Obama's first year

After one year in office, Obama's progress has been subject to examination by the media. This Newsy video uses multiple sources to review Obama's first year

By the way, NEWSY, "the news with more views", is an excellent resource. Unlike CNN, Sky news or other major news channels, Newsy reports are compiled from multiple sources. And a big plus ...transcripts are also provided.

The French, the Italians, the Scots, the...

Why Are The French So Bad At English?

We are talking about nationalities this week, and it seems that when it comes to learning English, French schoolchildren seriously underperform. France currently is on the 69th position among 109 countries on the standardized Test of English as a Foreign Language, aka TOEFL. In an attempt to remedy this state of affairs, French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently “unveiled an emergency plan for teaching foreign languages in the nation's schools with the objective that 'all our high school students must become bilingual, and some should be trilingual'."

Does that ring a bell ? Are politicians copying from each other? Is it globalization ? Don't you think it's the same everywhere? Here's the full story.

Oh, by the way, and when you thought you could get by in half decent English, then you meet a Scot from Glasgow (a Glaswegian)

In Scotland, the situation of languages is a bit complex. So complex that a company is even looking for a translator into English! Full story here

Halloween jokes and poems

Some Halloween jokes ....

and a well-known poem: Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven. The poem depicts a mysterious raven's midnight visit to the narrator, sad and mourning the loss of his love, Lenore.

You can watch :

the Simpson's version ...

or the masterpiece, interpreted by Vincent Price.

There's still another excellent version interpreted by Christopher Walken with beautiful illustrations by Gustave Doré.

Happy Halloween!

Podcasting

Some of you told me the other day that you liked running, and that you would like to be able to put some English into your brain while you run. Great idea! 'Podcast' is the word.
What is a podcast? Sorry, but I had to go to the dictionary for that : " A podcast is a radio programme that is stored in a digital form that you can download from the Internet and play on a computer or on an MP3 player ". All the radio stations have podcasting sites, for example, the BBC, or CNN:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/
http://edition.cnn.com/services/podcasting/

BUT If you want something a bit more guided, the BBC has an excellent site, BBC Learning English, with all sorts of podcasts which you can download into your Ipod or MP3, and the good thing about it that you can also download the script (so you can read it when you do your final stretching!) . I do recommend this site.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/general/

I'd go for "Words in the News" as a regular feature, or "London Life" and "Weekender" in the archive (scroll down to the bottom of the page) . The episodes are always short (5 minutes approx.) so download as many as you can so that you don't run out of listening material (to run out of something, a nice double phrasal verb!)

I guess listening while you're running is a good idea because your mind is in a relaxed state so it can process and "digest" better whatever comes from the outside. Of course, you can also use podcasts when your're driving -or having a bubble bath with scented candles.

PS: Talking about phrasals, Face up to Phrasals is also a good section dealing with phrasal verbs, with short and illustrative sequences exemplifying a specific phrasal verb in context. This is not a podcast, so you need to be logged in to see this feature.

So thanks for asking and enjoy your running-listening!

Watch and learn

This looks interesting. Lots of videos, you can choose if you want them with or without subtitles, you can click on any of the words you don't understand and you'll get a definition, you can even record your own speech.... Japanese technology at its best!
Let me know what you think.

In sickness and in health

Obama's Healthcare reforms and the Swine Flu hype are on the news these days...


Dave Granlund, Massachusets
Joe Heller, WisconsinChang

Posting Comments

Some of you have told me that you are having problems posting comments or don't know exactly how to do it. Ok, I've been testing the system and the easiest options (a lot easier than signing up for a Google account) are :

1. Choose 'Name/url' option , type in your name in the box and your name will appear in the message.
2. Choose 'anonymous user' and then sign your name, if you want, at the bottom of the message.

I think either of these two options works fine, though with computers you never know ...

What are you like ?

We 'll be talking about personality this week, so here you have a few tests with lots of adjectives, and expressions to describe your personality... and to get to know yourself a bit better!

• The Big Five Test: This test measures what some psychologists consider to be the five fundamental dimensions of personality.
• The World's Shortest Personality Test : This is the world’s shortest personality test … and maybe more accurate than others with a thousand questions !
• How Moral are you ? In this test you have to give your opinion about the characters in a story based on Robin Hood's legend (Robin Hood, Marion, Little John and the Sheriff of Nottingham) .

So did you get any surprising result ?

Minimal Pairs

The other day we were talking about pronunciation, rhythm and intonation and we saw how a sound can completely change the meaning of a word: these words are called “minimal pairs”, and here you have many good examples.
http://www.shiporsheep.com/page1.html

Coincidentally, Anna (4C) sent me a link to a funny story about an Italian who went to Malta to a bigg-a hotel-a, based on these minimal pairs. It contains dirty words that somebody might consider offensive, so I’m not going to put it in this blog ... but ...you can always ask Anna.

............. (Oct 9th)

...Ok, she's sent me another better version in which you can perfectly see the minimal pairs so I'm finally posting it. Just don't look if you don't want to see any dirty words.

Wonderful Alice

As I've seen in the newspaper today, 2010 is going to be Alice's year, since a number of films and TV series will appear based on Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland". It's just an amazing coincidence that this is one of your optional books for the third term. I wonder whether the movies will be half as good as the book -they will, as long as they catch the soul of the story- but the Cheshire Cat, the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, the Dodo, the Queen of Hearts ... how lucky you are to be able to read it in its original version!