Ted Talk: Lizzie Velasquez

Here is an inspiring talk about the importance of believing in oneself; the speaker is Lizzie Velasquez, an American woman whose extremely rare medical condition has led her to become a motivational speaker.

Read the introduction of her talk at Ted Talks: 

In a time when beauty is defined by supermodels, success is defined by wealth, and fame is deified by how many followers you have on social media, Lizzie Velasquez asks the question, `how do you define yourself?´ Once labeled, "The World´s Ugliest Woman," Lizzie decided to turn things around and create her own definitions of what she defines as beauty and happiness.

I am afraid the captions are automatic so there are quite a few mistakes but they may be helpful, anyway - listening practice: try to find the mistakes in the subtitles.

What lessons have you learned from this talk? Do you think it is a motivational one? How does it help people to see life from a different perspective?

Words Matter

Read the following paragraph; do you agree with it?

When a little boy asserts himself, he's called a “leader.” Yet when a little girl does the same, she risks being branded “bossy.” Words like bossy send a message: don't raise your hand or speak up. By middle school, girls are less interested in leading than boys—a trend that continues into adulthood. 

Ban Bossy is a campaign to encourage young women to feel good about themselves and to be confident to take the lead. Do you think a campaign like this is necessary and / or useful? Why (not)? 

March 8th: Women´s Day

March 8th is International Women´s Day  (IWD)

Here´s to all the remarkable girls out there (Girl Power):

 

2013 Girl Power Edition from Ines Almeida

The video below, I Am a Princess, is a Disney one - not that I am much of a Disney fan but the values it mentions (to be brave, to be kind, to be generous and compassionate) are certainly those that girls (and boys) should be learning to be decent adults. But since we are celebrating women´s day today, this is for all the future women.

Grammar: Be Used To

Here´s a video from Luiz Otavio Barro´s blog to help you remember the grammar construction: be used to + -ing. There is no sound at the beginning of the video, just read and think about the questions the video asks.

Food for thought: International Women´s Day, March 8th, is coming and there´s a lot to say about it, considering the message behind this video

 

In the video before, the actions performed by the husband are introduced by "would". Watch the next video for an explanation of the difference between "used to" and "would"

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

School Year 2013-13: Homework Assignment 2

This video is called"Girl Quits Job by  Making Dance Video At Work"; explicit title, isn´t it?

This is what you have to do:

1. Watch the video and make sure you understand the messages that pop up
2. Answer these questions (do it mentally; you needn´t write them down!) in relation to what you see and read in the video: who, where, when, what, why? If you can´t, watch the video again focusing on the answers you haven´t been able to answer yet
3. Imagine you are the girl in the video and I am a friend of yours: write an email to me. Include the following information:

• tell me what you have just done (include the details mentioned in the video)
• let me know how you felt after you posted the video on the internet
• explain how you feel now that your video has gone viral

Remember: use your own words, don´t copy the messages from the video




This assignment is due October, Friday 11th.

Good luck!

By the way, this is a video from the internet; we are used to watching videos that seem to be true and turn out to be fake...what is the truth about this one? (who knows?)

2nd part of this story: Click here

Are You Ready for "Arde Lucus"?

Arde Lucus 2013 starts tomorrow: Lugo will be a Roman town for three days. 

Here are a couple of videos that can help you get the spirit of the celebration. Both videos are part of Ted-Ed/Lessons Worth Sharing, which means they are really good from an educational point of view.

The first video is about the domestic life of leisure of young, wealthy girls; it focuses on four sisters - called "Domitia," all of them. While you watch the videos, choose the subtitles (captions) in English - they will not be difficult to follow since the images follow the text closely.

Once you have watched the video, you can do a multiple choice exercise about it; click here. For extra information about freeborn women in ancient Rome and about the cultural aspects in the video, click here

The second video is about a 17-year-old boy living in Rome in 73 AD; his name is Lucius Popidius Secundus. You will see what life was like for a typical Roman teenager: arranged marriages, coming-of-age festivals, and communal baths.

Are you ready for some comprehension questions about the video? Click here. If you would like to read some extra information about this period of history, click here.

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. 

Girls & Sports

Watch this video and tell me what you think about it - I do not mean from the point of view of bag styles or as an entrepreneur idea; I mean the statements about girls and the comparison between boys and girls in relation to sports.

Activyst: Help Girls Play Sports from activyst on Vimeo.

Monsalud, thank you for the video!

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?

Homework: Tell a Piece of News

This is the homework for next week: find the relation between the following terms and explain the piece of news orally in class. 

Michelle Obama + Argo  + Iranian TV news

Remember to find an answer to the basic questions: who?, when?, where?, what?, why?. If you can answer all those questions and manage to put the information together so that it makes sense, then you will have a good piece of news.

As for the oral part, tell the story to yourself in front of a mirror so that you can practise both pronunciation and intonation and, at the same time, you can see how "real" you sound. This kind of practice will help you to be sure of yourself for your delivery in class because you will soon be aware of the vocabulary you lack or of the part that is the most difficult for you; therefore, you can rehearse different ways to express the ideas until you get the speech right. Remember to use a pronunciation tool to find out the pronunciation of the words that you do not know.

Here are some tips for you to prepare the content:

1. Michelle Obama:

2. Argo

3. Iranian TV News

By the way, don´t forget to give your point of view regarding the story.

Arranged Marriages

Dear 1º BAC students,

now that you have read the story "Ekaterina" and we have talked about arranged marriages in class, let me share with you a video that will certainly impact you - to say the least. It is called "Too Young to Wed;" two women, a writer and a photographer, speak about their experience while investigating arranged child marriages. It is a disturbing video because, as you will see, some of the girls are really young (one of them is 5 years old!). 

This is certainly food for thought.

Violence Against Women: 25th November 2012

This year the celebration of the day against violence against women has a name: Malala, the 14-year-old Pakistani girl shot by the Taliban on her way home from school. They shot her because she openly campaigns online (she writes a blog) for education for girls in her country.The Taliban impose amazing rules on women (click here to read about it) and make their lives hell - what they did to Malala is just one more example. 

Would you like to have a look at Malala´s blog? Click here and remember that she was born in 1997, so she is probably as old as some of you.

Malala had also been giving lectures in her country, click here  to read more about this.

In my view, being aware of the problems that many women suffer all over the world just because they are women is the only way to actually do something to change our world. If we talk about it, if we become conscious of how unfair the situation is and say so, then maybe others will consider changing their minds and doing something about it... But it is no easy task since the situation is really tough in some countries. Do you want to know the worst places to live in if you are a woman? Click here and have a look at the photographs; the following paragraph will let you know what I am talking about:

Targeted violence against females, dismal healthcare and desperate poverty make Afghanistan the world's most dangerous country in which to be born a woman, with Congo a close second due to horrific levels of rape. Pakistan, India and Somalia ranked third, fourth and fifth, respectively, in the global survey of perceptions of threats ranging from domestic abuse and economic discrimination to female foeticide (the destruction of a fetus in the uterus), genital mutilation and acid attack. A survey compiled by the Thomson Reuters Foundation to mark the launch of TrustLaw Woman*, puts Afghanistan at the top of the list of the most dangerous places in the world for women. TrustLaw asked 213 gender experts from five contents to rank countries by overall perceptions of danger as well as by six categories of risk. The risks consisted of health threats, sexual violence, non-sexual violence, cultural or religious factors, lack of access to resources and trafficking. The collection of images that follow were provided by Reuters to illustrate the dangers women face in those 5 countries. -- Paula Nelson (*TrustLaw Woman is a website aimed at providing free legal advice for women’s' groups around the world.)

Luckily for us (and I mean women who live in developed countries) the kind of violence mentioned in the paragraph above is not what we face in our everyday lives, but in our society women are very often the target of male violence as well. 



The situation pictured in this song by Tracy Chapman, "Behind the Wall" makes your hair stand on end.

In fact, the situation Tracy Chapman describes in her song seems to be quite frequent all over the world: watch the first video in this link or watch the experiment in the following video, which won a price in the Cannes Lions Festival in 2011.

IIn most cases, violence against women originates because some men have the wrong idea of what a relationship is and tend to think of women as something you can possess, that´s why they often use the expression "you belong to me" (have a look at the lyrics in the first song in this link). 

We talked about all this in class last week, but I did most of the talking so now I would like to know what you think...

Bullying: A Song

Rachel Crow is 14. She sings this song, "Mean Girls"(mean= malicious) which she co-wrote to help girls fight against bullying from other girls. 

If you let the video play on after the song finishes, you will get ten more videos related to bullying prevention.

Lucía´s T-shirt

In class this morning, Lucía was wearing a T-shirt with a photograph of the surrealist Mexican painter Frida Kahlo and I couldn´t help noticing it. I find Frida Kahlo mesmerizing

In this video you will get a glimpse of her life, it´s a short biography which includes some of the things we mentioned in class this morning.

The trailer below belongs to Frida, a 2002 biographical film which shows the professional and private life of Frida Kahlo. It stars Salma Hayek in her Academy Award nominated portrayal as Kahlo and Alfred Molina as her husband, Diego Rivera. Antonio Banderas also has a part in the film. 

This film is a good choice for the weekend...

 

Remember your homework: Frida is said to have had a lover who was a member of the Soviet Russian government, someone who died in Mexico, who?