Spotlight - 14.2019

74 Spotlight 14/2019 FEEDBACK

Liebe Frau Bucher

herzlichen Dank noch einmal für Ihren

Besuch bei uns in der Redaktion und

die interessanten Gespräche. Sie hatten

erwähnt, dass die Prüfungen, auf die Sie

Ihre Schüler vorbereiten, in der Regel

Lese- und Hörverständnis-Übungen

mit drei Antwortoptionen umfassen:

„Wahr“, „Falsch“ und „Nicht im Text“.

Sie hatten angeregt, diese dritte Option

auch unseren Verständnis-Übungen im

Spotlight Übungsheft plus hinzuzufügen.

Wir haben uns Ihren Vorschlag selbst-

verständlich zu Herzen genommen. Ab

der Ausgabe 12 von plus finden Sie auf

Seite 20 eine Hörverständnis-Übung

mit jetzt drei Ankreuzmöglichkeiten:

„True“, „False“ und „Not mentioned in

text“. Wir wünschen Ihnen weiterhin

viel Spaß mit Spotlight und freuen uns auf

weiteres Feedback. Herzliche Grüße aus

der Redak tion

Petra Daniell, language editor

Dear Ms Sharp, dear Spotlight Team

I have admired your work on this great

magazine for a long time. It is one of my

favourite magazines, with which I have

really been able to improve my English.

Now I can even read novels and some

newspapers. I would recommend Spotlight

to anyone who would like to improve his

or her English. I really like all the travel re-

ports, the columns, the short stories and

the language pages.

Could you please do a story about the

various accents in English, or special

words — for example, in Welsh, Scottish

or Irish? I often listen to the different

BBC channels, and I am really interested

in the accents. Kind regards

Luis Pintak, by post

Dear Mr Pintak

Thank you very much for your letter. It

is gratifying for us to hear that readers

like the different sections of the maga-

zine. The language pages, for example,

are written by a group of experts and are

chock-full of information about vocabu-

lary, grammar and usage. Yet each section

— The Grammar Page, Everyday English,

etc. — is short enough not to overwhelm

the learner. These pages are a valuable,

easy-to-use resource for learning English.

The other sections you mention, such

as travel, the columns and the short story,

are designed to help readers improve their

English-language skills in a light-hearted,

entertaining way. We are glad you think

this works. As regards accents, we appre-

ciate this idea and will discuss how best

to address it for a broad range of readers.

Best regards

Claudine Weber-Hof, deputy editor

Factfulness is a 2018 book by the late Swed-

ish physician and statistician Hans Ros-

ling and two co-authors. Bill Gates called

it one of the most important books he has

ever read.

Ola Rosling, one of the co-authors,

created the word “factfulness” in 2015.

Steven Pinker, a famous Canadian-Amer-

ican author, cognitive scientist, and lin-

guist, thinks it should guide our think-

ing as a society. In a recent interview, he

argued for looking at situations through

a lens of “factfulness” — data and facts —

instead of using our strong cognitive bias

towards anecdotes to understand things.

For example, in the year after the 9/11

terrorist attacks, Pinker says 1,500 Ameri-

cans who were too scared to fly died in car

accidents, “unaware that a Boston-LA air

trip has the same risk as driving 12 miles.”

Example:

“We need to make ‘factfulness’ ... an inher-

ent part of the culture of education, jour-

nalism, commentary, and politics.”

— Steven Pinker in The Harvard Gazette

The habit of maintaining only those

opinions for which you have strong

supporting facts.

MEDIUM US

factfulness

FEEDBACK

WORDPLAY

by Claudine Weber-Hof

bias [(baIEs]

, Voreingenommenheit,

Tendenz

cognitive scientist

[)kA:gnEtIv (saIEntEst]

, Kognitionswissen-

schaftler(in)

inherent [In(hIrEnt]

, dazugehörend

late [leIt]

, verstorben

physician [fI(zIS&n]

, Arzt, Ärztin

statistician

[)stÄtI(stIS&n]

, Statistiker(in)

• CRIME
  TIME - CRIME

TIME - CRIME TIME

• CRIME TIME - CRIME

TIME - CRIME

TIME

EINFACH BESSER ENGLISCH

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