Learning English with the BBC: March 2013

Sunday 10 March 2013

Reaching for the sky

A man proposes marriage to his girlfriend at The View, as the Shard building in London opens to the public.

London now has the tallest building in the European Union. 'The Shard' stands at 310 metres tall, and is known for its unique shape like a shard of broken glass.

Rob and Callum discuss London's newest skyscraper.

This week's question:

According to the Guinness World Records, the first ever skyscraper was built in the USA. In which city was it built?

a) New York

b) Chicago

c) Detroit

Listen out for the answer at the end of the programme.

Listen

Reaching for the sky

End of Section

Vocabulary

SHOW ALL |

skyscrapers: very tall buildings with many floors
a shard: a piece of broken ceramic, metal, glass, or rock, which usually has sharp edges
forking out: spending a lot of money on something
the wow factor: a quality that makes someone feel excited or surprised when they first see something
landmark: a famous building
prosperous: wealthy and successful
observation deck: a viewing platform in a tall building
leased: let or rented out
established: recognised and accepted because of its location or long-term existence
dodgy: uncertain or having risks

Related BBC links

Take a tour of The Shard's viewing platform

Reaching for the sky

Rob: Hello, I’m Rob and this is 6 Minute English and I’m joined this week by Callum. Hello
Callum.
Callum: Hello Rob.
Rob: Today we’re talking about tall buildings – very tall buildings in fact.
Callum: I suppose we could call them skyscrapers – because they’re so tall they almost
touch the sky.
Rob: They do. Many countries compete with each other in trying to earn the title of having
the tallest building in the world. And this month, London has opened its newest
structure but unfortunately it’s not going to win the world record for being the
highest.
Callum: No, but it is now the European Union’s tallest building standing at 310 metres tall.
Rob: That’s high enough for me. I haven’t really got a head for heights! Anyway if you
don’t know what this new building is called we’ll tell you in a moment but not before
I’ve set today’s question for Callum.
Callum: I suppose this is going to be about height?
Rob: Yes, that’s the long and short of it! According to the Guinness World Records, the
first ever skyscraper was built in the USA, but in which city? Was it in:
a) New York
b) Chicago
c) Detroit
Callum: I don’t know this but I’m going to go for a: New York because there are many
famous skyscrapers in New York. So I’m going to go a: New York.
Rob: Well, I’ll let you know the answer at the end of the programme. But let’s talk more
about London’s newest building, which has just opened to the public, and is called
The Shard.
Callum: The Shard. That’s because of its shape. The structure narrows as it gets higher and
comes to a point at the top. From a distance, with the sun reflecting on it, it looks
like a shard – or a sharp, broken piece of glass, which is what a shard means.
Rob: Yes, and the steel structure is covered in glass which means that if you are inside
you get a fantastic view over London.
Callum: And if you don’t mind forking out lots of money you can go to the viewing platform
on the 72nd floor for a birds-eye view of the city. That’s what these people did – what
did they think of it?
The Shard visitors:
I’m just a bit blown away to be honest.
It’s what we needed really, isn’t it, against other capitals.
I’ve been on the London Eye and look how much higher up we are.
Rob: Well, The Shard seems to have the wow factor for those people. In other words,
they were very impressed. The first woman said she was ‘blown away’ or amazed by
the experience.
Callum: Someone else mentioned it was much higher than the London Eye – that’s another
famous landmark. And somebody else commented that it was what London needed
– but why?
Rob: A good question. A new skyscraper can create good publicity for a city – it’s an
image that is seen all around the world and it can show a city as being prosperous
and modern.
Callum: Yes, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates is a good example of this. It boasts the
world’s tallest building – the Burj Khalifa – standing at 828 metres tall. 'Burj', by the
way, is Arabic for tower. Other countries such as China, Malaysia and the USA all
boast towers much taller than The Shard.
Rob: Of course, the engineering involved is impressive. But what do you put inside these
towers? Most contain luxury living accommodation, a hotel, offices, and, of course,
an observation deck – that’s a viewing platform.
Callum: But there is a problem for The Shard. At the moment only 20% of the office space is
leased – which means only 20% is rented out. Jack Sidders from the Estates
Gazette newspaper has his reasons for this:
Jack Sidders, of the Estates Gazette newspaper:
What they are trying to do is create an entire quarter here, to make it into more of an established
office location but, you know, maybe if you’re a tenant, economy’s very dodgy, that added bit of
risk, maybe that will put people off.
Rob: So, the owners of The Shard want to make it an established office location – so,
therefore, a good recognised location for business – but the current economic
situation could be putting off tenants from moving in.
Callum: Yes, he said described the economy as dodgy – a slang word for uncertain or risky.
Rob: That’s not the view of Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London. He’s proud of the new
building and, together with other new constructions, he’s optimistic about the future.
See if you can hear the names of some other London landmarks he mentions:
Boris Johnson, Mayor of London:
You’ve got the Walkie Talkie going up, The Cheese Grater, the stuff that wasn’t happening four
years ago, all those cranes stopped moving four years ago; they’re back on the scene now.
Callum: Some interesting names for buildings there – The Walkie Talkie and The Cheese
Grater! This is, of course, because of the shape of the buildings, which look like the
objects they are named after. I suppose these names make it easier to identify the
buildings.
Rob: Yes but I think I’d be quite embarrassed to tell people I work in The Cheese Grater!
OK, well it’s time now to reveal the answer to today’s question.
Callum: Ah yes. You asked me, according to the Guinness World Records, the first ever
skyscraper was built in the USA but in which city?
Rob: Yes, was it in:
a) New York
b) Chicago
c) Detroit
Callum: And I said New York.
Rob: And you are wrong I'm afraid. The world’s first skyscraper was the Home Insurance
Building in Chicago. Built between 1884 and 1885, the so-called “Father of the
Skyscraper” towered all of ten storeys and was just 42 metres tall.
Callum: Not much of skyscraper by today’s standards, is it really?
Rob: Indeed. OK, well, it’s almost time to go but before we do, Callum could you remind
us of some of the words we have heard today.
Callum: Yes. We heard:
skyscrapers
a shard
forking out
the wow factor
landmark
prosperous
observation deck
leased
established
dodgy
Rob: Thanks Callum. Well, that’s all we have time for today. Please join us again soon for
6 Minute English from bbclearningenglish.
Both: Bye.

The 'plastic' princess?

Quotes from a speech in which the Duchess of Cambridge was compared to a "shop window mannequin" with a "plastic smile" caused controversy in the UK this week. But a closer analysis of British novelist Hilary Mantel's speech reveals a more sympathetic picture.

Finn and Neil explore this topic and look at some of the interesting language used.

This week's question:

How many wives did English King Henry VIII have?

a) four

b) five

c) six

Listen out for the answer at the end of the programme.

Listen

The 'plastic' princess?

End of Section

Vocabulary

SHOW ALL |

shop-window mannequin: a life-sized doll used to display clothes in shop windows
spindle: a thin, wooden rod around which something turns
extended metaphor: long comparison
objectification: treating people like objects
machine-made: made by machine
emotional incontinence: inability to control one's emotions
gesture: movement of one's body to express a feeling
scant: mere, barely
beheaded: had their heads cut off

Listen

Why we love a film that makes us cry

End of Section

Vocabulary

SHOW ALL |

to burst into tears: to start crying loudly and suddenly
misty-eyed: feeling that you might start to cry
a weepy: a film that makes you cry
a tearjerker: (also) a film that makes you cry
to blub: to cry noisily
a sob story: a story someone tells to get sympathy
goose bumps: small bumps on your skin caused by being scared, excited, upset or cold
to cry your heart out: to cry uncontrollably
it's a crying shame: it's regrettable, unfortunate or unfair
to cry over spilt milk: to waste time worrying about something small or something that cannot be changed

Related BBC links

Les Miserables: What makes people cry in films?

BBC News

Transcript

Rob: Hello, I'm Rob, welcome to 6 Minute English. With me in the studio today is Feifei.

Hello there.

Feifei: Hi Rob.

Rob: In today's programme we're discussing films that make us cry and why we actually

enjoy watching something that makes us burst into tears – or in other words, to

cry out loud. And we'll also be looking at the language associated with crying. So,

crying out loud, surely this is something that you have done Feifei?

Feifei: I'm afraid yes, I have done that.

Rob: Is there a particular film that's made you cry?

Feifei: I think, Turner and Hooch… and how about you Rob?

Rob: Well, being a man, obviously I would never cry - well almost. There is an old

children's film called The Railway Children. At the end when the children's father

returns from exile, his daughter runs down the station platform shouting "my daddy,

my daddy!" That makes me misty-eyed.

Feifei: You big softie!

Rob: I suppose I am. Now Feifei before we discuss this subject further, here's your

question for today. Which film has won the most ever Oscar awards?

a) Ben Hur

b) Slumdog Millionaire

c) Gone With The Wind

Feifei: I'm going to go for answer b) Slumdog Millionaire.

Rob: Ok, well let's find out if you are right at the end of the programme. Of course, the

85th Academy Awards – better known as The Oscars – were held recently and there

was one major weepy that won several awards.

Feifei: A weepy? You mean a film that makes us cry?

Rob: Yes. And that film was Les Miserables. I've seen it and it really is a tearjerker – it

literally causes tears to roll down our cheeks! So why do we choose to see a film – or

movie – that makes us get so emotional?

Feifei: I suppose it's the mark of a good film if it causes us to reveal our emotions. A really

sad story, if it's well acted and directed, can really make us blub – another word for

crying. And a sob story – one where a character tries to get our sympathy for him

or her – can have the same effect. But what is it about a film that can makes us cry

when we can't cry in real life?

Rob: Well, according to psychologist, Dr Averil Leimon, we allow our emotions to be

influenced when we watch a film. What word does she use to mean 'influenced'?

Dr Averil Leimon, Psychologist:

People want to have their emotions manipulated, because then they're allowed to have them. We

spend so much of our life being told you shouldn't feel like that, you don't feel like that when in fact

we do feel like that. And both the visual and the, you know, the auditory allows us to know what

emotion we're meant to feel.

Feifei: So Dr Averil Leimon says we like to have our emotions manipulated – influenced by a

film. In real life we are told how we should feel.

Rob: But when watching a film, at the cinema for example, we can let our emotions loose.

But there is something else in a film that effects our emotions and gives us goose

bumps – or a feeling that makes our hair stand on end and we get little bumps on

our skin.

Feifei: Yes, Dr Leimon says there are visual and auditory clues that provoke our feelings –

so that's the style of the pictures and the music or sound effects that are used.

Rob: (Mimics theme to Jaws) Like the music in the Jaws movie, although that's not really

a tearjerker.

Feifei: Come on Rob, I bet you cried at the scary bits?!

Rob: I told you, men don't cry. Although there is one film that has had grown men crying

their hearts out – which means they've been crying uncontrollably. That's the film

Toy Story 3.

Feifei: Really?

Rob: Yes. I don't think it's because the film is sad but because watching it makes men

nostalgic about their youth and perhaps they can see their kids reflected in the story

too.

Feifei: Well I bet these men were crying alone. They wouldn't want to be seen crying in

public?

Rob: Well not according to Philip Sheppard who composes – or writes – film music. He

thinks letting our feelings out – he calls it catharsis – is better in a group…

Philip Sheppard, Film score composer:

All of us sort of need to find a catharsis, especially within a group to have this sort of place to have

an emotional response. It ends up being something where you need to have that kind of release. As

British people we're terribly bad at it I think. But when people find an outlet for it such as a film,

especially when they are in a crowd, people's emotional responses are much more instantaneously

responsive.

Rob: So he says we all need to find a catharsis. Being in a group is a good place for letting

your emotions out. When you watch a film with others you react to other people's

emotional responses.

Feifei: So if one person cries then other people will start to cry too. Unless you're British of

course!

Rob: That's what Philip Sheppard thinks. And we could say 'it's a crying shame',

meaning it's regrettable or it's an unfortunate situation.

Feifei: OK Rob, well let's not cry over spilt milk!

Rob: Uh?

Feifei: Let's not get upset over something quite small. Could I just have the answer to

today's question please?

Rob: Yes of course. Earlier, I asked you, which film has won the most ever Oscars?

Feifei: And I said Slumdog Millionaire.

Rob: And you were wrong. The answer was Ben Hur. The 1959 film has won 11 awards –

the same number has also been won by Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The

Return of The King. Well, Feifei before we go, please could you remind us of some of

the crying-related words and phrases that we've heard today.

Feifei: Sure. We heard…

burst into tears

misty-eyed

a weepy

tearjerker

blub

a sob story

goose bumps

crying their hearts out

it's a crying shame

cry over spilt milk

Rob: Thanks Feifei. Well, it's a crying shame but we're out of time. Please join us again

soon for 6 Minute English from bbclearningenglish.

Both: Bye

Staring at the Shard

Will Self confesses to being dazzled by the skyscrapers that dominate urban skylines, but wonders if they have overshadowed visionary dreams of making cities better places to live.

It was said of the French writer Guy de Maupassant that he ate dinner in the restaurant of the Eiffel Tower every night of the week, and when asked why, replied, "Because it's the only place in Paris from where you can't see the Eiffel Tower."

While this anecdote has the distinct whiff of too-good-to-be-true about it, I can assure you that my own peak perspective is 100% genuine.

So taken am I by the spectacle of Renzo Piano's Shard lightsabering up into the London night, that I've taken to sleeping in the spare room, from where I have a good view of this, currently the loftiest building in Western Europe. I even leave the blind up, so that when I wake in the small hours I can contemplate the Shard under different light and weather conditions.

This is not, I hasten to assure you, because I think the building has any architectural merit whatsoever. Rather, with its catchy nickname, and gross simplification of form, it's just the latest exemplar of what the architectural critic Owen Hatherley has characterised as the boosterist cliche of creating structures that are simultaneously a logo and an icon.

Find out more

A Point of View is usually broadcast on Fridays on Radio 4 at 20:50 GMT and repeated Sundays, 08:50 GMT
Will Self is a novelist and journalist

There's this, and there's also the ephemerality of the Shard. I have a friend who lives in a house in its shadow that was built in the 1600s, and given the 75-year specification of this scintillating spire and our proven capacity for doing away with large and recently-built buildings, I've no doubt that his humble abode will still be there long after it has gone.

Indeed, at New Year's Eve, standing on top of Brockwell Park in Brixton, and looking at the starbursts and glittery flak explode over the Thames while the London Eye was transformed into a gigantic Catherine wheel, it occurred to me that the contemporary metropolitan skyline is really only a fireworks display of decades-long duration. A burst of aerial illumination intended to provoke awe, but doomed, eventually, to subside into darkness.

As it is to London, so it is to other British cities. Over the past 20 years a series of signature buildings has lanced up into heavens, forms that by day have the aspect of grossly enlarged desktop toys, but which by night resemble nothing so much as the over-lit rockets and gantries of some Cape Kennedy of the collective British psyche.

It's as if our architects, civil engineers and urban planners were summoning us not to the dull confinement of the workaday, but to an exciting mass exodus, one in which we will all become colonists of the future. I say "as if" because, of course, these gleaming nacelles are no more the product of careful arrangement, or thoughtful dispensation, than the up-thrust finials and melting buttresses of a termite heap.

Inside the Shard - one of the few places in London you can't see the building

Not, I'm sure, that those who believe they're responsible for the character of our built environment would view it this way.

After all, never before in our history have quite so many people spent quite so much time drawing up plans, conducting surveys and initiating impact studies. Never before has every single square foot of available building land been pored over with quite so much attention, nor has each aesthetic detail and design feature of our habitation been subjected to as systematic a supervision.

“Start Quote

The contemporary metropolitan skyline is really only a fireworks display of decades-long duration... doomed, eventually, to subside into darkness”

Moreover, our journeys through this maze of quantification are subjected to the most accurate possible computer modelling, with a view to achieving that quintessentially modern desideratum: smooth traffic flow. And yet, despite all of this the end result is still an anarchic hugger-mugger of concrete, brick, steel and glass, typified by cul-de-sacs full of double-parked cars, and arterial roads clotted with traffic jams.

How can it be that we've arrived at this strange impasse, where, instead of being citizens of a noble acropolis presided over by a genius loci, we seem the short-let tenants of a sandpit played in by a giant (and not especially imaginative) toddler?

It's true that historically Britain faces an uphill struggle when it comes to effective and rational planning. As the first society to be industrialised and urbanised, our relatively small island was already thickly layered with sectional and individual interests before any effective civic authority existed. Hence, in longstanding built-up areas planning has always been a piecemeal and rearguard action against the successful redbrick invader.

There's also the paradoxical role played by the two great 20th Century theorists of urban planning: Ebenezer Howard, the founder of the native garden city movement, and Le Corbusier, the continental promoter of the city as a "machine for living".

Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928)	Charles-Edouard Jeanneret 'Le Corbusier' (1887-1965)
British thinker, author of Garden Cities of To-morrow (1898), a depiction of ideal city where people live in harmony with nature.	Swiss-born architect, author of Vers Une Architecture (Towards A New Architecture); famously said houses were "machines for living"
Ideas led to foundation of Garden City Movement, and founding of several garden cities, including Letchworth (pictured) and Welwyn in Hertfordshire, and many more in the US	Highly influential in the sphere of urban planning; believed modern architecture provided solution to poor conditions for urban working class; buildings include "Typ Berlin (pictured)

Garden City Museum	Fondation Le Corbusier

The two are often portrayed as polar opposites: Howard the believer in privet hedges, and low-rise bungaloid development ranged along parabolic crescents; Le Corbusier, the apostle of the perpendicular skyscraper right-angling up from a grid-pattern of flyovers.

But in fact both were responding to what they perceived as the human cost exacted by the chaotic growth of European cities. Both saw the vital need for people of all classes to have well-lit, unpolluted and safe places to live, characterised by large amounts of green space, and both sought to reconcile socialistic aspirations and capitalistic prerogatives within beautiful and sustainable urban environments.

That Howard tended to a more laissez-faire model of how this was to be achieved - the garden city acting as a magnetic attractor by its obvious virtues alone - while Le Corbusier saw the need for a firmly dirigiste, top-down approach, can be explained in part by national temperament, in part by cultural experience.

Howard was a true son of the Arts & Crafts movement, and as such, although he looked forward practically to clean and ubiquitous electrical power, he looked backward, idealistically, to the vernacular architecture of a supposed merry and harmonious England. This is why, to this day, you can stand on a suburban pavement in Uxbridge or Uttoxeter, and see a shiny new car parked beside a lichen-covered lych-gate.

More from the Magazine

"Since its birth more than 100 years ago, the humble skyscraper has grown and matured. Shimmering glass and steel replaced classic stone exteriors, as each incarnation pushed ever skyward. But, for the latest generation of buildings, being the tallest is not necessarily the main concern."

Skyscrapers - past, present and future

However, you can also look up from the half-timbered facades of "Tudorbethan" semis to see powering along the horizon a file of Le Corbusier-style multi-storey blocks. They may not be standing in the acres of open parkland as he would have wanted, but here at least the victory of the machines that he prophesied seems secure.

This dual and poorly-enacted heritage perhaps best explains the curiously confused aspect of our cities. Indeed, you can walk through them pointing to first one feature then the next, and identify them as the bastard children of either one or the other of these visionaries.

Howard's plans were ruined by the private car - the rise of which he didn't fully anticipate. Le Corbusier's were wrecked by the adoption of high rises for human habitation - something he never envisaged, believing that most people should live in comparatively low-rise apartment buildings. And underlying this confusion is a further derogation - that of an ideal both men shared, which was that the municipalities of the future should utilise increasing land-values to improve the collective lot.

Lying abed, looking at the Emerald City of unfettered finance capital coruscating across the rooftops of the Victorian corridor streets that Le Corbusier and Howard so decried, I can appreciate that enacted here is the most important axiom of contemporary architecture - form follows finance.

With its short life and great height, the spiky Shard graphically illustrates exponentially increasing inner-city land values, while the chaos of old and new masonry surrounding it testifies to the greed and short-termism of successive generations.

Will's words of the week

Links to Collins dictionary

There's just one massive mitigating factor in this prospect - despite the Wizard of Oz-hollowness of the illusion, the spectacle remains entirely bewitching. Indeed, I doubt anyone would ever change their sleeping arrangements in order to survey a well-planned city. It's this essential ambivalence we all feel about the urban landscape - that its sordidness and its beauty are somehow inseparable - that unites me with De Maupassant across both the Channel and the years.

And high buildings, in particular, arouse in us these painfully comingled feelings of love and hatred. We love them for the new prospects they afford us of our cities, while loathing them for the way they belittle us.

De Maupassant may have dined upright in the Eiffel Tower gazing down over Paris, while I'm supine in London staring up at the Shard. However,au fond, I think we share the same point of view.

Learning English with the BBC

Sunday 10 March 2013

Reaching for the sky

Listen

Vocabulary

Related BBC links

Take a tour of The Shard's viewing platform

The 'plastic' princess?

Listen

Vocabulary

Related BBC links

Hilary Mantel on Duchess of Cambridge's 'perfect plastic smile'

Why we love a film that makes us cry

Why we love a film that makes us cry

Listen

Vocabulary

Related BBC links

Les Miserables: What makes people cry in films?

Staring at the Shard

Find out more

“Start Quote

More from the Magazine

Will's words of the week

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