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:

Primary School Graduation Speech

Listen to Ryan Anthony Quenangan Balaoing in his graduation speech at Pearl Zanker Elementary School in Milpitas, CA. He delivered this speech on June 10, 2010 but it is a very good example of a well-rehearsed speech - he had learnt it all by heart!. He was graduating from Primary school to go to Middle school.

Pay attention to all the details that make this a very good example of what a graduation speech should be like: 

• the notes in his hand (which he does not read)
• the layout of the speech
• his body language
• his intonation
• his pauses
• his eye contact
• his outfit

 

One More Interesting Speech

Dear 2nd BAC students,

Now you are getting ready for your graduation speeches, listen to Ashton Kutcher´s acceptance speech at the Teen Choice Awards 2013

Transcript:

Here’s to my friend and the ultimate choice award recipient Ashton Kutcher.

 What’s up? Oh WOW! Okay, okay, let’s be, let’s be brutally honest, this is the old guy award, this is like – this is like the grandpa award, and after this, I get to go to the geriatric home. First of all, I don’t have a career without you, guys. I don’t get to do any of the things I get to do without you. 

You know, I thought that, hi! I thought that it might be interesting in Hollywood in the industry the stuff we do, there’s a lot of insider secrets to keeping your career going and a lot of insider secrets to making things tick and I feel like a fraud. 

My name is actually not even Ashton. Ashton is my middle name. My first name’s Chris. And it always has been. It got changed when I was like 19 and I became an actor. But there are some really amazing things that I learned when I was Chris, and I wanted to share those things with you guys, because I think it’s helped me be here today.

So it’s really 3 things. 

The first thing is about opportunity, the second thing is about being sexy and the third thing is about living life.

So first, the opportunity. I believe that opportunity looks a lot like hard work. When I was 13 I had my first job with my dad carrying shingles up to the roof. And then I got a job washing dishes at a restaurant. And then I got a job in a grocery store deli. And then I got a job in factory sweeping Cheerio dust off the ground. And I’ve never had a job in my life that I was better than. I was always just lucky to have a job. And ever job that I had was a stepping stone to my next job and I never quit my job until I had my next job. And so opportunities look a lot like work.

Number two: being sexy. 

The sexiest thing in the entire world is being really smart. And being thoughtful. And being generous. Everything else is crap! I promise you! It’s just crap that people try to sell to you to make you feel like less. So don’t buy it. Be smart, be thoughtful, and be generous.

The third thing is something that I just re-learned when I was making this movie about Steve Jobs. 

And Steve Jobs said: When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way that it is and that your life is to live your life inside the world and try not to get in too much trouble and maybe get an education and get a job and make some money and have a family. But life can be a lot broader than that when you realize one simple thing and that is that everything around us that we call life was made up by people that are no smarter than you. And you can build your own thing, you can build your own life that other people can live in. So build a life, don’t live one, build one, find your opportunity, and always be sexy. I love you guys.

Here is the video subtitled in Spanish; check how much you have actually understood

Farewell to Students 2013

One more farewell to students...

Dear students, 

let me use the words of others to wish you the best for the future

1. Let´s start with the comedy duo Rhett and Link. This is their graduation speech at their former high school. You can either watch and listen to the full video or just watch the video of their graduation song below. They first sang this song in the middle of their graduation speech.

Both the speech and the song are funny but full of serious reflection and positive advice. You may want to read the lyrics before or while listening to the song - find them between the two videos



LYRICS:

You're sitting here; in your cap and gown

all your loved ones are just so proud.

And we would love to inspire you

but someone needs; to just give you the truth.

For the past 18 years; your life's been pretty smooth;

Let's take a moment and reflect on; all you've had to do.

You've rolled outta bed; and strolled to the living room

and watched Cartoon Network while your mom made waffles for you.

Your laundry; was magically cleaned.

And your dad's back pocket was an ATM machine. 

Your life's biggest worry; was what to wear to the prom.

And your only regret was that incident - with the stinkbomb.

But, do you hear that subtle sound?

it's the sound of reality about to slap the taste out yo' mouth!

(Now) You're on your own

Don't screw this up.

You're on your own.

Good luck. (You're gonna need it.)

You're young and now you're free; the world is your oyster

We have no clue what that means...but let us paint a picture of your future:

You're gonna eat alotta Hot Pockets; and you're thinking "that sounds great!"

well, get back to us in 6 months; when you're had 378.

As soon as you move out; you know what you parents are gonna do?

They're gonna turn your bedroom into an exercise room that they never use.

And you won't use lockers in college. And this might be a total bummer-

There are no yearbooks either; you actually have to say-"have a great summer."

Do you hear that KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK?

That's personal responsibility about to put you in a head lock

You're on your own

You should be scared.

But we can tell

You don't care. Why don't you care? You should be frightened right now.

Do you sense that gentle breeze?

it's the category-5 hurricane of adulthood about to HIT YOU UP SIDE THE HEAD WITH A TREE.

You're on your own

Don't screw this up.

You're on your own.

Good luck. (You're gonna need it.)

   

2. Theodor Seuss Geisel, known as Dr. Seuss, was an American writer, poet, cartoonist and illustrator. Dr. Seuss´quotes that can change your life: in fact, each quote is a good piece of advice or a thought worth considering

Dr Seuss Words of Wisdom infographic

3. Click here if you need extra advice; there are 101 tips for different kinds of problems

4. And now some important questions that should outline your life - if you want to be happy with yourself (They are more suitable for students who are going to graduate from college but, since I won´t be there for you, you might just as well start thinking about them)

• What would you like to do if money were no object? 
• How would you really enjoy spending your life?
• What do you desire?
• What do you really want to do?

This is the transcript:

What makes you itch? What sort of a situation would you like?

Let's suppose — I do this often in vocational guidance of students, they come to me and say 'well, er, we're getting out of college and we haven't the faintest idea of what we want to do'. So I always ask the question: What would you like to do if money were no object? What would — How would you really enjoy spending your life?

Well, it's so amazing as a result of our kind of educational system, crowds of students say 'well, we'd like to be painters, we'd like to be poets, we'd like to be writers, but as everybody knows you can't earn any money that way.' One other person says 'well, I'd like to live an out of doors life and ride horses.' I said 'Do you wanna teach in a riding school?... er... let's go through with it: what do you want to do?'

When we finally got down to something which the individual says he really wants to do, I would say to him 'You do that and, er, forget the money... er... because if you say that getting the money is the most important thing you will spend your life completely wasting your time... you'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing things you don't like doing... which is stupid!

Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way. And after all if you do really like what you're doing it doesn't matter what it is... you can eventually turn it... you can eventually become a master of it. The only way to become a master of something is to be really with it... and then you'lle be able to get a good feel for whatever it is...

So, don't-don't worry too much... that's everybody —  somebody's interested in everything and anything you can be interested in you'll find out with you... but it's absolutely stupid to spend your time doing things you don't like... in order to go on spending things you don't like, doing things you don't like, and to teach your children following the same track!

What we are doing is we are bringing up children and educating them to live the same sort of lives we are living... in order that, er, that they would-may justify themselves and find satisfaction in life by bringing up their children to bring up their children to do the same things so it all wretch and no vomit — it never gets there.

And so, therefore it's so important to consider this question: What do I desire?

This text was written by philosopher Allan Watts (1915-1973)

5. Here´s some advice that will also help you to be happy

6. Let me finish with another video whose title I would like to change just for you, "The Future is Yours"

The Future is Ours from Michael Marantz on Vimeo.

Tips for Your Oral Presentations

Dear 1st BAC students,

have a look at these presentations. I´m sure you will get some very useful ideas for your oral presentations in the last school term.

Great Presentations Are Like Ads by @slidecomet from Slide Comet

What Would Steve Do? 10 Lessons from the World's Most Captivating Presenters from HubSpot All-in-one Marketing Software

A Taste of My Students´Speeches 2013. Group 3

These are the shortest speeches: 

A Taste of My Students´Speeches 2013. Group 2

The speeches of the group below were between five and six minutes long:

A Taste of My Students´Speeches 2013. Group 1

These are some of the speeches we listened to this year - not all of them have been uploaded, so we may get some more in the future.

I have classified them according to their length - I had told the students each speech should be from 6 to 9 minutes long. This is the first group, the one whose speeches lasted that long:

Graduation Speeches 2013. Day 2

Last Monday we had three turns with speeches. Here is the first group:

This was the second group of speakers:

And here is the third group:

Thanks to the audience:

And now some photos with a very happy and proud teacher:

The Importance of your Accent When Speaking a Foreign Language

Listening to the graduation speeches these days has made me think about lots of aspects related to oral production in a foreign language and I couldn´t agree more with the message in the following video - which is part of a longer one called "Expert Advice on Accent Reduction from Paddy Kennedy."

Paddy Kennedy, the Principal of Kennedy Communication Studio, is a communication coach who describes her job like this: I teach people to say what they mean and mean what they say. I teach people to speak to be heard and to write to be read. 

Her speech can be summarized in these four points:

1. Your accent is not the problem
2. Language has rhythm

3. We speak in "sound units"

4. Homework is important: listen, imitate, exaggerate, say tongue twisters, practice

You can watch this video with captions in English

I first watched this video in the blog "Labor English Zone," so thank you, Álvaro!

Click here and here if you want to hear some amazing people imitating lots of different accents

Graduation Speeches 2013. Day 1

The first turn of graduation speeches took place last Tuesday; the students were divided into two groups according to their class numbers and, funnily enough, they turned out to be two single-sex groups. 

Here they are: on the one hand, Sara, María, Catalina, Cristina and Alba, and Carlos, Alejo, Simón, Abraham, Víctor and Emilio, on the other.

Here are some photos to remember that wonderful experience ( I hope the videos will be ready soon)

Charlot´s Speech: The Great Dictator

I know many of you are working hard at your graduation speeches, so here is one more speech for you to get in the mood for it. Yours will be very different from this one, though; it is a very powerful speech by Charlie Chaplin in his film The Great Dictator.

Here is my suggestion: watch the video, write the English version that you will hear while you read the Spanish words, then check and correct your version with the text below the video. If you need subtitles in a different language, click here and go to the "about section," there is a very long list of versions of this video with its audio in English but with subtitles in many languages.

Text of Charlie Chaplin’s speech from The Great Dictator (from Worthview )

Hope… I’m sorry but I don’t want to be an Emperor – that’s not my business – I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that.

We all want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful.

But we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls – has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.

We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in: machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little: More than machinery we need humanity; More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say “Do not despair”.

The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish…

Soldiers – don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you – who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder.

Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate – only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers – don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty.

In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written ” the kingdom of God is within man ” – not one man, nor a group of men – but in all men – in you, the people.

You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let’s use that power – let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.

Soldiers – in the name of democracy, let us all unite!

Look up! Look up! The clouds are lifting – the sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will rise above their hate and brutality.

The soul of man has been given wings – and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow – into the light of hope – into the future, that glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up. Look up.

Quite a few people have noticed a great similarity between the message in this speech and the situation in the world nowadays; watch this video and tell me what you think of its choice of images.

This speech has been called "the greatest speech ever," do you agree? Why (not)?

Would you like to watch the full film? I am sure you will find some time to watch it during the Easter holidays; it´s worth watching it, believe me! The audio of the video below is in English but you can choose the language of its  subtitles, either English or Spanish.

March 8th: Working Women

graphics18.com | Women's Day 8 march

Tomorrow, March 8th is IWD= International Women´s Day; a day when we pay homage to working women so you will find quite a few things in this entry related to that.

Here´s what you can do for optional homework: choose one of the photos in this post and explain its message in relation to the celebration; whatever image you choose, try to see the irony in it, go deep into its meaning (see if you can find a double meaning), and explain why you like it or not, or why you agree or disagree with it. 

And here are a couple of videos related to the topic of "working women".

The first one is a short film (about 10 minutes long) called What´s A Girl Doing Here? It is about women working in a job not frequently associated to them:  female cab drivers in NY; but they are not only taxi drivers, one of them is also a photographer, another one has a master´s degree.... The film director is also a woman, Diana Diroy .

There are no subtitles in this film but I am sure you will get a pretty good idea of the things they talk about; read this introduction by the director first, it will really help you understand it better:

Loud flashes of yellow are all around you in this city—46,000 taxi sedans, vans and S.U.V.’s streaking across the streets of New York. Yet, only about 170 of them are driven by women, a percentage even lower than the national average. In all my years of hopping into cabs here, and elsewhere, I never met a female driver until I shot this documentary. I needed to find them.

I went from one taxi garage to the next, the only woman in a sea of men, and the drivers would look at me like I was crazy. For weeks I had no luck. Then one evening, a good friend of mine hailed a cab—and there was Shonna Valeska behind the wheel. He told her about my project, wrote her phone number down on a record sleeve, and texted me right away.

In November 2010 I began filming Valeska, and Elena Tenchikova, to whom I’d been connected via the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission. They graciously brought me into their world—one of late nights, early mornings, and forgotten corners—and a year and a half later, I caught up with the women for an update.

Tenchikova recently graduated from Brooklyn College with a master’s degree in urban policy and administration. She put driving on hold for ten months as she completed a program at the NYC Civic Corps, an AmeriCorps initiative, through which she was placed in the NYC Housing Authority to work on its “green” agenda. She hopes to someday work in environmental sustainability, but until then she’s back behind the wheel, navigating a yellow cab through the streets of New York.

After driving for ten months, Valeska hung up her taxi license in February 2011 because of the exhausting and repetitive 12-hour shifts. She loved the customers, but wasn’t making enough money to support her photography studio and simply did not have enough time to pursue her passion for photo work. She continues to take photographs and most recently shot her fourth book cover for Ann Coulter. In the future, Valeska hopes to produce a documentary about the taxi-driving industry.

"What's a girl doing here?" from Narratively on Vimeo.

As for the second video, it shows another type of working woman, Michelle Obama. I have chosen it because you can see and listen to her delivering a speech about education at Renca's Condor Summit Bicentennial School in Santiago de Chile, on March 21, 2011. Michelle Obama spoke in English but the video is subtitled in Spanish. Click here if you are interested in reading the English transcription.

Here are some remarks, related to education, made by the First Lady Michelle Obama that are worth considering:

• the importance of getting a good education - the greatest a gift parents can give to their children
• you shouldn´t be limited by circumstances as far as education is considered
• what really matters is what you think about yourself and what you are willing to do to achieve your goals - because big dreams require big efforts.
• as for school life, the importance of paying attention in class everyday, listening to teachers, doing your homework, not being afraid to make mistakes, asking questions when you don´t understand something.
• Once you succeed, help someone else succeed: none of us can fulfil our dreams on our own.

Any comments? Is there anything you don´t agree with?