VOA · Everyday Grammar
Advanced · C1learner speed5:012024-06-27public domain
Everyday Grammar digs into one grammar topic per episode — verb tenses, prepositions, sentence patterns — with plenty of spoken examples. Because you are listening to language about language, it doubles as grammar review while you train your ears.
Hit "Start dictation practice" — all 5 minutes are already sliced into sentences, so practice starts immediately. No wait.
Expect longer sentences and richer vocabulary — replay freely, and slow the speed if a sentence runs away from you.
Switch to Dictation mode, type each sentence, and get a word-by-word diff with your accuracy score.
01Sky watchers have had a busy year so far in 2024.
02There has been much to see among the stars and planets.
03In April, many people in the United States were able to watch a total eclipse of the sun.
04Coming up in the next few months, there will be a nova of two stars.
05This week, we will learn about some of the special words you can use to talk about objects and events in the sky.
06A nova is a star explosion.
07A pair of stars called T.
08corona borealis, called the blaze star, will become very bright, so people almost everywhere on Earth, even in cities, can see it.
09Scientists say the event will be visible to the naked eye, which means you do not need any special tools, like binoculars or a telescope, to see it.
10Visible is an adjective form related to the word view.
11The two stars that form the blaze star produce an outburst, or increased period of energy, energy, around every 80 years.
12Rebecca Hounsell is an assistant research scientist specializing in NOVA events at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
13We don't often see a repeated outburst in a human lifetime, and rarely one so relatively close to our own system, Hounsell said.
14Material from one star moves toward another and causes the explosion, or outburst, of energy.
15Energy.
16This makes the bright light we can see from Earth.
17Scientists say they are not sure exactly when we will be able to see the NOVA, but you will surely hear about it on the news.
18Your next question might be, how can I find it in the sky?
19This is when you will need to know the word constellation and how to find one in the sky.
20A constellation is a group of stars.
21Some constellations look like particular shapes to people on Earth.
22The NOVA coming this year is in the constellation Corona Borealis, or Northern Crown.
23There are many uses for the preposition between for talking about the upcoming NOVA and its constellation.
24If you make an imaginary line between the stars in it, you get a curved line that looks like a headpiece worn by kings and queens.
25To find it, you can look for the two brightest stars in the northern hemisphere, Arcturus and Vega.
26In the space between them, you will find two constellations, Hercules and Bootes.
27Northern Crown is between them.
28People enjoyed another event in the sky in April.
29A total eclipse of the sun.
30The moon moved between earth and the sun, causing a shadow or an area of darkness on earth.
31The path of the moon's shadow on earth is called the path of totality.
32We can change an adjective, such as total, to a noun with the noun suffix I-T-Y.
33The resulting noun means the state or condition of what the adjective describes.
34For example, it is used with active to form activity.
35The next total eclipse on earth will be August 12, 2026, and it will be visible in Spain.
36And that's Everyday Grammar.
37I'm Andrew Smith.
38I'm Andrew Smith.
39I'm Andrew Smith.
40I'm Andrew Smith.
41I'm Andrew Smith.
42I'm Andrew Smith.
43I'm Andrew Smith.
// transcribed with Whisper AI — reading it is easy; catching it by ear is the skill
Practice it by ear
