English B2: Entertainment

Nowadays we have many ways of entertainment for example go to some places as ciemna, disco or play some sports, eating etc. It depends on our preferences, how we want to spend our free time. We would like to show a few of them, which are interesting according to our research.

First of all, many people like spending their time in theater. But not everybody is able to attend in plays f. ex. deaf people. Millions of them in the USA are unable to fully enjoy films and live theatre performances. In 1997, a New York reporter came up with a way to help. His idea was to provide ‘real time’ sub-titles wich can be read by deaf people while they watch the performance. How is this done? The dialogue of the play is typed into a computer befor the show. During the performance, a Professional computer operator sits near the stage. He listens to the actors and displays the dialogue on a screen as the actors say their lines. People In hearing problems sit In specialty reserved seats near the screen, and the letters are big enough to be read easily. The idea has been very successful in New York. Now Peter Paulan, a partially deaf British businessman, has brought the system to Britain. He hopes to persuade theatre companies to rent or buy it. Deaf people should be able to enjoy the theatre like everyone else.

The most popular entertainment among going people is karaoke. Everyone knows that karaoke comes Frome Japan, but it is not the Japanese for ‘drunk and tone-deaf’ as you might think! It actually means ‘empty orchestra’. It all started in a small music bar in the city of Kobe. One night when the usual guitarist didn’t turn up, the desperate bar owner recorded some music and invited his customers to sing instead. The craze soon spread, and special karaoke machines were invented. The idea was that however badly you sang everyone applauded at the end, and it proved the perfect way for stressed Japanese businessman to unwind.

Today, just twenty years after it started in Kobe, you can find karaoke bars all over the Word. It’s so popular in China that restaurants normally have several karaoke machines going at the same time. These days, you can hire karaoke machines that not only play music and videos, but also have smoke machines, laser lights, and even dancers and a DJ to accompany you, while you make-belive for a few minutes that you a star. As one karaoke fan put it, ‘it something everyone should try at least once in their lifes’.