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M: Hello English learners! Welcome back to EnglishPod! My name isMarco.

E: And I’m Erica.

M: And today we bring you part II of the presidential farewell speech of President

Eisenhower.

E: That’s right, so we saw in our previous lesson the beginning of this speech. Now we’re

gonna look, um, towards the end of this speech. Now we must tell you as well that we did

change the speech a little bit, right?

M: We changed it a little bit to make it a little bit more comprehensible and also we did

shorten it. The speech isn’t this short, what we did…

E: Okay.

M: Take out a lot of stuff.

E: Alright, so, um, again, Marco, why are we looking at this speech? What are we learning

from it?

M: Well, in this last part of the presidential farewell speech there’re a lot of great words that

are more difficult…

E: Uhu.

M: And very poetic, so you can use them in different formal circumstances or just to sound

a little bit more well-spoken.

E: Yeah, and we also again are gonna look at some really quite difficult and challenging

structures that we hope you can use, um, maybe when you’re… when you’re giving a formal

talk, um, or… yeah, or… or even in your writing if you wanna sound quite professional.

M: Okay, very good, so why don’t we listen to the dialogue for the first time? Let’s listen

how President Eisenhower says goodbye and then we’ll come back and look at the words.

DIALOGUE, FIRST TIME

E: Well, that certainly was a very moving speech, hey?

M: Very moving and to a certain point a little bit religious, huh?

E: Yeah, I think we’ll… we’ll talk a little bit about that a little bit later, but let’s concentrate

on the language now, so we’ll go to “language takeaway”.

Voice: Language takeaway.

M: Alright, on language takeaway today we will start with our first word and it’s pre-

eminence.

E: Alright, “we are understandably proud of this pre-eminence”.

M: A pre-eminence.

E: So pre-eminence, uh, what is this?

M: Basically it’s the state of being the leader of something.

E: Okay, so in this case, um, America was the pre-eminent nation.

M: Right, so they were coming up, they were very prosperous, so they had a pre-eminence

in the world.

E: Alright, so I think we can see here you can use this, um, as anadjective – a pre-

eminent nation or…

M: Uhu.

E: Or as a noun, an uncountable noun – the pre-eminence of our state.

M: Very good. Since we can use word as a noun and an adjective why don’t we listen to

some more examples, so we can get a better understanding of it?

Voice: Example one.

A: Now please welcome Dr. Frank Hicks, the world’s most pre-eminent expert on nuclear

biology.

Voice: Example two.

B: He’s been a leader in his field for twenty five years and his pre-eminence has never been

questioned.

Voice: Example three.

C: Carl Dixon is one of the most pre-eminent experts in green technology.

E: Alright, well, Eisenhower’s talking about all of the things that, um, the American people

had done since they became a free nation and one of these things was to foster progress

and human achievement.

M: Foster progress and human achievement.

E: Well, I like this verb a lot – to foster something.

M: So if I say “to foster progress” or “to foster something”, what am I saying?

E: Um, to help something grow and develop.

M: To take care of it.

E: Uhu.

M: To nurse it.

E: Yeah, we very commonly hear this… this word, um, associated with children, right?

M: Uh, a foster child.

E: Yeah, so what’s that?

M: If you have a foster child, you are basically taking care of a child, because the parents

can’t look after him. It’s not like adopt them, because, you don’t actually… it’s not actually

legal. It’s just that you’re helping somebody out by raising this child.

E: Right, so we can see the connection there – a foster child…

M: Right.

E: To foster something, but, you know, this is really a great word and I think it would help

to, uh… to give a couple of examples of how we could use it.

M: So, for example, I can say “our company is looking to foster better creativity in the

workplace”.

E: Or we could say, um, “Here at Praxis Language we foster the development of you

English”.

M: Very good. So the word foster. Now moving on in his speech, he was talking about

nations and faiths and, uh, different types of groups and he said “all

who yearn for freedom”.

E: Alright, this… this is a great phrase all who yearn for freedom.

M: To yearn.

E: So to yearn for something.

M: Now if I yearn for freedom or I yearn for something, it’s basically that I really want it in

my heart.

E: Yeah, you really wish for it, um, in a way that’s almost… almost painful. You know, you…

M: Oh, uhu.

E: You want it so badly.

M: Now, you wouldn’t say like, I’m yearning for ice-cream, would you?

E: No, unless you were locked up in prison and hadn’t had ice-cream for fifty five years.

M: Exactly, so… but it’s usually related to something that’s very difficult to get or something

like freedom or yearning for…

E: That’s really important.

M: Exactly, something very important. And now for our last word President Eisenhower was

talking about charity, he was talking about freedom and then he mentioned

the scourges of poverty.

E: Okay, so scourges.

M: The scourges of poverty.

E: Scourges is a really, um, difficult, but interesting word, so why don’t we hear a few more

examples to help us understand it?

Voice: Example one.

A: Malaria is a disease that continues to be a scourge to the developing world.

Voice: Example two.

B: One day we hope to eliminate the scourge of cancer.

Voice: Example three.

C: NATO promises to wipe out the scourge of terrorism.

M: So, as we can see, the scourges of something basically is the cause of pain or suffering.

E: Uhu.

M: So now, relating it back to the text, we see scourges of poverty.

E: Yeah, scourges of poverty, scourges of disease and scourges of ignorance.

Alright, so we can see that poverty, ignorance and disease cause a lot of really terrible

things, right?

M: Exactly, so that’s why we say they are scourges.

E: Okay, so scourges. Now, so that brings us to the end of our… our words for takeaway

today, but, you know, as we talked to… earlier, we’ve got some really difficult and

interesting structures to look at now in “fluency builder”.

Voice: Fluency builder.

M: Okay, so in fluency builder we’ll start off with the very first sentence of the paragraph

when he said we now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century.

E: Okay, so I love this phrase - we now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century.

M: Now, it’s interesting, because he’s making reference to the future in the present.

E: Uhu, um, and he’s using a great phrase to do that – we now stand.

M: Uhu, now, we can change it a little bit and use the first part we now stand in different

circumstances, so why don’t we listen to a couple of examples?

Voice: Example one.

A: We now stand before you to declare our love and be united in marriage.

Voice: Example two.

B: I stand before this court and declare my innocence.

Voice: Example three.

C: Together we now stand before this great challenge and we will fight arm in arm to

defeat poverty.

E: Alright, so you can see that this is a wonderful phrase to use maybe in a formal speech,

right?

M: Right, or a wedding again or a formal ceremony.

E: Yeah, so, um… and it… and it gives you this idea, the sort of very poetic image of people

sort of almost standing at the cliff, standing before the, you know, some big change that’s

about to take place.

M: Exactly, so ten years past the midpoint of a century the United States has witnessed four

major wars, right?

E: Okay.

M: And, well, he said despite the carnage of these conflicts America is today the

strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world.

E: Okay, so a great, great, great structure here - despite the carnage of these conflicts

America today is the strongest… bla-bla-bla-bla-bla.

M: Right, now, let’s look at that first word – despite the carnage of these conflicts.

E: Okay, so, um, carnage, what’s that?

M: Carnage is like a massacre, right? Where many people got hurt or killed.

E: Okay, so a… a pretty violent situation when a lot of people died.

M: Uhu, and now why does he s… use this word despite?

E: Okay, so he’s basically saying “Even though we had all of the… this death and, um,

violence in a century, we’re still the greatest nation…” bla-bla-bla-bla-bla.

M: Exactly, that’s exactly it. I can say for example “Despite the economic crisis the world is

going through, our company has an enormous opportunity to grow and be more profitable”.

E: Okay, or if we wanna take it, um, and imagine we’re at a wedding, we might say

something like this… we could say “Despite the many difficulties this couple has faced, they

have a very bright and happy future together”.

M: Very good. And now if we take a look at the last paragraph, it’s very interesting, because

it’s one sentence.

E: It’s a really long sentence.

M: It’s a very long sentence, so even though it’s not a… phrase, let’s take a look at

the punctuation of this paragraph.

E: Okay, so Eisenhower starts out by saying “We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races,

all nations may have their great human needs satisfied”.

M: And then we have a semicolon (;) there, right?

E: Right.

M: So why do we have a semicolon?

E: Well, here’s what he’s doing. He’s saying we pray for something…

M: Uhu.

E: And then he’s listing the many different things that he’s praying for.

M: Okay, so it’s basically a list.

E: Yeah, okay, so we know that when you’re writing a list we commonly use commas (,)

between all the things that are in this list.

M: Uhu.

E: But here because they are long and complex ideas a comma is not enough.

M: Right.

E: You need a semicolon. Okay, so we can see here from the text that the semicolon is a

great way to separate ideas, big ideas, complex ideas, in a list.

M: Exactly, so you can use it and not necessarily have to end your sentence or that each

idea become one sentence.

E: Mm.

M: You can all it just make in one big sentence.

E: Yep, you know, and actually I remember back to high school, Marco, my, uh… my

teacher told me “Hey, if you throw in a few semicolons into your writing and do it properly,

you’ll really impress people”.

M: Hehe. Alright, so this is good advice that you can take and throw in a couple of

semicolons like a little bit of commas here and there and, well, it’ll look like you really know

how to write.

E: Yep, okay, so with that in mind, um, why don’t we listen to what Eisenhower wrote one

last time?

DIALOGUE, SECOND TIME

M: Alright, we’re back and we’re here again with Pete, our voice actor for the second part of

the dialogue. And, Pete, we have a couple more questions for you today.

P: Cool!

E: So I hear in Eisenhower’s speech that he keeps referencing God, like he keeps saying I

pray bla-bla-bla-bla-bla, he said Godspeed bla-bla-bla-bla-bla, so what’s up with that?

Why is he talking about God?

P: Well, this is a very interesting question. Traditionally America has had a really clear

boundary between church and state and you’ll hear a lot of rhetoric these days that says,

you know, we are a Christian nation and we were founded as a Christian nation. Well,

that’sbaloney.

E: Baloney? So it’s not true.

M: Hehe.

P: At the time when the country was founded two hundred years ago it was

overwhelming Christian. If the Founding Fathers as we call them, the… like George

Washington, if they had wanted a Christian nation, they could have had it. They explicitly

did not and a lot of people since then have gotten that confused and now, when we have a

very large Muslim population, we have Buddhists, we have, uh, you know, people in all

various different kinds of, you know, Mormonism and everything, it’s even less possible

now. So I’m kind of baffledwhen I hear people say that America is a Christian nation.

M: But you even have it now in the coins like… or on the money, right? It says IN GOD WE

TRUST.

P: Right, that… that started in the early twentieth century. I think that was Teddy

Roosevelt, he opposed that. Roosevelt really opposed that, but…

M: And then what happened? They… they approved it.

P: Yeah, and you know, people said later like Eisenhower talked about that stuff, you know.

In America we have something called the Pledge of Allegiance, which I don’t think you

guys probably have.

E: Not in Canadia.

M: Hehe.

P: Hehe. Yeah, obviously, you wouldn’t do it to America, but to your own. It’s… it’s kind of,

um…

M: Like a salute to the flag, right?

P: Yeah, it’s a little bit nationalist. I… I did it growing up. You put your hand over your heart

and you face the flag and you say “I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of

America, and to the Republic for which is stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with

liberty and justice for all”. Uh, that part about one nation under God, that was added in

the Fifties (50’s) as a kind of, uh… we’ve shown that America is not quote-unquote “a

Godless communist country”.

M: Wow.

P: Yeah, cause communism teaches, you know, no religion and so they??? make sure we’re

not communist, you know.

M: Hehe.

E: Okay, well, we don’t think that, right?

P: Yeah, I mean, I’m… I’m all about tolerance, so I think that’s kind of absurd.

E: Okay, so what I think is really interesting though is that every political speech every time

a political leader has to say something publicly, he’ll always quote God, right?

P: Right, uh, and they’ll often end a speech with, you know, “thank you and God bless

America” or something.

M: Yeah.

E: Yeah.

M: Exactly.

E: Which, you know, uh… for me as a Canadian is really strange like if… if a Canadian

president said “God bless Canada”.

M: Hehe.

P: Hehe. Yeah.

E: Everyone would… no one would know what to do, like…

P: Yeah.

M: I don’t… I don’t know, anyway.

P: I had ex-girlfriend who was British and she liked Tony Blair started with that a couple of

times. He said, you know, “God bless us all” or something. And she was just put off by it.

She was like “Brits will never take this” and they didn’t.

M: Oh, really? Hehe.

E: Hehe.

P: Yeah, no one was impressed.

E: Alright, well, an interesting feature of, uh, American history, politics and society.

M: Right.

E: So thanks for that insight, Pete.

P: Cool! My pleasure.

M: Yeah, and if you guys have any comments, uh, or any suggestions about this lesson or

any upcoming lessons, just let us know.

E: Or American Politics, in general.

M: Hehe.

P: Cool, and try and stop in on the forum and see if I can answer a question or two.

M: That would be awesome.

E: So visit our website us at englishpod.com and Marco, ah, myself and Pete are around

to answer your questions.

M: Alright, we’ll see you guys there.

P: Bye-bye.

E: Thanks for downloading and… Good bye!

M: Bye!

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