 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. Coming up on the program, I reports on the Golden Globe Awards. Brian Lin has a story on an American company that launched the first private space mission to the moon. Ana Mateo has the health and lifestyle report on a man who may regain use of his hand after a nerve operation. Later, Andrew Smith and Jill Robbins present the lesson of the day, but first... The historical film Oppenheimer won big at the Golden Globe Awards Sunday. It won five awards, including Best Drama. And the comedy Poor Things upset summer hit Barbie, as Hollywood threw its biggest party since labor disputes shut down much of show business last year. Oppenheimer is about the making of The Atomic Bomb. It won five awards, including Best Movie Drama. Actors Killian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. won awards for their performances. Christopher Nolan won his first Golden Globe Award for Best Director for the film. Poor Things stars Emma Stone as a woman who was brought back to life by scientists. It won Best Movie Musical or Comedy. Awards Watchers had widely expected that honor to go to Barbie, the female empowerment story inspired by the famous toy. Barbie led 2023 box office lists and went into the night with a leading nine nominations. But it went home with just two awards. One was for Billy Eilish's song What Was I Made For. Another was for a new category called Cinematic and Box Office Achievement, created for widely seen films. Lily Gladstone was the best actress winner for her role in Killers of the Flower Moon. She began her acceptance speech by introducing herself in the Blackfeet Native American Language, which she learned in school. This is an historic win Gladstone continued in English. It doesn't belong to just me. I am holding it right now with all my beautiful sisters. She thanked director Martin Scorsese as well as Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, her co-stars in the film. The movie was based on murders of members of the Osage Nation in the 1920s. In television succession was named Best Drama and led all series with four wins, including a Lead Acting Award for Kieran Culkin. The Bear, a television series about the struggles of owning a restaurant, won Best TV Comedy. Actors Jeremy Allen White and I.O. Adebury both won awards for their performances in The Bear. Less serious than the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes nearly collapsed in recent years. A 2021 Los Angeles Times report noted a lack of diversity among the 80 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, or HFPA. That is the group that previously voted on the Globes. The 2022 ceremony was cancelled and the HFPA was shut down. The awards returned last year, but drew a small audience. The awards are now voted on by a group of about 300 entertainment reporters from around the world. Sunday's ceremony showed Hollywood has re-accepted the Globes. Several of Hollywood's biggest stars could be seen in the crowd, including Meryl Streep and De Niro. Pop singer Taylor Swift also joined the crowd as a nominee for her recent concert film. The ceremony at the Beverly Hilton Hotel started Hollywood's yearly awards season, which ends with the Academy Awards on March 10th. The event brought top stars together for the first time after six months of strikes by actors and writers last year. An American company successfully launched a mission Monday to explore the moon. The launch of a robotic lander marked the first time a private space vehicle has been sent to the lunar surface. However, the company reported a serious fuel leak about seven hours after the launch. The 1.9 meter tall lander, called Peregrine, launched at 718 UTC from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The spacecraft was built by Astrobotic Technology, a company based in the eastern U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It was carried into space on a Vulcan Centaur rocket. The rocket was built by American Space Launch Company, United Launch Alliance, or ULA, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Earlier, Astrobotic Chief Executive John Thornton said if all goes as planned, Peregrine will attempt to land on the moon February 23rd. However, Astrobotic said in a statement, it is currently assessing possible changes to the mission to see what might be possible. If the fuel issue is serious, it threatens the ability of the spacecraft to land on the moon, the company said. Astrobotic said in a press release, Peregrine is loaded with 20 research experiments involving seven different countries. It is equipped to collect data on radiation and materials found on the moon's surface. The lander also carried a small robotic explorer and other materials. These included a physical bitcoin, a piece of rock from Mount Everest, and the ash remains of famous space lovers Gene Roddenberry and Arthur C. Clark. Roddenberry was creator of the popular science fiction television show Star Trek and Clark was a science fiction writer. The Navajo Nation recently sought to have the launch delayed because of the inclusion of the remains. The head of the Native American group called the sending of remains a desecration because Native Americans consider the moon a sacred place. In a message on X, formerly Twitter, Navajo Nation president Bu Nigren said, the suggestion of transforming the mission into a resting place for human remains is deeply disturbing and unacceptable to our people and many other tribal nations. Astrobotics Thornton answered the criticism by saying the Navajo Nation's objections came too late to reach an agreement on the issue, but he promised to try to find a good path forward with the Navajo Nation for future missions. So far only four nations have successfully landed spacecraft on the moon, the United States, China, the Soviet Union, and India. The last time the United States landed on the moon was in 1972 with its Apollo 17 mission. NASA is currently moving ahead with its Artemis program which aims to return astronauts to the moon. Astrobotic is trying to be the first private business to successfully land on the moon in an effort to support the Artemis program. But the Associated Press reports another space company's lander might beat Peregrine to the lunar surface. This is because that lander called Nova Sea is set to take a more direct path to the moon. It plans to launch next month on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Nova Sea was built by Texas-based space company Intuitive Machines. The company also plans to send the lander to the moon for another mission later this year. Private companies from Japan and Israel tried in the past to land spacecraft on the moon, but those attempts failed. Japan's space agency will attempt another moon landing in mid-January. The agency, JAXA, launched the Slim spacecraft on its way to the moon in September. Slim's goal is to test the possibility that spacecraft can land on very specific targets. Another astrobotic lander called Griffin is set to launch to the moon's south pole in late 2024. It will be carrying an exploring robot or rover called Viper. Viper is designed to search for water sources on the moon. All the private space missions were developed through NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services CLPS program. The program aims to turn over the country's major missions to private companies in an effort to operate at reduced costs. I'm Brian Lin. A man in Italy might regain the use of his hand after having a new kind of medical operation. Doctors in northern Italy said the surgery used a nerve from the man's partly amputated leg to repair a damaged nerve in his hand. His hand became paralyzed after a severe driving accident. Surgeons at Turin City Hospital took part of the man's sciatic nerve from his leg. That is the nerve which helps control movement in the foot. The doctors transferred part of the man's sciatic nerve to his brachial plexus. That is a network of nerves connecting the spinal cord to the shoulder, arm, and hand. It's the first time that someone has transferred a component of the sciatic nerve to the brachial plexus, said Paolo Titolo. He was one of the surgeons who performed the operation. He recently spoke with Reuters News Agency. The patient is Marcello Gaviglio, a 55-year-old healthcare worker. He had half of his left leg amputated after he was hit by a motorbike five months ago. The accident happened while he was traveling to work on his small motorized bike, called a moped. He suffered serious injuries to his brachial plexus, as well as his leg. The damage to his upper body left him unable to use both of his hands. Because the part of the sciatic nerve that controlled his left foot was no longer needed, it could be transferred to the shoulder area. On December 21st, doctors carried out the operation. They hope it will give him the ability to use his left hand. Gaviglio will need about five months of special care after the operation. For now, he is still unable to move the hand at all. Nerve transfer surgery is not new, but normally it does not involve moving a nerve that controls the foot to an area that controls the hand. For that reason, doctors involved in the operation are calling it pioneering. We think this is pioneering surgery because if it works, it means that the brain plasticity can control other parts of the body that we didn't expect, Titolo said. He added that the surgery opens new fields in nerve studies. The aim is to restore some grasp function to the hand. That means the ability to hold objects. Titolo explained that this can help the other hand to do things. The operation was the result of four years of research. It was published in the medical journal Injury. Gaviglio, the patient, said he had given little thought to the pioneering part of the operation. He said he just felt that there was a chance for a good result. He said he thought about depending on a team of very good doctors and being able to move his hand again a little bit. I'm Anna Matteo. That was Anna Matteo with this week's Health and Lifestyle Report. Welcome to the show, Anna. Hi, Dan. Thanks for having me. In today's report, you shared a story about a man recovering from surgery in Italy. What kind of surgery? Well, Dan, a man in Italy had a pioneering surgery after a terrible accident left his leg partly amputated and his hand paralyzed. Why is the surgery considered pioneering? Good question. Nerve transfer surgery is not new, but normally it does not involve moving a nerve that controls the foot to an area that controls the hand. For that reason, doctors involved in the operation are calling it pioneering. That's really brave for the patient to have a surgery that's never been done before. Yes. The patient said he didn't really give much thought to the pioneering aspect of the surgery. He said he was thinking more of the team of doctors helping him and, of course, regaining use of his hand. Well, I hope it works out for him. The surgery has the possibility to change a lot of people's lives for the better. Thanks for answering my questions, Anna. Thanks for having me, Dan. My name is Anna Matteo. My name is Andrew Smith. And I'm Jill Robbins. You're listening to The Lesson of the Day on the Learning English podcast. Today's lesson helps you do more with level two of our video series, Let's Learn English. This series shows Anna Matteo in her work and life in Washington, D.C. Lesson six of level two helps explain some ways we use prepositions in English. Let's listen to the beginning of the lesson. Anna has agreed to take her friend Penelope on a tour around the city. Anna, thanks for taking me on a tour of D.C. today. Sure thing, Penelope. You are new to town. And a tour is the best way to see more of the city. So which tour are we taking? The one that goes through the city on a bus or the one that goes along the river in a boat? Both! Anna, this isn't going to be one of those trips. Is it? No. Follow me. Okay. In this lesson, you are going to hear lots of prepositions. What's a preposition, you ask? It's a word that shows relationships between things. Anna says they are going on a tour through the city and along the river. Through and along are both prepositions. Watch for more. It is often difficult for English learners to use prepositions correctly in all situations. That's because there are so many ways we can use them. Like Professor Bott says, we use prepositions to show physical relationships. But we also use them in many kinds of idiomatic expressions and phrasal verbs. And it's sometimes hard to know any rules for which preposition to use. The good news is that mistakes with prepositions usually do not create problems for understanding what you want to communicate. Unless, of course, you make a very basic mistake with a physical description. Right. That's true. So if you say under the table when you should say on the table, that will, of course, create problems. That's a very basic beginning level mistake. But remember we can learn from our mistakes, so keep on speaking English when you get the chance to. Lesson 6 uses prepositions mostly for physical descriptions. Let's listen to Anna and Penelope take a ride in a special vehicle. It is a boat with wheels that takes tourists around the city to see famous places in Washington, D.C. Well, Penelope, there's our ride. What is it? It's the famous D.C. ducks. The boat with wheels. We will ride on the road and then sail on the water. Who thinks of these things? I don't know, but I'm glad they do. Let's get aboard, sailor. Hey, did you know that this bus, um, boat was created during World War II to carry people and supplies? Wow. You know, a tour is so much more interesting with fun facts like that one. I agree. I love fun facts. To get aboard means to get on a boat or a train. Now, here's more of their tour on the boat with wheels. This is amazing, Anna. There are so many beautiful buildings along this road. Hey, the Washington Monument is on the left. Look, Anna, we're across from the White House. Penelope, the only thing between us and the president is the street and a park and a security gate and police officers with guns. Excuse me, do you want to know a fun fact about the White House? Yes. Inside the White House, there is a swimming pool, a movie theater, and 32 bathrooms. 32 bathrooms? That's a lot of bathrooms. I'd be happy with two. I live in a house with my mom, four sisters, two aunts, and only one bathroom. Oh my. You know, Anna, we should give him a tip. Of course. It is polite to tip your tour guide. Luckily, I have lots of dollar bills. That was a great fun fact. Here you go. Thank you. I can tell you fun facts all day. Did you hear any more prepositions of place? I heard between us and the president. Inside the White House and in a house. Now, let's look at a few examples to see how prepositions can have more than one meaning and how they can show more complex relationships. Let's start with the preposition through. Anna and Penelope go on a tour through the city. That's a physical place. But we can also go through an experience or through a process that happens over a period of time. We can go through a change or through changes. For example, teenagers go through a lot of changes between the ages of 13 and 18. Yes, they sure do. Now, let's look at the preposition for. We can say we are going home for the holidays. This can mean a period of time during the holidays. Or it can mean the reason why we are doing something. Right. Like I can say I exercise for my health. That means I exercise to help my health. We also use for to express a connection or relationship. We might say the students need to buy books for each subject they are studying. In that example, the preposition for connects the phrase buy books with the words each subject. Jill, what is your best advice for how students can learn to use prepositions correctly? Because we use them so much and in so many different ways, I suggest learners pay careful attention and memorize the preposition that is used when they learn new expressions. For example, as we just explained, we can say the expression go through a process. A learner should memorize the whole expression. And that way, the learner does not have to worry about how to choose or guess which preposition to use. It does take a long time to learn the large number of expressions and their prepositions. So students need to be patient and you need to practice using the expressions until you can say them naturally and easily. I also recommend reading a lot in English. Pick a book that is on a topic you like and read it for fun. The grammar of English will become more familiar to you the more you read. Jill, before we go, we need to find out if the boat with wheels can also go in the water. Well, to do that, we have to watch and listen to the next lesson, Lesson 7 of Level 2. That lesson gives many more examples of prepositions for physical places. We don't have time to listen to Lesson 7 in today's podcast, but here's one little part of it. Penelope, this is amazing. A minute ago, we were riding along the river and now we're riding in the river. Awesome. So be sure to watch Lessons 6 and 7 to see all the places Anna and Penelope visit on the boat with wheels. And you will also learn about a boy who makes money on their tour. The boy makes the money thanks to Anna and Penelope. Well, we've made it through another lesson of the day. Thanks for listening to the Learning English podcast. Remember to share Let's Learn English with your family and friends. You can also find us on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. I'm Andrew Smith. And I'm Jill Robbins. 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.