For this post, we take our spoken English lesson from a recent NDTV report. This report talks about staff in CCD being made to change their names to their westernized versions in order to retain their jobs.
[First the disclaimer: This is an NDTV news report (and it shows the visuals of Costa Coffee while it talks about CCD) and we do not endorse or vouch for the accuracy of the report. We have just shared this public video from Youtube.]
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Some of the interesting words and phrases in this news report are as follows:
Across India = Throughout India (Bollywood movies are very popular across India OR the issue of terrorism unites people across India )
Retain = To keep (To reach the top is easy but to retain your top position is more difficult)
Lounges = A room where people sit and relax (He met his girlfriend at the airport lounge while waiting for his flight)
Insist = Force someone to do as you wish (The principal insists on everyone wearing neckties even in the summers)
Evolve = Develop (The legal system in India has evolved over a period of centuries)
Reluctant = Not very excited about, trying to avoid (The minister is reluctant to talk about his name coming up in the newest scam)
Assign = Allocate (My friend who joined the army last year has been assigned Gorkha Regiment)
Generic = Unspecific (A car is a generic name while Ford or Maruti is a specific name)
Called for = Wanted or required (There is immense anger in public about corruption and strong anticorruption laws are urgently called for)
Orthodox = Old fashioned, regressive (Orthodox elements in Indian society oppose women’s education)
Pander = To satisfy someone’s demands usually unjustified (We cannot keep on pandering to the demands of Ajmal Kasab. He is a killer under sentence not a guest)
Ambience = Environment (I like the ambience in this college. There is a lot of peace and quiet and greenery to stimulate creative thinking)
Cosmopolitan = Global, broad minded in outlook (Delhi is a cosmopolitan city)
Confident in its own skin = Confident of its own self (We should be confident in our own skin and should not need westernized names to make us hep)
Now, solve the following quiz.
[ssquiz id=”17″]
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