Reasons to Learn English

Here´s one more reason for you to speak English well: if you want to be a film director and work in Hollywood, you need to give clear instructions to the staff working for you, or they´ll freak out…

Mexican Alfonso Cuarón won the Golden Globe Award 2014 for best director of his film Gravity. When he gave his acceptance speech, he explained his problems to make himself understood in English - "because of my thick accent," he says- when giving the actors and actresses directions. Try to understand him when he thanks Sandra Bullock for not quitting when he told her "Sandra, I am going to give you herpes" ( he says he meant "I am going to give you an ear piece" - but I still wonder whether he meant "a hair piece")

 

And here´s the trailer of the film, with subtitles in Spanish:

The Importance of Speaking English, According to Our Politicians

Dear Mr Núñez Feijoo, President of "Xunta de Galicia,"

you are welcome to my classes; you could learn two things:

• the importance of rehearsing speeches before delivering them
• the pronunciation of "Chieftains"

While we are at it, you might as well consider increasing the number of hours of English lessons per week: three 50-minute-long periods a week with a ratio of up to 34 students per class is certainly not the way to make our students   fluent in English (judge for yourself)

Let me recommend a great way to learn some pronunciation: singing along while listening to a song. 

Since you had difficulties reading the name of the Irish band, The Chieftains,  while mentioning they had been awarded the Castelao medal, here´s one of my favourite songs played by this band together with The Corrs , I Know My Love

I Know My Love,  Lyrics

I know my love by his way of walking
And I know my love by his way of talking
And I know my love dressed in a suit of blue
And if my love leaves me, what will I do?

chorus:
And still she cried, "I love him the best,
And a troubled mind, sure can know no rest"
And still she cried, "Bonny boys are few,
And if my love leaves me, what will I do?"

There is a dance house in Maradyke
And there my true love goes every night
He takes a strange girl upon his knee
Well now don't you think that that vexes me?

chorus

If my love knew I can wash and wring
If my love knew I can sew and spin
I'd make a coat of the finest kind
But the want of money sure leaves me behind

chorus

I know my love is an errant rover
I know he'll wander the wild world over
In dear old Ireland he'll no longer tarry
An American girl he's sure to marry

chorus
chorus

Unfortunately, Mr Núñez Feijoo is not the only one who has problems with English; click here and watch the videos

How To Learn English

Kaplan Academy has released this infographic about different ways to learn English. Have a look at it and answer their question, What, in your opinion, is the best way to learn English? Here are my thoughts about it:

• traveling to an English-speaking country. I know that in our school some of our students travel to countries where English is the native language -they do that mainly in the summer to attend summer courses - but, at school, we have the excellent student exchange programme with Tibble Gymnasium in Sweden and quite a few of our students have taken part in it since it started in the year 2000. English is not an official language in Sweden but everybody speaks it fluently so we can include it in this group of countries. Can anyone share his/her experience -from the point of view of learning English- about his/her trips with us?
• watching TV programs in English. From what I learn in our classes,  instead of programs, we could say "series" because that is what students are really into. In this sense, I must accept the fact that "Series Yonkis" has done more for the English language in Spanish than all the English teachers together. I do not know, though, which are the favorites among teenagers...
• watching films in original version. Some years ago, when it was not easy to  watch films in original version on TV, borrowing films from the school was a good way to practise and showing them in class with some sort of projects or work done by the students was really entertaining and educational. Right now I have the feeling that students -generally speaking, of course- are less keen on movies than in the past. I remember showing Dead Poets Society to 1ºBAC students and Real Women Have Curves to 2ºBAC students and I have the feeling that everybody learnt a lot from those films -and not only English
• listening to music. I learnt English listening mainly to The Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel and singing along to their songs. Whose songs´lyrics do you learn and sing along to?
• playing computer games. There are a few gamers in my classes, I know. I don´t want to mention any games because most of them are quite violent, but my students´faces (mostly boys, just for the record)  light up when they talk about them. As for the English they learn from them, "to shoot" and "shot" are two words all of them know.
• reading comics. I do not really hear students talk about comics that much, but I do not know it it is because I just don´t hear about comics (meaning, since I am not too interested in them, maybe I just don´t pay enough attention) or they do not talk about them...

I miss, in the infographic, one method which is certainly not the best but it is the most frequent in Spain: classes of English with Spanish teachers....Many students have learnt English with just that: homework and classwork. It does´t sound fun but it helps.

So, dear students, which method works best for you? I am looking forward to reading your answers

Infographic: How to learn Englishvia Kaplan Blog