starring Sandra Bullock, which is in a similar vein to the 1984 classic Romancing The Stone. By the way, to the ones who miss watching Harry Potter on the big screen, Dan Radcliffe is also part of this movie. The Lost City is going to be released on 25 March in the US, Canada and France. Here in Brazil, it will be released on April 21.

The last one I’ll be bringing out today is the latest Pixar animation: Turning Red. Turning Red is the first Pixar animation to be directed only by a woman, the first to be set in Canada, and the first to be based on a heroine from an Asian family. Mei Lee turns into a huge, shaggy red panda whenever she is stressed. The director, Domee Shi, was inspired by the Japanese cartoons she watched when she was Mei’s age in the early 2000. So far, this one seems to be my favorite! It’s gonna be on Disney +, starting 11 March.

E se você quer chegar à fluência em inglês, espanhol, francês, italiano, alemão, japonês, mandarim e agora com o nosso novo idioma, coreano, inscreva-se na nossa lista de espera! Nela, você vai ficar sabendo assim que abrirem novas turmas! Desse jeito você não arrisca perder a sua vaga e ficar meses esperando uma nova chance!

Para se inscrever é só apertar no link na descrição desse episódio!

And, remember, there’s a new episode of Fluency News every week. I’ll be waiting for you!

Until next time!

Peace out ✌️

Stories

Oscars nominations 2022: the full list
‍https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/feb/08/oscars-nominations-2022-the-full-list
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/feb/08/oscar-nominations-2022-the-power-of-the-dog-leads-the-pack
https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/where-to-watch-the-2022-oscar-nominees/
https://variety.com/2022/awards/awards/oscars-2022-telecast-categories-cut-1235187841/

Praggnanandhaa: How India is emerging as a chess powerhouse
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/arts/chess-magnus-carlsen-rameshbabu-praggnanandhaa.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-60497243
https://www.npr.org/2022/02/22/1082284287/carlsen-praggnanandhaa-chess

Study finds part of human brain responding to singing
https://www.wionews.com/science/study-finds-part-of-human-brain-responding-to-singing-455584
https://www.zmescience.com/science/scientists-find-neurons-in-the-human-brain-that-only-respond-to-singing/
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/feb/22/scientists-find-part-of-brain-responds-selectively-to-sound-of-singing

ARTIGO MENCIONADO:
‍https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)00131-2

10 Best films to watch in March
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220224-10-of-the-best-films-to-watch-this-march