Book Day 2014

Click here if you want to read some interesting books

Sophie´s World, the Movie

Sophie´s World  is a book written by a Norwegian philosophy teacher called Jostein Gardner; it presents philosophical ideas and the history of philosophy in the form of a story, from ancient Greece, over the Roman empire, the Middle ages, the renaissance, the enlightenment, the big revolutions and up to today. 

I think this book is a must for all BAC students so here you are:

Sophie´s World, free pdf in English, click here

El mundo de Sofía, free pdf (in Spanish), click here

And here is the film - original version in Norwegian with subtitles in English. 

I would read the book first and watch the film afterwards, but that is just a suggestion...

ICDL= International Children´s Digital Library

To all book lovers,

this is a video on the basics of the International Children's Digital Library (ICDL) website and how to do a simple search for a book - and read it online: you can browse by age, genre, book length, character types and even the color of a book´s cover! (and, of course, by language, writer, title…)

This Book is the Milk!

This Book is the Milk! is a book written by Damián Mollá and Alberto Alonso; they explain the meaning of the English words we see in our everyday lives. It is aimed at the Spanish market so I am sure you will recognize most of the examples they give.

Leave a note for Santa Claus or for The Three Wise Men asking them for this book; you´ll have fun while you learn a lot of vocabulary in English. Click here to read a sample chapter

This is the presentation of the book: 

25th November 2013: Day Against Violence Against Women

November 25th is here again, a reminder of the violence against women in the world

Here are two different ways to make you ponder on this issue. The first one is an advertisement for female abuse prevention which won an award in Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2011

The second one is a story called Hooked on You, written by Cristina Durán and Miguel A. Giner  Bou

Uploaded on Feb 19, 2009

Would you like to read this story in Spanish? Click here

School Year 2013-14: Homework Assignment 3

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2013 was awarded to Alice Munro, "master of the contemporary short story". In the first video below you can hear a telephone interview with her following the announcement on 10 October; the interviewer is Adam Smith, a member of Nobelprize.org.

Your homework this time is a listening comprehension exercise. These are the steps you should follow:

• read the comprehension questions - make sure you understand them
• find the key word in each question: the word that will help you know what sort of information you need to listen for
• you may listen to the video up to three times; after that you may read the transcript included in the youtube page but beware of its mistakes

Comprehension questions:

1. Where is she from? 
2. How many short - story books had she published when this interview came out?
3. What part of Canada is depicted most in her stories?
4. Why did A. Munro decide to write short stories instead of novels?
5. How long did it take her to write a short story?
6. How old was she when she started writing?
7. What does she think about small towns?
8. How does she describe the Canadian society of her childhood?
9. What kind of people are the characters in her stories?
10. How did A. Munro´s relationship with her own mother influence her writing?

Would you like to read any of her short stories? Here are some of them: Amundsen, Train, Boys and Girls

Child Soldiers

Here´s a video that will help you to understand the story Remember Atita better. In the documentary Out of the Shadow of War, three girls describe their traumatic experiences of being abducted by rebels and forced to be child soldiers in Liberia during the civil war.

The organization that helps these children is called "Plan International." It works with children and communities in fifty of the world´s poorest countries to help them realize their full potential. 

World Book Day 2013

To celebrate World Book Day this year I have chosen a video about a moving piece of news related to books. In order to understand it better, spend a couple of minutes thinking about an answer for these questions: 

• If you were told you could only read one book for the next twelve years, which one would you choose?
• What do you know about Nelson Mandela ?
• What do you know about William Shakespeare?

In this video we will see how W. Shakespeare´s work inspired South African anti-apartheid prisoners who had been incarcerated on Robben Island.

When the video us over you should be able to explain what the Robben Island Bible is.

Optional homework: Choose one of these pictures and explain its message

Free E-Book Download: "The Da Vinci Code"

Have you read  Dan Brown´s book The Da Vinci Code? This mystery novel became a bestseller as soon as it was published, in 2003, and has sold over 80 million copies all over the world - it is up to you to decide whether this information is valuable or not in relation to this book, if you have read it.

If you haven´t read it, here´s a good chance for you to do so. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of its publication, it will available as a free download on some ebook platforms until March 24th.

Click here to be linked to the free downlad for the Sony Reader

Click here to be linked to the free download of Barnes and Noble´s ebook, Nook book

This piece of news was published on the Galleycat a couple of days ago.

If you have no idea what kind of a book this is, have a look at the trailer of The Da Vinci Code, the film based on it; it may help.

A Glowing Future

Now you have all read Ruth Rendell´s story, A Glowing Future, you  may feel like watching this version for TV.

I think the story is better than the short film but you may not agree and, anyway, it will be a good listening exercise. Pay attention to the following:

• vocabulary: how much do you understand and remember from your list?
• the pronunciation of words you had to study
• the differences in the plot between the story and the short film
• the characters: did you expect them to look like this? how did you imagine them as you read the story?

Which do you like best, the written story or the short film? Why?

Closed for the Summer

My summer break applies to classes and to the blog as well. I do not know if I am more stimulated to blogging when I am teaching but I do know it feels right to take a break (both for me and my readers).

Here are my suggestions for the summer holidays:

1. Read: you may find something that suits you here or here. If you are looking for teen or young adult literature, click here and here 

2. Listen to English; podcasts are a good idea: try here and here. Songs are also great to practise both listening and pronunciation; have a look here. By the way, besides making you feel good, singing songs is encouraging as for English learning: have you noticed people have accents when they speak English but not when they sing? Isn´t it weird?


 From Millan.Net


Here´s a video that shows what a podcast is and how it works:



3. Play some games online. Try this one: Placefy - fun geography game, twitter game, travel game. Besides, there are different types of games in my Delicious links as well.

4. If you are willing and able, you can take a special summer course; you can choose any of these:  an elephant camp in Thailand, learning ice-cream making in Italy, learning Senegalese drumming and dance traditions in Senegal... for these and many more, click here 

5. Watch films or documentaries in English. You will find some very interesting ones in this link, SnagFilms:

Watch more free documentaries

6. Dream: if you cannot go anywhere, dream of the day when you´ll be able to travel and visit places like these:

And this is a wink to my colleagues: here´s to all those of you who are real superstars -not the celebrity-type, though:

Teachers as superstars:

If you need me, send me an email or write a comment in any of the entries... If you miss me, browse through the pages of the blog... Happy Holidays! I will be back in September

Ray Bradbury (1920-2012)

Writer Ray Bradbury has died. He was 91. He is well known for his science-fiction novel, Farenheit 451, whose title refers to the temperature at which paper catches fire and burns. This book presents a future society where books are outlawed; it tells the story of the protagonist, Guy Montag. At first, Montag takes pleasure in his profession as a fireman, burning illegally owned books and the homes of their owners... would you like to know how the story goes on? HERE IS HOW TO CONVERT FAHRENHEIT INTO CELCIUS. Determine the temperature in Fahrenheit. Using your calculator, subtract 32. Multiply the result times 5. Divide that answer by 9. Your final answer is the temperature in Celsius. Since you will be enjoying your summer holidays in less than a month, here´s a good reading for the start of your vacation.

fahrenheit 451 full text pdf

View more ebooks on ebookbrowse.com

You can download the ebook here

If you are not much of a reader, you might like to watch the film, click here to watch it in English with subtitles in Portuguese, which I am sure you will all understand.

Carlos Fuentes (1928-2012)

Mexican writer, diplomat and social critic Carlos Fuentes died last week and I want to share with you a couple of videos showing two interviews with him.

In the first one you will hear him speak in Spanish but the subtitles are in English and I think they are very good so it will be very good practice for English reading and vocabulary learning. AARP VIVA's interview highlights his sense of humor and his love of family.

There are no subtitles in the second video. Carlos Fuentes was very fluent at English as you will appreciate in this interview; it took place in February this year, 2012.  Let´s see how much you can understand.

 

Emilio Calatayud, the Reforming Judge

Dear 2nd BAC students, this is a post for all of you who didn´t know Emilio Calatayud, the Juvenile Court judge in Granada, before we did the university entrance exam in class last week. 

In the following video you will have a glimpse of the kinds of things he does working as a judge; just about everything that came out in the text is mentioned here: his original way of dealing with juvenile offenders, the kind of punishments he chooses, his emphasis on resocializing young people... a role model for all the other judges

If you are interested in seeing the other side of the coin, click here to read about Juvenile In Justice, a project to document the placement and treatment of American juveniles housed by law in facilities that treat, confine, punish, assist and, occasionally, harm them.

The project includes images of over 1,000 juveniles and administrators over 200 facilities in 31 states in the U.S, plus extensive information collected from interviews. The hope is that by seeing these images, people will have a better understanding of the conditions that exist.