Some speaking questions answered by Germanos

Part 1

Which magazines and newspapers do you read?

Nowadays I don’t really read any newspapers often, except sometimes that I want to be informed about the political and financial problems of my country , and that’s because I find them really expensive and apart from that I can easily find them online on the web.

What kinds of article are you most interested in?

I really enjoying reading articles from magazines with scientific content and that’s mostly because I love mathematics and computer science. I also want to know how the market’s going, so I love reading articles about the stock market, I don’t have any specific reason why I read those articles , it’s just a personal preference .

Have you ever read a newspaper or magazine in a foreign language?

Actually, I’m reading magazines in English all the time, and not just me, but all the adults, and that’s because nowadays it’s easy to (browse them from) flick through them on the internet, it's free and fast. For instance when I wake up in the morning I like drinking my coffee browsing a newspaper on the web, it’s a nice ‘company’.

Do you think reading a newspaper or magazine in a foreign language is a good way to learn the language?

Well to learn the language from all aspects no, but when you flick though a magazine , written in English for example , you can sometimes understand, people's culture and their everyday activities. However, (comma) reading an English magazine also allows you to know the people's slang, which is really hard to get acquainted with alone. In conclusion, (comma) reading a magazine can be beneficial and simultaneously can harm you, if you are trying to learn English only from them.

Part 2

Describe a restaurant that you enjoyed going to. You should say: 1) where the restaurant was, 2) why you chose this restaurant, 3) what type of food you ate in this restaurant and explain why you enjoyed eating in this restaurant.

If I remember correctly it was two years ago, the restaurants’ name was china town and it was located in syntagma (Athens) .From the first second that I saw it , it was amazing, the service was excellent and fast. (Full stop) Imagine that the waitress was filling our glasses with water all the time and her reactions were really fast. It had great salads with many vegetables, and the two most exciting dishes was duck with sweet sauce and vegetables, and a soup filled with shark fin, the last one was delicious. Other than that, I really like their ‘traditional’ beer, the Chinese beer. In a nutshell the atmosphere was amazing and I would like to visit them again in the near future, it was worth every penny.

Some of part 3 questions

Some people say that food in an expensive restaurant is always better than food in a cheap restaurant – would you agree?

Well, I have never considered this matter before, but I’m inclined to believe that sometimes expensive restaurants are believed to be better due to pricey materials and ingredients they use in order to cook the food that they serve. I also have to mention that we might sometimes pay more for the trademark of the restaurant than the actual ly food that we order, and that’s because some restaurants are luxury and we need to choose them on more special occasions like birthdays or weddings. So in conclusion I disagree.

How important is it for a country to be able to grow all the food it needs, without importing any other from other countries?

That’s a tough question to be answered, but the true question is, can a country grow all the food it needs alone? I guess the answer is no, because this is nearly impossible. For example here in Greece as a Mediterranean country we has the advantage of growing vegetables thanks to the right conditions but we don’t have all kinds of fruits that we might need, like the African ones, so we are forced to import them from our neighbors. All in all, (comma) the more food a country grows, the wealthier it gets.