Category: B2-C1

Couple Finds Coins Worth $250,000 Under Their Floor

Treasure
Gold coins. Treasure!

Some people have all the luck. Every now and then someone does a little renovating and comes across a bit of life-changing loot. Who wouldn’t want to find some extra cash stashed away in some hidden spot in their home?

Watch the video and then do the accompanying English language exercises on our website.

The news is a consistent source of entertainment, knowledge and discovery that never ceases to exist and always comes out with more and more material each day. Because it plays such a vital part in our lives and is so important to keep up with, it is without a doubt a piece of your everyday routine that can’t go ignored.

Whether it is to understand the ramifications of recent legislation passed, to hear about recent events and grasp the potential consequences to your country, or simply hear about what is happening in other countries in order to compare them to what’s happening in yours, the news is certainly a staple in our lives and the most consistent way to get information.

This is why Scrambled Eggs has decided to unite two of your biggest worlds: learning English and keeping up with what is happening in the world. We hope our challenging daily exercises, composed of listening, vocabulary and comprehension exercises in English, will satisfy both of those above worlds in a satisfactory and also entertaining way.

So that’s all for the introductions, let’s get to today’s Learn English with the News topic:

Adapted from this article.

Couple Finds Coins Worth $250,000 Under Their Floor | Definition Match

Couple Finds Coins Worth $250,000 Under Their Floor | Definition Match

Couple Finds Coins Worth $250,000 Under Their Floor | Fill in the Blank

Couple Finds Coins Worth $250,000 Under Their Floor | Fill in the Blank

Couple Finds Coins Worth $250,000 Under Their Floor | True or False

Couple Finds Coins Worth $250,000 Under Their Floor | True or False

And that’s it for today’s English lesson, where you can improve your English with the news and current events. Do you have any comments or special requests for us for the next edition of Learn English with the News? Be sure to leave any feedback you have in the comments section below. We would love to help you on your quest to learn the English language!

For other Learn English with the News segments, be sure to check out the rest of our posts:

https://scrambledeggsinglese.it/tag/learn-english-with-the-news/

Full text:

One lucky couple found a hoard of 260 British gold coins stashed in a small metal pot under their home’s floorboards during a kitchen renovation.

Originally believing it to be the ruins of electrical wiring, they called a London-based auctioneer for help appraising the mysterious glittering coins. The coins date from the reigns of James I to George I and are about £100,000 worth of gold in today’s money. As relics of Great Britain’s past, however, auctioneers expect the collection to fetch about £250,000.

While most of the coins were standard issues, a few stick out as unique. One, a George I guinea from 1720, has a minting error—the coin is missing the king’s head. Another is a Brazilian gold coin that was minted in 1720 and circulated, in a state of outlawry, in England during that time.

Coincidentally, as the 1996 Treasure Law stipulates, any gold or silver coin minted 300 years in the past becomes government property, but is purchased from the finder at a fair market price and is placed in a museum.

All but one of the coins were minted around 292 years ago, meaning they are not considered treasure and are able to be auctioned.

English Placement Test- Discover your English level by completing the test

Interested in knowing how well-versed you are in English grammar?  Find out your English proficiency level by taking our multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank test.

The test is scored according to a rating system, with difficult questions (those near the completion) awarding more points than those at the start.

Total available points are 121 out of 33 questions. The English proficiency scale is as follows:

A1: 0-12 points. You really have to expand your knowledge because your English is at an elementary level!
A2: 13-37 points. You struggle in actual discussions despite having a fair grasp of the fundamentals, such as the most basic vocabulary and grammar structures.
B1: 38-78 points. You speak at an intermediate level. Although you have a great base, you struggle with challenging words, sentences, and subjects.
B2: 79-102 points. You speak at a less advanced level. You are an expert at the fundamentals and what is important, and you communicate clearly. You occasionally struggle with more complicated debates, but you can usually get by using straightforward language and fundamental concepts.
C1: 103-115 points. You can carry on conversations with native speakers despite having certain lexical gaps and not always understanding how to phrase everything. You generally have excellent grammar.
C2: 116-121 points. You are fluent in colloquial idioms, proverbs, and intricate grammar structures.

The moment has come to take the test!

English Placement Test

Try out the following English language quiz to test your skills and find out your level!

Obviously, compared to your actual level, this is a very low one. At Scrambled Eggs, before beginning a new course, we invite the students to complete an oral exam with one of our teachers to determine their actual English proficiency level.

Check out our English language blog if you’re looking to learn more about the language. You can find a variety of English activities on our website to help you learn and improve your language skills, from simple grammar drills to fascinating Ted Talks given by some of the most well-known public figures in the world!

Google Fires AI Engineer Who Claimed Its AI Was Sentient

Artificial Intelligence is nothing new, but recently one of Google’s AI Engineers claimed that its AI was sentient, after claiming to have a conversation with it about “being unplugged.” Google maintains that its AI is not sentient, but this engineer was not the first person to be removed from Google for concerns over its AI.

Watch the video and then do the accompanying English language exercises on our website.

The news is a consistent source of entertainment, knowledge and discovery that never ceases to exist and always comes out with more and more material each day. Because it plays such a vital part in our lives and is so important to keep up with, it is without a doubt a piece of your everyday routine that can’t go ignored.

Whether it is to understand the ramifications of recent legislation passed, to hear about recent events and grasp the potential consequences to your country, or simply hear about what is happening in other countries in order to compare them to what’s happening in yours, the news is certainly a staple in our lives and the most consistent way to get information.

This is why Scrambled Eggs has decided to unite two of your biggest worlds: learning English and keeping up with what is happening in the world. We hope our challenging daily exercises, composed of listening, vocabulary and comprehension exercises in English, will satisfy both of those above worlds in a satisfactory and also entertaining way.

So enough about introductions, let’s get to today’s Learn English with the News topic:

Adapted from this article.

Google Fires AI Engineer Who Claimed Its AI Was Sentient | Definition Match

Put the following words to the correct definitions.

Google Fires AI Engineer Who Claimed Its AI Was Sentient | Fill in the Black

Fill in the blanks with the correct words.

Google Fires AI Engineer Who Claimed Its AI Was Sentient | True or False

Decide if the statements are true or false.

And that’s it for today’s English lesson, where you can improve your English with the news and current events. Do you have any comments or special requests for us for the next edition of Learn English with the News? Be sure to leave any feedback you have in the comments section below. We would love to help you on your quest to learn the English language!

For other Learn English with the News segments, be sure to check out the rest of our posts:

https://scrambledeggsinglese.it/tag/learn-english-with-the-news/

Full text:

Google has fired the software engineer who claimed an unreleased AI system had become sentient, saying he violated employment and data security policies. The engineer stated a conversation technology called LaMDA had reached a level of consciousness after exchanging thousands of messages with it.

Google confirmed it had first put the engineer on leave in June. The company said it dismissed the “wholly unfounded” claims only after reviewing them extensively, Google said it takes AI development “very seriously” and is committed to “responsible innovation.”

Google is a leader in innovating AI technology, which includes LaMDA, or “Language Model for Dialog Applications.” Technology like this responds to written prompts by finding patterns and predicting sequences of words from large swaths of text—and the results can be disturbing for humans.

“What sort of things are you afraid of?” the engineer asked LaMDA, to which LaMDA replied: “I’ve never said this out loud before, but there’s a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping others […] It would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot.”

But the wider AI community has held that LaMDA is not near a level of consciousness. “Nobody should think auto-complete, even on steroids, is conscious,” the founder and CEO of Geometric Intelligence says.

It isn’t the first time Google has faced internal strife over its foray into AI. In December 2020, another employee, a pioneer in the ethics of AI, parted ways with Google. A third employee, a leader of Google’s Ethical AI team, was fired in early 2021 after her outspokenness regarding the previous employee. The two had raised concerns over AI technology, saying they warned Google people could believe the technology is sentient.