Bell Teacher Campus 2016: Cultural Talks

    Our talks start at 16:00 on the first week in August, and each one lasts about one hour. Each talk will be offered only once during your 4-day stay. Please sign up on the main Bell Noticeboard (Second floor, Mary Allan Building).

August 1st

    BRITISH MUSIC, by Pete Sharma in Room 106. British music is famous worldwide. In this talk, I'll discuss what's popular and what's not right now and the top music festivals in the UK. We will listen to some of the artists and share some thoughts about singing and dancing.

August 2nd

    LOVE ME, LOVE MY CAT, by Lis Harrison in Room 207. We will be looking at this national interest through idioms(习语), songs, and everyday British life, and along the way covering some vocabulary for “talking cat”. At the end, we'll be discussing that old topic: do we Brits treat out pets better than we treat our kids?

August 3rd

    A GAME AS ENGLISH AS CROQUET(槌球游戏)，by Anna Young in Room 218. First, we will look at the origins of croquet, a much loved garden game in England. We will look at simple croquet rules, and then practice time! We'll go out and play!

August 4th

    WHY ENGLISH PEOPLE LAUGH, by Jim Scrivener in Room 117. Let me try to show you a little bit of what British people find funny. You will discover some of the most popular radio& TV comedy game shows. You probably won't find it funny at all! But you will learn a bit more about us Brits!

    Did you know that something as simple as the wallpaper on your computer can tell people a lot about you? According to researcher Donna Dawson,our computers say something about what we're like because they are part of our “personal space.”

    A picture of a child or family on the screen often means the person cares deeply about their loved ones.A photo of the person surrounded by friends shows they value their popularity and probably work well with other people.On the other hand,pictures showing examples of past successes,like winning a prize may mean a person is only interested in themselves.

    Pictures of nature and natural scenery tell people that you are driven to succeed and use the pictures to relax and remove the pressure（压力）in your life.Cityscapes,pictures of cities or towns,show that you enjoy travel and adventure.Most people with cityscapes as their wallpaper are optimistic（乐观的）,happy people who feel even better thinking about the places they've visited or want to visit.

    Pictures of animals show that you are optimistic and kind-hearted.You are often happy and you enjoy life and act young.Cartoons（漫画）or drawings show that you are a multitasker,someone who does many things at once.You have many responsibilities,but you deal with them well.That's one reason you like having something to smile about when you look at your computer wallpaper.

    Then,what does plain blue wallpaper tell us about a person?According to Dawson,a person with plain blue wallpaper probably values their privacy and keeps work from becoming too personal,

    More than 90 years has passed since Hollywood's official film organization first proposed plans to build its own museum. Those plans are finally becoming a reality, with the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures set to open in 2019.

    The project is underway at the site of a historic Los Angeles department store built in 1939. Museum officials say visitors will be able to “experience the magic of cinema” by learning about all parts of the film-making process.

    Film historian Kerry Brougher has been named directors of the museum. Brougher says the museum will include 12 million photographs and 80,000 screenplays as well as props（道具）, costumes and other objects from famous films. The Academy Museum will also feature Oscar statuettes（小雕像）donated by actors who won the awards.

    Brougher says the museum is designed to make visitors feel like they are in a movie, too, with many interactive experiences. “You won't necessarily know what's coming next, '' he adds. “You'll be in environments sometimes that make you feel like you've gone back to the past and that you're in the area that you're actually exploring.” He adds that visitors may even get the chance to walk down a red carpet and accept their own Academy Award.

    Currently, Hollywood only has a few possibilities for visitors. They can go along the Walk of Fame and visit movie studios or see the Dolby Theater, where the Oscars are presented. But beyond these, movie fans have limited possibilities.

    Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles says the Academy Museum will provide visitors the chance to experience many different parts of the film industry all in one place. Garcetti notes the museum will also serve the hundreds of thousands of local people working in film-related businesses. He says they, too, will finally be able to visit a place that celebrates their own Hollywood movie industry.

    The U.S. Department of Labor statistics (统计) show that there is an oversupply of college-trained workers and that this oversupply is increasing. Already there have been more than enough teachers, engineers, physicists, aerospace experts, and other specialists. Yet colleges and graduate schools continue every year to turn out highly trained people to compete for jobs that aren't there. The result is that graduates cannot enter the professions for which they were trained and must take temporary jobs which do not require a college degree.

    On the other hand, there is a great need for skilled workers of all sorts: carpenters, electricians, mechanics, plumbers, TV repairmen.

    These people have more work than they can deal with, and their annual incomes are often higher than those of college graduates. The old gap that white-collar workers make a better living than blue-collar workers no longer holds true. The law of supply and demand now favors the skilled workmen.

    The reason for this situation is the traditional myth that college degree is a passport to a prosperous future. A large part of American society matches success in life equally with a college degree. Parents begin indoctrinating (灌输) their children with this myth before they are out of grade school. High school teachers play their part by acting as if high school education were a preparation for college rather than for life. Under this pressure the kids fall in line. Whether they want to go to college or not doesn't matter. Everybody should go to college, so of course they must go. And every year college enrollments (入学) go up and up, and more and more graduates are overeducated for the kinds of jobs available to them.

    One result of this emphasis on a college education is that many people go to college who do not belong there. Of the sixty percent of high school graduates who enter college, half of them do not graduate with their class. Many of them drop out within the first year. Some struggle on for two or three years and then give up.

    It is not always a good thing to praise children because "empty" words may make them unhappy. Words such as "well done" may make them doubt their own abilities, a leading psychologist (心理学家) Stephen Grosz has warned. He says that words such as "you're so clever" or "you're such an artist" could also hinder their future development at school. He says that such empty praise causes children to be unhappy as they may say they can't live up to these expectations.

    Instead he advises parents and teachers to praise children less frequently and use words like "trying really hard," Mr. Grosz said, "Empty praise is as bad as thoughtless criticism (批评). People often pay no attention to children's feelings and thoughts." He also mentions research showing that children who are heavily praised probably perform worse at school.

    Some psychologists from Columbia University asked 128 pupils aged 10 and 11 to work out a number of math problems. Afterwards, some were told, "You did really well­—you're so clever." But the researchers told the other group, "You did really well­—you must have tried really hard." Both groups of children were then given more difficult questions and those who had been told they were clever did not do as well as the others.

    He says that when collecting his daughter from a school near their home in North London, he heard a teacher tell her, "You have drawn the most beautiful tree. Well done," Later, after she had done another drawing, the same teacher said, "Wow, you are really an artist." In his book, Mr. Grosz writes, "How could I explain to the teacher that I would prefer it if she did not praise my daughter?"

    As a parent of two children, I strongly agree with Mr. Grosz. I praise them when praising is proven right. I want them to know if I praise them, they have done something beyond my expectation, beyond what they are able to do.

    They still bite, but new research shows lab-grown mosquitoes are fighting dengue fever — a dangerous disease that they normally would spread. Dengue infections appear to be dropping fast in communities in Indonesia, Vietnam, Brazil and Australia that are filled with the specially grown mosquitoes.

    Researchers first injected (注射)mosquito eggs with Wolbachia bacteria that's common in insects and harmless to people in a lab. Infected females then pass the bacteria on through their eggs. Releasing enough Wolbachia carriers, both the females that bite and the males that don't, allows mating(交配)to spread the bacteria through a local mosquito population.

    Rather than using chemicals to wipe out pests, "this is really about transforming the mosquito," said Cameron Simmons of the nonprofit World Mosquito Program, which is conducting the research.

    The first success came from Australia. Mosquitoes carrying Wolbachia were released in parts of North Queensland starting in 2011, and gradually spread through the local mosquito population. Dengue is spread when a mosquito bites someone who is infected, and then bites another person, but somehow Wolbachia blocks that — and local spread has nearly disappeared in those North Queensland Communities, Simmons said.

    The studies are continuing in other countries. But the findings, presented at a meeting of the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, suggest it's possible to turn at least some mosquitoes from a public health threat into annoying biters.

    The work marks "exciting progress," said Michigan State University professor Zhiyong Xi, who wasn't involved with the project but has long studied how Wolbachia can turn mosquitoes against themselves.

    More research is needed, specialists cautioned. "The results are pretty exciting — strong levels of reductions — but there clearly are going to be things to be learned from the areas where the reductions are not as great," said Penn State University professor Elizabeth McGraw.