Prime Time 4, Coursebook

Grammar For more details see 1 G 3 Reporting what someone said in the past Direct speech Reported speech “I can hear you very well.” She said that she could hear me very well. “I am writing a post for my blog.” I told her that I was writing a post for my blog. “I ’m so happy that you agreed to skype with me.” Ally said that she was so happy that Professor Holmlund had agreed to skype with her. “I have no time on Monday morning.” Ally said that she didn’t have time on Monday morning. “I ’ll bring a robot vacuum cleaner.” Professor Holmlund said that she would bring a robot vacuum cleaner. G In my last blog post, I described a few intelligent machines which people use regularly. I was quite curious to find out how these things work. So I talked to robotics expert Professor Sarah Holmlund from Colorado State University. I was very happy about the chance to do this interview and thanked her that she had agreed to skype with me. I told her that I was writing a post for my blog and added that I was doing some research on how intelligent machines worked. My first question was about her job. I wanted to know what a robotics professor does. Generally speaking, robotics professors design and build robots. Robots are machines that help us do things that we don’t want to do or cannot do ourselves. I asked her if she also designed vacuum cleaning robots. She explained that she didn’t design such robots herself but that she worked with the technology behind them. She told me that even a robot could be intelligent in some way but that it needed a certain type of computer software to have “artificial intelligence”. She pointed out that a robot could do things on its own only with the help of this special software. By means of a vacuum cleaning robot Professor Holmlund showed me how intelligent it was, how it moved along the walls and how it found its way around her apartment quite easily. She told me that it could even remember where it had been. I wondered how this was possible. She explained to me that this robot had sensors which told it where the walls were. Well, I have definitely learned much from Professor Holmlund. In the end, she told me that today there was even artificial intelligence that could teach itself. Now this sounds really complicated to me! What do you think? Home About me Topics How intelligent machines work 5 10 15 20 “Backshift” can  could am writing  was writing am  was agreed  had agreed have no time  had no time / didn’t have time will (’ll) bring  would bring Reading: Ally’s Blog a) Read Ally’s blog post. b) Underline all the reporting verbs in red. c) Highlight the tenses in the reported statements. 6 27 3 twenty-seven Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv