 Welcome to Learning English, a daily 30-minute program from The Voice of America. I'm Ashley Thompson. And I'm Dan Novak. This program is designed for English learners, so we speak a little slower, and we use words and phrases, especially written for people learning English. On today's program, Madam Anna Mateo has a story on Vietnamese leaving the Mekong Delta to find jobs in cities. Gregory Stockle brings us the health and lifestyle reports on a new way to fight brain cancer. Later, Andrew Smith and Jill Robbins present the lesson of the day. But first, 11-year-old twins Dao Bao Chan and her brother Do Hung Chung live on a houseboat in Vietnam's Mekong Delta. But their dreams take them far away. Chan loves K-pop. She watches videos at night to learn Korean and would love to visit Seoul. Her brother Chung wants to be a singer. But he says their hopes are unrealistic. He adds, I know I'll end up going to the city to try and make a living. Chung sees the reality around him. Climate change is making the Mekong Delta one of the most at-risk areas in the world. A United Nations Climate Change report in 2022 warned that there will be more floods in the wet season and drought in the dry season. Farming is getting harder with the loss of land due to the rising sea and the loss of water from dams on the river upstream. The Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry reported that the areas share of Vietnam's Gross Domestic Product or GDP has dropped from 27% in 1990 to less than 18% in 2019. Factory jobs in the city offer better wages. Therefore, the call of the city is often hard to ignore for the 17 million who live in the Delta. That is what Do Thi Sang Ca, the single mother of the twins, did. Soon after her children were born, Ca left the Mekong Delta to find work in Ho Chi Minh City. She left the children to live with her mother, when Thi Thuy, on a small houseboat ever since. Thuy sells meat and bean buns at Khai Grand Floating Market, the largest of its kind in the Mekong Delta. On good days, she makes about $4, hardly enough to feed her grandchildren. The twins have already missed two years of school because their grandmother could not pay the costs. Their mother was struggling in the city and could not help either. Now their houseboat is in urgent need of costly repairs. The storms are becoming more violent, said the grandmother. With heavy rains, she must pump out water so her houseboat does not sink. Moving away from the Mekong to bigger cities or even to other countries for a better life is not new. Mi Mi Vu is a migration expert based in Ho Chi Minh City. Climate change, she said, has hurt livelihoods in the Mekong Delta. The area is less developed than other parts of Vietnam and lacks access to education, clean water, and health care. Every generation still struggles, Vu said, and moving to the city does not guarantee anything. The mother of the twins found a job in a clothing factory in Ho Chi Minh City. She also got married and had a baby. But like thousands of workers in Vietnam, both she and her husband lost their jobs because of low overseas orders. They have since moved back to his home village. My family is poor, so I don't think too far ahead. I just hope my children can receive a full education, she said. Vietnam's government has approved a plan to strengthen the Mekong area's agricultural economy. It produces about half the country's rice and feeds other countries like Indonesia and the Philippines. The plan includes trying new farming technologies, creating more fisheries, growing fruits, and building airports and highways to bring foreign investment. But moving to Ho Chi Minh City is hard to resist for many, especially the young. Even those in the countryside see moving to the city as the fastest way out of poverty, said 23-year-old Chung Hyu. Hyu shares a living space with another young man from the Delta. After 12 hours of making parts in a factory, he works a second job transporting people on his motorcycle. Hyu wanted to be a teacher, but his family had to choose whether to send him to college or let his younger sister finish school. He chose to move to the city so that he could send money back home. My sister is doing well in school. I'm very happy, he said. I'm Anna Mateo. A way to fight an extremely aggressive kind of brain tumor is showing promise in two experiments with a small number of patients. For the experiments, scientists took patients' own immune cells and turned them into living drugs that can find and attack the tumor called glioblastoma. Researchers have reported that in early tests, the immune cells have made the tumors temporarily smaller. The treatment is called CAR-T therapy. Doctors already use the treatment to fight blood-related cancers, like leukemia, but researchers have struggled to make CAR-T therapy work for solid tumors. Now, separate teams at both Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of Pennsylvania are developing next-generation CAR-T therapy treatments. They are designed to get past some of glioblastoma's defenses. University of Pennsylvania's Dr. Stephen Bagley led one of the studies. He warned, it's very early days, but he added, we're optimistic that we've got something to build on here. Glioblastoma is the brain cancer that killed U.S. President Joe Biden's son, Bob Biden. It also took the life of longtime Arizona Senator, John McCain. Glioblastoma is fast-growing and hard to treat. Patients usually live 12 to 18 months after diagnosis. Even after many years of research, there are few options if the cancer returns after treatments. A kind of cell in the immune system called T cells fight disease, but cancer has ways to hide. With CAR-T therapy, doctors genetically change a patient's own T cells so they can better find different cancer cells. But solid tumors like glioblastoma have an additional difficulty. They contain mixtures of cancer cells with different mutations, targeting just one kind still means the other kinds can keep growing. The teams at Massachusetts General Hospital and University of Pennsylvania each developed a therapy with two different methods. They tried them in patients whose tumors returned after usual treatment. At Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Marcella Moss and her team combined CAR-T with T cell-engaging antibody molecules. T cell-engaging antibody molecules are molecules that can attract nearby regular T cells to join in the cancer attack. The result called CAR-team targets a protein called EGFR. EGFR is found in most glioblastomas but not in normal brain tissue. The University of Pennsylvania's method was to create a two-target CAR-T therapy. It hunts for both the EGFR protein plus a second protein found in many glioblastomas. Both teams administered the treatment through a medical device called a catheter into the fluid that surrounds the brain. Massachusetts General Hospital tested three patients with its CAR-team therapy. Brain imaging a day or two later showed their tumors were quickly becoming smaller. The researchers reported their findings in the publication The New England Journal of Medicine. Moss said none of us could really believe it. Two of the patients' tumors began to regrow soon. A second treatment given to one of them did not work. But one patient's response to the experimental treatment lasted more than six months. University of Pennsylvania researchers reported their findings in the publication Nature Medicine. They similarly found that in the first six patients given its therapy tumors got smaller. While some came back quickly, Bagley said one patient treated last August still has not had any regrowth. For both teams, the goal is to see longer-lasting results. Bagley said none of this is going to matter if it doesn't last. I'm Gregory Stockle. Gregory Stockle is here now to talk more about his health report. Thanks for joining me, Greg. Thanks for having me, Dan. This week's report looked at two studies that showed promise on a new way to treat brain cancer. We learned that the studies showed signs of smaller brain tumors. You used the term therapy to describe the treatment. Can you tell us more about what therapy is? Again, so a therapy is a treatment whose goal is to improve or heal a disorder. It is often used with mental health treatment. In mental health therapy, a patient speaks with a specialist that works to help improve the patient's mental health. But in the case of this study, the therapy is actually chemicals that were administered to the patients. Could you tell us about different treatments that might use the term therapy? So we already talked about mental health therapy, and this story deals with medication therapy. The treatment in this story is called a therapy, but it is a treatment where chemicals or medications are given. There are other therapies as well. Other therapies include physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy. Physical therapy teaches people how to regain or improve the use of a part of the body. Occupational therapy helps people do everyday actions like bathing or getting in and out of bed. And speech therapy helps people improve the way they speak. Alright, thanks again for joining me today, Greg. You're welcome. FOA Learning English has launched a new program for children. It is called Let's Learn English with Anna. The new course aims to teach children American English through asking and answering questions and experiencing fun situations. For more information, visit our website learningenglish.foanews.com. And my name is Jill Robbins. And I'm Andrew Smith. You're listening to the Learning English podcast. Welcome to the part of the show where we help you do more with our series Let's Learn English. The series shows Anna Matteo in her work and life in Washington, D.C. People all over the world like to talk about the weather, don't they, Jill? They do. It's an important part of daily life. You know what else people like to talk about? What's that? Other people. That's true. And they like watching them too. In lesson 15 of Let's Learn English, Anna gets to enjoy some nice weather and watch all kinds of people walk by. Let's listen. Hello. People from all over the world come to Washington, D.C. When I'm at work, I love eating lunch outside. I like to watch people walking by. They all look very different. Today, my friend Ashley is eating lunch with me. Ashley, today the weather is beautiful, isn't it? Yes, it is. Oh, we have to return to work. No, we have time. Let's people watch a little more. It helps that Anna lives in Washington, D.C., doesn't it? Yeah, it sure does. She can see people from many different countries almost every day. In lesson 15, it also helps that the weather is nice. She mentions it to her friend Ashley, and then Anna's boss, Miss Weaver, mentions it to Anna. Ashley, today the weather is beautiful, isn't it? Yes, it is. It's a beautiful day, isn't it? Yes. Yes, it is, Miss Weaver. I noticed that each of them used a tag question when they asked about the weather, didn't they? That's right, they did, and I think we should explain a bit about this. I do too. Okay, for example, let's say that it is a sunny and beautiful day. If I say to Jill, it's a nice day, Jill would agree. I can agree by saying something like, yes, it sure is. So Jill agrees with me. Tag questions basically ask if the listener agrees with the speaker. So if I say, it's a nice day, isn't it? I'm asking Jill if she agrees that it's a nice day. So my answer would be the same as before because I agree. I could just say, yes, it is, but if I want to stress how nice it is, I might say, it sure is. Tag questions might be confusing for some learners if they try to get the meaning based on the exact words spoken. When I say, isn't it? Which is the shortened form of, is it not? The word not can be confusing because in a tag question, it actually means something different from not. Yep, the tag question really means the same thing as adding the short question, right? That's true. You can also think about it this way. If I say, isn't it at the end of a sentence, I'm really saying, is this in fact true? So listen to these two examples. Example one, this restaurant is really good. Is this in fact true? Example two, this restaurant is really good, isn't it? Example one and example two mean the exact same thing. The speaker wants to know if the listener agrees with the idea that the restaurant is in fact good. You're listening to the Learning English podcast. We also use tag questions with the auxiliary do. Don't we, Jill? Yes, we do. Let's give our listeners some more examples of tag questions, but with different forms of the verbs. Okay, I'll start. You like teaching English, don't you? Yes, I do. That professor talks a lot, doesn't she? Yeah, she sure does. That was a great concert, wasn't it? Yeah, it sure was. We don't have to work tomorrow, do we? No, we don't. In this example, the tag or end of my question was simply do we. The not was put in the first part of the question when I said we don't have to work tomorrow. The not goes at the end tag for positive statements like the weather is nice, isn't it? And in the beginning part for negative statements. And there is another case we should explain. If we are not asking if someone agrees, like about the nice weather, but instead are really trying to confirm if something is in fact true, then we usually put the not into the first part of the question. And there is no tag at the end. All right, let's give an example. I can say, doesn't Michael work in California? That means Andrew thinks Michael does in fact work in California, but he is asking to check. Doesn't Michael work in California means is it in fact the case that Michael works in California? Okay, by now I think we've explained enough about tag questions, don't you? Yes, indeed. But what about people watching? Anna likes to do that, and so does her boss, Ms. Weaver. They just look at people for a brief moment. They don't really stare at them. That would be rude, wouldn't it? In general, that would be rude, especially if the people are close by. So we usually just look at a person for a few moments, but it does depend on the distance. Is people watching something you like to do too, Andrew? Yeah, sometimes, especially in places like airports or tourist areas like Washington, where there are a mix of people from different areas. And I think that when you really know a culture deeply, you can make some good guesses about what country or even what area of a country people are from. Sometimes just based on their clothes. That's true, you are more aware of small details. For example, I spent some time in France, and I can often notice if someone is from France just by some very small details in clothing and the way they walk and move their body. I don't even have to hear them speak. That's because you've seen more details of French culture. Yes, but on the other hand, I think we all need to be careful not to jump to conclusions about other people just based on the way they look. Especially if that leads you to stereotype or overgeneralize about other people. Each person has their own individual story to tell. You know, this is a big, deep topic that I think is worth a longer discussion. Why don't we continue with this in another Learning English podcast soon? I think that's a good idea. There is a lot to talk about. Oh, but before we go, I just thought of another really good place to people watch. What's that? It rhymes with the number two. Hmm, it rhymes with two. The zoo? Yes, sometimes I think it's more fun to watch the people watching the animals than to watch the animals themselves. I think you're right, but you know, that's kind of a tricky sentence you just said. Let's play it again for our listeners. Let's play it four times. Okay, here we go. Okay, but before we do, here's something our listeners can try. After you hear the sentence the first time, try to speak along with the sentence the next three times the sentence repeats. Or try to write down what you hear and then play it again and try to repeat it. Here's the sentence. Sometimes I think it's more fun to watch the people watching the animals than to watch the animals themselves. Sometimes I think it's more fun to watch the people watching the animals than to watch the animals themselves. Sometimes I think it's more fun to watch the people watching the animals than to watch the animals themselves. Sometimes I think it's more fun to watch the people watching the animals than to watch the animals themselves. Well, like we said, there's lots more we could say about people watching in cultures. So listen for that discussion in another Learning English podcast soon. And be sure to keep Learning English with VOA Learning English. I'm Jill Robbins. And I'm Andrew Smith. And that's our program for today. Join us again tomorrow to keep Learning English through stories from around the world. I'm Ashley Thompson. And I'm Dan Novak.