{"id":3042,"date":"2013-09-09T15:08:55","date_gmt":"2013-09-09T19:08:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/?p=3042"},"modified":"2014-08-06T11:43:46","modified_gmt":"2014-08-06T15:43:46","slug":"america-the-beautiful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/america-the-beautiful\/","title":{"rendered":"America the Beautiful"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>The Song<\/h2>\n<p>Every country has a <strong>national anthem <\/strong>&#8211; a song to represent the country. In the USA, this song is &#8220;<em>The Star Spangled Banner<\/em>.&#8221; Go to any sporting event in America, and you&#8217;ll hear this song before the action begins. This isn&#8217;t the only <strong>patriotic<\/strong> song in the States, however. Another very popular song is &#8220;<em>America the Beautiful<\/em>.&#8221; In fact, a lot of Americans would like to see this song become the national anthem. Just take a look at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.change.org\/petitions\/change-national-anthem-to-america-the-beautiful\">this <strong>petition<\/strong><\/a> that has been going around online. Katherine Lee Bates originally wrote this as a poem titled &#8220;<em>Pikes Peak<strong>,<\/strong><\/em>&#8221; and her words were combined with music written by Samuel Ward in 1910. Here is a video of the song that includes the <strong>lyrics<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wDxGQcNq0QI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen title=\"Embedded video\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>America the Beautiful<\/em><\/p>\n<p>If you want to read and study all of the lyrics to the song, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scoutsongs.com\/lyrics\/americathebeautiful.html\">you can find them here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>National Parks<\/h2>\n<p>Many people would argue that the most beautiful aspect of the USA is the country&#8217;s national park system. Gabriele wrote a nice post about America&#8217;s national parks last year, so <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/americas-national-parks\/\">click here<\/a> to see that if you missed it.<\/p>\n<p>Recently, the NPS (National Park Service) named its <strong>annual<\/strong> pass after the famous song discussed above. For more information about this park pass, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nps.gov\/findapark\/passes.htm\">click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cJDn_arZdus?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen title=\"Embedded video\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>A short video about the annual park pass.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Over the next few months, I&#8217;m going to introduce some of the national parks through short articles, photo galleries, and videos. Before we get to that, though, why don&#8217;t you practice your English by answering some of these discussion questions?<\/p>\n<h2>Discussion Questions<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Does your country have national parks?<\/li>\n<li>Have\u00a0 you ever been to a national park? Where did you go?<\/li>\n<li>Do you think it&#8217;s important to have national parks? Why\/why not?<\/li>\n<li>Which national parks do you know in the USA?<\/li>\n<li>Which would you most like to visit?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Vocabulary<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>national anthem<\/strong> &#8211; a patriotic hymn or other song adopted by a nation for use on public or state occasions<\/li>\n<li><strong>patriotic<\/strong> &#8211; of, like, suitable for, or characteristic of a <a href=\"http:\/\/dictionary.reference.com\/browse\/patriot\">patriot<\/a><\/li>\n<li><strong>petition<\/strong> &#8211; a written document signed by a large number of people demanding some form of action from a government or other authority<\/li>\n<li><strong>lyrics<\/strong> &#8211; the words of a song<\/li>\n<li><strong>annual<\/strong> &#8211; yearly; lasting for a year<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<img width=\"350\" height=\"219\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2013\/09\/Natl-Parks-350x219.jpg\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image tmp-hide-img\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2013\/09\/Natl-Parks-350x219.jpg 350w, https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2013\/09\/Natl-Parks-768x480.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2013\/09\/Natl-Parks-1024x640.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><p>The Song Every country has a national anthem &#8211; a song to represent the country. In the USA, this song is &#8220;The Star Spangled Banner.&#8221; Go to any sporting event in America, and you&#8217;ll hear this song before the action begins. This isn&#8217;t the only patriotic song in the States, however. Another very popular song&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/america-the-beautiful\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":3043,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3,135139,135370],"tags":[274063,2327,13187,229464],"class_list":["post-3042","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-english-language","category-english-vocabulary","tag-america-the-beautiful","tag-national-anthem","tag-national-parks","tag-star-spangled-banner"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3042"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4307,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3042\/revisions\/4307"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}