Help to Your Partner Our talk of today will be about help. The help to your future partner. Most of us, who present here, on italki, want to find a language partner. It is an easy and logical way to have some language practice. First of all, you need to find a partner who learn your native language. Usually, it is not a problem. There are many people on this site, so, as a rule, the list of potential language partners is long enough. Ok, let us suppose, that you've found the language partner, which matches you perfectly. Now you want to contact with him (or her). And here we encounter a problem. Let me explain. Of course, you may send a request to your potential partner, but usually he is not online, so you can't say WHEN he will receive your request. It is too long to wait until your partner will enter to site. But we want to get the result right now, as soon as possible. What shall we do in this case? There is a key in this question. If your future partner has filled up his profile and specified his contacts - Skype, for example, or ICQ, Facebook, or something else, you CAN contact with him more quickly. But what we usually see? An empty profile without anything. Of course, a wish to be a language partners completely disappears... What can we to do to avoid this situation? First of all, it needed to fill up your own profile. Specify as more information, as you can. Never forget about: 1) Contacts. Skype, ICQ, Facebook, your own blog - as more than better. 2) Your time zone. Your potential partner may have a huge time difference with you, so, it will be very convenient for both partners to know a time of each other. 3) If possible, specify a time, when you can to talk or to chat. Take care about each other, and everything will be allright!

Trainig a "Stand-up" Talks Today I want to talk about my strategy. The strategy of learning English. To the moment of writing this, I'm on the italki less one month, but my English already improoved (slightly). I understood one of the main thing: it is not needed of afraid the speaking. When you write something, you have enough time to think, to have a look into dictionary, to translate a questionable sentence in Google... Even in chat you still can do all these things. But when you speak... When you speak, you have no time to think, you have no time to build a phrase on your native language and then translate it. Your partner waits an instant answer, it is no time for translating, no pauses allowed. Thus, you have to THINK on the language you learning. And this is the most hard thing in language learning. In addition, there is another thing, which sometimes completely stops a conversation. It is topics. Partners often don't know what they can talk about. Really, what about can talk two person from different sides of the world? About weather? That's why it is so important to find an interesting partner or an interesting topic. Of course, first of all it is possible to use common topics: weather, family, pets... But to the third, to the fourth conversation, partners already can't talk with each other because of absence of suitable topics. I think, the best way to avoid this situation is to list on the piece of paper some topics. For examle: 1) Talk about cars, 2) talk about women 3) talk about plans of both partners 4) etc. If you'll have that piece of paper, you can easily talk during 30-minutes session and your partner will not feel a slow speed of conversation. But to make a successful session, you need a partner. How can you find him? On italki, of course. And here we encounter (thank for word, pacificamatt!) one more thing. It is a communication problem. Let me explain. Most people live in different time zones, so, they can't to talk in time, which will be comfortable enough for both partners. For examle, I'm learning English and I'm in Russia. Somebody from USA learns Russian. But we can't talk, because of time difference. When I wake up and going to work, my partner in USA is going to sleep! It is funny, isn't it? That's why I decide to accept ALL calls to my Skype ID, even if I'm not online (well, exept calls at deep nights). What do think about it? Will it work? By the way: I write this text without ANY translators, dictionaries, etc. So, don't judge me severe ))

A Fire And Combustion Our todays talk will be about fire and combustion. You can ask me: "Wait, wait, but those things are the same, aren't they?" Yes, of course, those things are very close to each other. But they aren't same. The fire is known to people since extreme antiquity. But even in antiquity people knew the power of fire. A fire was extremly important for ancient people. It was giving light, warm, and, one of the most important features, the safety. Wild animals was afraid of fire and travelled by side of human's fires. People believed to power of fire and used it anywhere. Later they learned to use fire more effectively - they started to use stoves and other devices, which made a combustuion more effective. But it was not a knowledge about combustion, just some observations. It continued, until people got to know about how the fire "works". It gave a push to inventing of internal combustion engines. At first time, it was huge machines, but, with the passing of time, they became more and more effective. And now, at present day, we can't even think about world without engines. Engines give to people power. They give to people a freedom of moving, they provide to people comfort and pleasure. But the mankind was not stopped at this stage of evolution. The next stage became a nuclear decay. More fire! More combustion! More power! That's the key idea of the mankind. And people do all to achieve even more powerful thing - the nuclear fusion. But. Can people control it? That's the question is. I hope, we'll can keep it in control... And what the next step? I don't know, but I think, that it will be the power of annihilation.

Electronics and Modern World Let us talk today about electronics and it's role in the modern world. One hundred years ago people knew not even a word. Technologies was very primitive. Of course, there were such concepts as internal combustion engine, phone... But they were simple, not so complicated as now. For example, a phone, a well known device for modern people, had no any electronics, it was a purely electrical device. The real power of electronics people have felt later, when transistor was invented. Before transistor inventing, people have used lamps. They were big, consumed a lot of power and had low mechanical strength. And, as one of the main concerns, they had a very short period of life. Transistors, in opposite, were small, had consumed just a couple of power (in comparing with lamps) and were enough strong and durable. But the progress is never stopping. Transistors have been becoming smaller and smaller. It has led to inventing of integrated circuits - a small pieces of silicone with millions microscopic transistors on it. And it was a great breakthrough! Integrated circuits (or ICs) have made possible personal computers, internet, mobile phones and many other things. ICs gave to mankind a real power. The power of calculations. It is impossible to imagine modern world without these small black chips with a plenty of soldered pins. If people meet a serious problem, they hope on electronics. To its precision, speed and size. And electroncs easy solves almost any problem. Thats why the modern world is impossible without power of electronics.

What the difference between "too" and "as well"?And between "humanity" and "mankind"?

The Space, Electronic music and the Great Dream Today I want to talk about dreams. More precisely, about Great Dream of the whole humanity. About Space. The humanity has always wanted to reach stars, to become a lord of space. Since first human's look to the sky filled up with stars and till now. People dreams about space trips, other planet colonization, contacts with aliens... And there is a music. Music, inspiring people to dream. The electronic music. The most popular musician of this kind of music is Jean Michel Jarre. He began to create his music in 70th. His most known album, «Oxygen», was released in 1976. Later, in 2000, another album was released, «Métamorphoses». It contains one of my favorite tracks — «Million of stars». Have you ever heard it? If not, you should find it and listen. Let us listen it. The quite, soft, melodic tune... Do you feel it? Do you feel a millions of stars? Now, let us listen another track — «Oxygen 1». What do you feel when listening this tune? Space? Lifeless? The dead, cold space without any sign of oxygen? Or, may be, mountains? I know, it is individual. But how do you think, what have boys felt in 1976, when this tune have been released? More than ten years have passed since first human space trip, all countries have mastering space technologies... It was a time of frequent rockets launches, a time of intensive space programs... A time of the Great Dream. And what we have now, in present days? What a dreams boys have? Is it Space? Is it trips to other galaxies? No. Now there are another values in people hearts. Money. Luxurious cars. The power. There is no more the Great Dream. But I believe, it is not lost. Sometime, may be in far, far future, the Great Dream of humanity will come true.

Are my corretions too red? I'm just a newbie at this site, but I already made some corrections in the notes of other members. And each time I correct someone's note, I ask myself: "Are my corrections too red?" Really, after my corrections a lot of words stroked and a lot of words inserted. But why so hard? Because I pay attention not to grammar only, but to stylistics too. Well, sometimes the phrase is correct from the point of view of grammar, but not from point of view of style. That is why my corrections contains a lot of red colour. I don't want to offend other members — only to show them a right order of words. Sometimes I insert a blue words in brackets. It is my suggestions. When I see a better word-candidate, I suggest it and mark with blue colour. From time to time I need to comment something. I do this by marking a text with green colour and italic font. So, if somebody will correct this note, I ask to do the same. Stroke out, red, blue and green. Your corrections are welcome!

My reasons to learn English I'm Russian. I was born and live in St. Petersburg — the «Northern Capital or Russia». So, my native language is russian. But since school I wanted to learn english in perfect. Why? Well, the answer is easy. At that time I have had my first own computer — ZX Spectrum. It was a «Scorpion ZS256» — the clone of original Sinclair's ZX 128K, it has had 256 Kbytes of memory. Sounds funny, yep? But in this small plastic case with floppy drive was a whole world. Games, demos, electronic magazines... Most of them was in English as an international language. It was a great stimulus to begin to learn english. The time passed and now I have more powerful machine. And what I see? A lot of games and movies are in english again! Of course, some of them are translated to russian, but... Well, this is a first reason: I want to be able to understand, what persons saying in games and movies. The second reason is quite easy too. I work in official dealership of Land Rover. I'm very interested in contacts with my english colleagues. English is their native language, so, I must know it. But in fact, there is the another one, the third reason: I like this language. For it's laconic, capacitance and power. Thats why I'm here. Now, I have no a lot of time to learn english — my work, my family occupy almost all my time. But I decided to learn english in another way: by chatting with english speakers from time to time. I hope, it will help me to improve my language skills.