This week’s video is for all my high level English students and all of you are interested in global and American politics. In honor of last week’s American election, this week’s video is Obama’s victory speech. It can be seen thanks to dozens of news agencies around the globe posting it on their websites or using their You Tube accounts. I choose the New York Times You Tube posting, as it has the most views at the time of this posting, at over 8,000,000 views in one week.
The speech is long and contains lots of high level vocab, but President Obama’s voice is so clear and he speaks so eloquently and purposefully that the speed is not bad. Obama is a master at giving speeches, pausing at appropriate times to let the audience think or cheer or for dramatic effect. His speaking style is very impressive, not to mention the great speech writing from his staff. Of course, don’t forget the message, which is of course the main point. So listen to it as many times as you can (at over 20 minutes it is a long video to watch), watch it every day if possible. Absorb the words and try your best to understand the message, but also study his tone, speed, pronunciation and so on. Even if you don’t understand it, you can still learn from it. If nothing else, putting it on in the background while working, studying, cooking, cleaning snd just passively absorb the English. If you still have trouble with it, you can read the transcript (at the same time, before, after, on the train…) which will help as well.
Yes we can!