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VOICE ONE:
THE MAKING OF A NATION -- a program in Special English.
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An army of freed slaves could not be trained in time to save the Confederacy.
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VOICE ONE:
You have been listening to the Special English program, THE MAKING OF A NATION. Your narrators were Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe. Our program was written by Frank Beardsley and Christine Johnson.
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THE MAKING OF A NATION is an American history series written with English learners in mind. Developed as a radio show, each weekly program is 15 minutes long. The series begins in prehistoric times and currently ends with the presidential election of 2000.
Both the text and sound of each week's program can be downloaded from WWW.51VOA.COM. Past shows can also be found on the site.
There are more than 200 programs in the complete series, which starts over again every five years. Most of the shows were produced a long time ago. This explains why a few words here and there may sound a little dated. In fact, the series has even outlived some of the announcers. But we know from our audience that THE MAKING OF A NATION is the most popular of the feature programs in VOA Special English.
VOA Special English is a radio, TV and Internet service of the Voice of America. Programs are written with a limited vocabulary and are read at a slower speed. The purpose is to help people improve their American English as they learn about news and other subjects.