English Conversation

Leader: Mandi Ashmore

english@ iwc-lausanne. org

    We meet on Mondays at 14：30 at the IWC clubhouse. We chat for about an hour and discuss everything. Mandi asks “students” to contact her on Monday to confirm the class as sometimes she needs to cancel for various reasons or occasionally she may choose to hold the class at a different venue(举办地点) or at an earlier time for us to be able to have lunch together.

French Conversation, Advanced Beginner

Leader: Marielle Sulmoni

frenchconvo@ iwc-lausanne. org

    I'm French (born in Bordeaux) and Swiss by marriage. I hold an advanced beginners' French conversation class on Tuesday afternoons from 14：30 - 16：00. We meet weekly at the clubhouse in a friendly atmosphere. I hope to help you use your knowledge of French, allowing you to speak with no fear of making mistakes, which in time will become fewer and fewer.

French Language Lab, Beginner

Leader: Maija Remlinger

frenchlab@ iwc-lausanne. org

    The group meets on Thursday afternoons from 15：00－16：30 at the clubhouse. The first half of the class is devoted to reading out loud from the book “Easy French Reader”, working on pronunciation and phrasing. During the second half, we listen to audio recordings from “New French with Ease” and work on oral comprehension.

French Conversation, Advanced

Leader: Juliette Brull

french@ iwc-lausanne, org

    We meet every Tuesday at the IWC clubhouse from 9：30－11：00. Most of our time is devoted to very lively discussions about current events and various topics. We also read a book written by a French author and sometimes we see a French movie.

    Terrible disasters in the last 50 or 100 years have become increasingly common. Over the last 30 years, the number of weather-related disasters has increased quickly, and the disasters have also affected more people and caused more economic loss. However, much of this could be avoided through disaster risk reduction(DRR降低灾难风险).

    A meeting, held in Sendai, Japan last month, opened one day after Cyclone Pam（飓风Pam）hit Vanuatu, which struck the islands with winds of up to 340km/h and destroyed the island nation. The speech by the President of Vanuatu was given shortly after that. He begged the international community for support and stronger commitment (承诺)to helping them manage climate and disaster risks. In the face of disasters, it is always the developing countries that suffer most. Damage in these countries is often worse and unluckily, there is limited money and technique to prevent these disasters.

    In fact, we have seen Asian countries-especially those that have suffered a lot in disasters can't pay the price. Great loss Asia has suffered comes to a total of almost $ 53 billon yearly over the past 20 years.

    At the same time, studies have shown once again that proper prevention saves lives and damage. With this in mind, people at the Sendai meeting were able to come up with new agreements that effective ways of disaster risk reduction will be carried out in the coming years for those who easily get damaged in disasters.

    With the rapid development of China's economy, more and more foreigners begin to learn Chinese because they are beginning to realize the importance and growing influence of China. Pupils in Warwickshire will soon be learning Mandarin after new links were forged(建立联系) with a region in China.

    Head teachers from the county spent a week in Shenzhen in South-east China, making links with schools and touring different education establishments.

    Schools that took part are now looking to introduce Mandarin lessons. Pupils from schools in Warwickshire and Shenzhen are starting to write and e-mail each other and plans are being made to share lessons over the Internet.

The trip was arranged by Warwickshire County Council and funded by the British Council as the first stage of development of a range of ties with the economically booming city.

    International development officer Judith Young said: “We are entering an exciting period of school relation between Warwickshire and Shenzhen. There is a real appetite for sharing ideas among the Chinese. We were able to see the differences and similarities between the education systems and there are many areas in which our schools, teachers and pupils will be able to benefit from a different cultural perspective(观点) and links with a country that is becoming very important on the world stage.

    Throughout the high profile(引人注目) visit led by our county education officer, Eric Wood, our group was made to feel very welcome and attracted a great deal of interest. Our visit to a primary school was featured as the main news item on television that night. A mark of how highly the visit was valued is that plans are being made for a return visit to Warwickshire of civic leaders, senior education officials and school principals.”

    Are some people born clever, and others born stupid? Or is intelligence developed by our environment and our experience? Strangely enough, the answer to these questions is yes. To some degree our intelligence is given to us at birth, and no amount of education can make a genius out of a child born with low intelligence. On the other hand, a child who lives in a boring environment will develop his intelligence less than one who lives in rich and varied surroundings. Thus the limits of person's intelligence are fixed at birth, whether or not he reaches those limits will depend on his environment. This view, now held by most experts, can be supported in a number of ways.

    It is easy to show that intelligence is to some degree something we are born with. The closer the blood relationship between two people, the closer they are likely to be intelligent. Thus if we take two unrelated people at random from population, it is likely that their degree of intelligence will be completely different. If, on the other hand, we take two identical twins, they will very likely be as intelligent as each other. Relations like brothers and sisters, parents and children, usually have similar intelligence, and this clearly suggests that intelligence depends on birth. Imagine now that we take two identical twins and put them in different environments. We might send one, for example, to a university and the other to a factory where the work is boring. We would soon find differences in intelligence developing, and this indicates that environment as well as birth plays a part. This conclusion is also suggested by the fact that people who live in close contact with each other, but who are not related at all are likely to have similar degree of intelligence.

    A MENTORING (导师制）program is giving life changing opportunities to Banbury youth. Young Inspirations was founded two years ago to provide mentoring sessions for students and unemployed young adults aged 11 to 21.

    Alex Goldberg, the program's founder, said： "We set up Young Inspirations because we wanted to give young people experiences which will potentially be life changing and broaden their outlook." "We try to create work experience opportunities that will really make a difference to our youth. For example, we've secured internships (实习）with world-famous firms such as Honda."

    "At a time of funding cutbacks, schools are finding it more and more difficult to offer this kind of mentoring because of that- It is extremely important that these opportunities are available both to help youth with their school work and grades and to give them opportunities which may help shape their futures." Kieran Hepbum, 14, is one of a group of Banbury youth who has benefited from the program so far. In October the Banbury School pupil was accompanied by Young Inspirations staff to Paris where he was an observer at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) International Youth Forum(论坛).

    The event was held for young people from around the world, to seek their views on how the future of youth and education should look. Kieran joined several hundred observers mostly in their 20s and was the only UK school pupil to attend the event. Kieran thinks the trip was a life changing experience. Before we left 1 didn't quite know what to make of it but when we got there we didn't stop, it was amazing" he said, "We went to three or four hours of debates each day and then did something cultural each afternoon."

    The main theme of the forum was how youth can drive change in political and public life. It  dealt with issues(问题）such as drug abuse, violence and unemployment. kieran said： It has really helped me to improve my confidence and social skills as well as my school grades and I was voted most improved pupil at school in August."

    The Young Inspirations mentoring sessions take place each Friday in Banbury. For details visit www.younginsviratiom.com.

Both humans and animals have enemies. It is easy for us to know the difference between our friends and our enemies. But can other animals do the same? Elephants can! They can use their sense of vision and smell to tell the difference between people who mean a threat and those who do not. In Kenya, researchers find that elephants react differently to clothing worn by men of the Maasai and Kamba ethnic groups. Young Maasai men hunt animals and thus mean a threat to elephants; Kamba men are mainly farmers and are not a danger to elephants.

In an experiment conducted by animal scientists, elephants were first presented with clean clothing or clothing that had been worn for five days by either a Maasai or a Kamba man. When the elephants noticed the smell of clothing worn by a Maasai man, they moved away from the smell faster and took longer to relax than when they noticed the smells of either clean clothing or clothing worn by a Kamba man.

Clothing color also plays a role. In the same study, when the elephants saw red clothing not worn before, they reacted angrily, as red is typically worn by Maasai men. Rather than running away as they did with the smell, the elephants acted angrily toward the red clothing.

The researchers believe that the elephants' emotional reactions are due to their different senses of smell and sight. Smelling a possible danger means that a threat is nearby and the best thing to do is run away and hide. Seeing a potential threat without its smell means that risk is low. Therefore, instead of showing fear and running away, the elephants express their anger and become aggressive.