The CNN English report for this week was about caffeine for pregnant women. This news cast is probably one minute long, total. But the speakers have an American accent, even if they speak quickly.
Almost all the vocabulary is on the page, and the magazine does a good job explaining it. There are a few things I want to you remember after reading this.
- The magazine uses very special verbs in this report — verbs like link, suggest, may cause and things like that. This is because in America, if you say something causes something, and you’re wrong, you might get sued. So the magazine is trying to avoid that, by using “fuzzy” words like suggest, instead of cause. It’s avoiding direct language.
- The other thing is that this study is sponsored by Kaiser Permanente, which is a huge health management company. In America, most people are skeptical of news reports that come from companies — they’re not really news, they’re more like advertisements for the company. And since this is a CNN report, it’s one company telling the news of another company. So is it trustworthy? You can decide. Personally, I don’t know how much I believe it.
Other than that, we had a very easy class. This news report was much easier to follow than the report about obesity in British children.
Next week we’ll start the polite English lessons from the English Journal magazine. Those should be fun. 
