Learning English Podcast - February 14, 2025
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Welcome to Learning English, a daily 30-minute program from the Voice of America. I'm Katie Weaver. And I'm Mario Ritter, Jr. This program is designed for English learners, so we speak a little slower and we use words and phrases especially written for people learning English.

On this program, we will answer a listener's question about the word regimen. Then, we complete our series on academic writing, followed by a story about a museum of laughter in Croatia. Then, we conclude our American story, The Fall of the House of Usher, by Edgar Allan Poe. But first...

This week on Ask a Teacher, we answer a question from Marco in Italy. Here is Marco's question. Dear teacher, I want to understand more when to use the word regimen for exercise or other actions. Thank you. I'm happy to answer this question, Marco.

A regimen is usual and repeated action, especially in training. In healthcare, it is a systematic plan to improve a person's health. A training regimen, for example, can include exercises people can do to help them get the results they want.

For example, a long-distance runner's regimen might include runs of 10 or 20 kilometers every week. Note that we often put another noun before the word "regimen" to help identify it more clearly. These are called attributive nouns.

They act similarly to adjectives, as in the following examples: a weightlifting regimen, a workout regimen, a running regimen, a walking regimen, a stretching regimen. In fact, you can more clearly identify any kind of regimen by placing an attributive noun before it.

For example, musicians can have a practice regimen and students can have a study regimen. To express what actions or steps are in a regimen, we can use the verb and preposition "consist of" as the following example shows:

My exercise regimen consists of strength training two days a week and running or walking most other days. Note that native speakers might substitute the word "routine" for "regimen" in some situations. Here are some examples: What practice routine do you follow? You can use this daily routine to improve your fitness.

A medical regimen is a series of repeated treatments. For example, a doctor might tell a patient to take a certain medicine two times a day for two weeks. We often put adjectives like medical before the word regimen also. Daily and effective are commonly used, as in

Try to include long walks in your daily regimen. You need an effective regimen for losing weight. And it is not unusual to use both an adjective and an attributive noun, like in this example. She swims two kilometers a day as part of a strict training regimen. For our readers and listeners, what are your questions about American English?

Do you have a special study regimen? We want to hear from you. Send us an email at [email protected]. And please let us know where you are from, too. And that's Ask a Teacher. I'm Andrew Smith. From VOA Learning English, this is Everyday Grammar.

English has many patterns. Learning and mastering these patterns can help you improve your writing and speaking skills. They can also help you do better on your next grammar test. Today, we explore a common verb pattern, the transitive verb pattern.

This pattern is common in writing, speaking, and even on language tests such as the Test of English as a Foreign Language, or TOEFL. To get you started thinking about transitive verbs, consider this stanza from Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note by the famous author Amiri Baraka.

and now each night i count the stars and each night i get the same number and when they will not come to be counted i count the holes they leave by the end of this story you will understand one transitive verb pattern that baraka uses in this stanza in a previous everyday grammar we discussed intransitive verbs

One feature of intransitive verbs is that they do not require a complement. In other words, there does not need to be a noun phrase or adjective to the right of the verb in the sentence. Unlike intransitive verbs, transitive verbs take one or more complements. Complements, in this case,

refer to nouns or noun phrases that are immediately to the right of the verb in the sentence. There are several types of transitive verbs, but they all have one thing in common: a direct object. In its most basic form, the direct object is the noun phrase that follows a transitive verb.

noun phrase is a noun and all the words and phrases that describe it the basic transitive verb pattern is this noun phrase 1 plus transitive verb plus noun phrase 2 transitive verbs are often but by no means always action words one way to know if the noun phrase is a direct object is

is if it is the receiver of the action of the verb. For example: Mary hit the softball. Mary is a noun, hit is a transitive verb, and the softball is a noun phrase. You can tell that the softball is receiving the action, hit. However,

the direct object does not always have to be the receiver of an action consider this sentence my family enjoyed the concert in this sentence it is hard to say that the direct object the concert is really receiving an action so this leads us to another way to think of the direct object

It is the answer to a "what" or "whom" question. Consider these examples: Dirty laundry covered the bedroom floor. We enjoyed the concert. The teacher helped her student. Once again, asking the "what" or "whom" question will not work all of the time.

but it can be a useful strategy to help you recognize the direct object. So, if it can be difficult to find the direct object, how can you tell if a verb is transitive? There are two reliable ways to check. One reliable way to test if a verb is transitive is to change it to the passive voice.

Think back to the example sentence, "Mary hit the softball." If you change it to the passive voice, the sentence would be, "The softball was hit by Mary." If you can change the sentence from active to passive voice, then the verb is probably transitive. You can read more about the passive voice in a previous Everyday Grammar story.

A second way to check if a verb is transitive is to think about the two noun phrases surrounding a verb. This strategy, say Robert Funk and Martha Cohn, two English grammar experts, is the best way to identify a transitive verb. Here is the basic idea: If the two noun phrases refer to different things,

then you know the verb is transitive think back to the sentence mary hit the softball the subject mary refers to one thing while the direct object the softball refers to a different thing in technical terms you could say the two noun phrases have different referents

Contrast this to a pattern we discussed in a previous Everyday Grammar, the B pattern. We gave an example sentence from Christina Aguilera's song. She sings, "I am beautiful." In that sentence, the word beautiful, the subject complement, refers to the subject I. They refer to the same person. That is, they have the same referent.

In English, words that come after a verb often give information about the verb. Looking at what comes after a verb can really help you figure out the meaning of a verb, even if you do not know it. Now, think back to the stanza of Amiri Baraka's poem. And now, each night I count the stars, and each night I get the same number.

and when they will not come to be counted i count the holes they leave you can see the transitive verb pattern clearly in this stanza consider the first line and now each night i count the stars paraca starts the line with adverbial information and then uses the basic transitive verb pattern i count the stars

Noun + transitive verb + noun phrase. How do you know the verb is transitive? You could try asking a "what" question. I count... What? ...the stars. Or, you could even change the sentence to the passive voice. I count the stars. The stars were counted by me.

A third option is to ask yourself what the noun phrases around the verb refer to. You know it is transitive because the subject, "I," refers to a person, while the direct object, the stars, refers to something different from a person. The second line, like the first line, uses a similar structure.

I get the same number, or noun plus transitive verb plus noun phrase. The remaining two lines in the stanza use structures that are more complex than the basic transitive verb pattern. However, you can still see that writers can use basic patterns to create beautiful poetry. I'm Jill Robbins. I'm Jonathan Evans.

And I'm John Russell. A new museum of laughter in Croatia is offering to help people deal with the negativity of modern life. Visitors to the "Haha House" in the Croatian capital Zagreb walk into a little cloud of white smoke when they step inside.

Its purpose is to blow away their worries before they climb into a giant washing machine. Then they move down a twisting slide into a space filled with little white balls where their trip to a happier place starts. 43-year-old Andreea Golubic is the museum's creator.

golubitch said she got the idea during the covid nineteen pandemic at that time many people were feeling down depressed and alone i realized that i had a mission to heal people with laughter the idea came straight from the heart golubitch told the french news agency afp

golubitch said the ha ha house is popular with every one from small children to older people adults say it is a good excuse to act like a child all those who still feel a bit of childish joy and embrace their inner child will recharge themselves she said

retiree bruno dadic told afp he was pleased by his visit as there is never enough humour in life laughter is a medicine for the soul he said singer zorica buchic from the coastal town of split said the museum was just right for our times

Entering here is like entering childhood, being relieved of all problems, she said. Bucic added that if you could come to the museum often, you would not need to visit a psychologist. Psychologist Peter Kraljevic told AFP that laughter is a kind of weapon which gives people strength to face their problems.

he said that if doctors could advise their patients to have three hours of laughter a day people would feel much better i'm john russell the fall of the house of usher part three i was visiting an old friend of mine roderick usher in his old stone house his palace where a feeling of death hung on the air

i saw how fear was pressing on his heart and mind now his only sister the lady madeline had died and we had put her body in its resting-place in a room inside the cold walls of the palace a damp dark vault a fearful place as we looked down upon her face i saw that there was a strong lightness between the two

indeed said ussher we were born on the same day and the tie between us has always been strong we did not long look down at her for fear and wonder filled our hearts there was still a little colour in her face and there seemed to be a smile on her lips we closed the heavy iron door and returned to the rooms above which were hardly less gloomy than the vault

and now a change came in the sickness of my friend's mind he went from room to room in a hurried step his face was if possible whiter and more ghastly than before and the light in his eyes had gone the trembling in his voice seemed to show the greatest fear at times he sat looking at nothing for hours as if listening to some sound i could not hear

i felt his condition slowly but certainly gaining power over me i felt that his wild ideas were becoming fixed in my own mind as i was going to bed late in the night of the seventh or eighth day after we placed the lady madeline within the vault i experienced the full power of such feelings sleep did not come while the hours passed

my mind fought against the nervousness i tried to believe that much if not all of what i felt was due to the gloomy room to the dark wall coverings which in a rising wind moved on the walls but my efforts were useless a trembling i could not stop fueled my body and fear without reason caught my heart i sat up looking into the darkness of my own room listening

I do not know why, to certain low sounds which came when the storm was quiet. A feeling of horror lay upon me, like a heavy weight. I put on my clothes and began walking nervously around the room. I had been walking for a very short time when I heard a light step coming toward my door. I knew it was Usher. In a moment I saw him at my door, as usual very white, but

There was a wild laugh in his eyes. Even so, I was glad to have his company. "'And have you not seen it?' he said. He hurried to one of the windows and opened it to the storm. The force of the entering wind nearly lifted us from our feet. It was, indeed, a stormy but beautiful night, and wildly strange. The heavy, low-hanging clouds, which seemed to press down upon the house, flew from all directions against each other.'

always returning and never passing away in the distance. With their great thickness they cut off all light from the moon and the stars, but we could see them because they were lighted from below by the air itself which we could see rising from the dark lake and from the stones of the house itself. "'You must not, you shall not look at this,' I said to Usher, as I led him from the window to his seat.'

"'This appearance which surprises you so has been seen in other places, too. Perhaps the lake is the cause. Let us close this window. The air is cold. Here is one of the stories you like best. I will read, and you shall listen, and thus we will live through this fearful night together. The old book which I had picked up was one written by a fool for fools to read, and it was not, in truth, one that Usher liked.'

it was however the only one within easy reach he seemed to listen quietly then i came to a part of the story in which a man a strong man full of wine begins to break down a door and the sound of the dry wood as it breaks can be heard through all the forest around him here i stopped for it seemed to me that from some very distant part of the house sounds came to my ears like those

of which i had been reading it must have been this lightness that had made me notice them for the sounds themselves with the storm still increasing were nothing to stop or interest me i continued the story and read how the man now entering through the broken door discovers a strange and terrible animal of the kind so often found in these old stories he strikes it and it falls with such a cry that he has to close his ears with his hands

Here again I stopped. There could be no doubt this time I did hear a distant sound, very much like the cry of an animal in the story. I tried to control myself so that my friend would see nothing of what I felt. I was not certain that he had heard the sound, although he had clearly changed in some way. He had slowly moved his chair so that I could not see him well.

i did see that his lips were moving as if he were speaking to himself his head had dropped forward but i knew he was not asleep for his eyes were open and he was moving his body from side to side i began reading again and quickly came to a part of the story where a heavy piece of iron falls on a stone floor with a ringing sound these words had just passed my lips when i heard clearly but from far away

a loud ringing sound as if something of iron had indeed fallen heavily upon a stone floor or as if an iron door had closed i lost control of myself completely and jumped up from my chair ayesha still sat moving a little from side to side his eyes were turned to the floor i rushed to his chair as i placed my hand on his shoulder i felt that his whole body was trembling

a sickly smile touched his lips he spoke in a low quick and nervous voice as if he did not know i was there yes he said i heard it many minutes many hours many days have i heard it but i did not dare to speak we have put her living in the vault did i not say that my senses were too strong

i heard her first movements many days ago yet i did not dare to speak and now that story but the sounds were hers oh where shall i run she is coming coming to ask why i put her there too soon i hear her footsteps on the stairs

hear the heavy beating of her heart here he jumped up and cried as if he were giving up his soul i tell you she now stands at the door the great door to which he was pointing now slowly opened it was the work of the rushing wind perhaps but no outside that door a shape did stand

the tall figure in its grave clothes of the lady madeline of ussher there was blood upon her white dress and the signs of her terrible efforts to escape were upon every part of her thin form for a moment she remained trembling at the door then with a low cry she fell heavily in upon her brother

in her pain as she died at last she carried him down with her down to the floor he too was dead killed by his own fear i rushed from the room i rushed from the house i ran the storm was around me in all its strength as i crossed the bridge

suddenly a wild light moved along the ground at my feet and i turned to see where it could have come from for only the great house and its darkness were behind me the light was that of the full moon of a blood-red moon which was now shining through that break in the front wall that crack which i thought i had seen when i first saw the palace then only a little crack it now widened as i watched

A strong wind came rushing over me. The whole face of the moon appeared. I saw the great walls falling apart. There was a long and stormy shouting sound, and the deep black lake closed darkly over all that remained of the House of Usher.

And that's our show for today. But join us again tomorrow to keep learning English on The Voice of America. I'm Katie Weaver. And I'm...