Breathe in Breathe out

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It's certainly reassuring to see that we are not the only ones with weird ideas here -though I agree that it takes a lot of breathing in and out, and a lot of physical and mental control to cope with certain policies and attitudes of our city councils/governments. Watch this video -transcript included- and just picture the situation: you receive a parking ticket with a yoga pose and some 'take it easy' advice printed on it in an attempt to cool down your anger. Do you think you would relax? Would you think it's a joke? Make a note of it - it wouldn't be a surprise to see this brilliant idea implemented here one of these days. Ommm...

Don't touch my junk!

Click on the image and find out about the new security measures being enforced in the USA: either a patdown procedure,which includes the touching of passengers' inner thighs and women's breasts, or a full body scan.

From pilots' unions to viral online protests, Americans are telling the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) that the government has gone too far in the name of security, equating the new searches to "sexual molestation" or "sexual assault." Pilots are against both the patdown procedure and the alternative full body scanner.

"If you touch my junk I'm gonna have you arrested!" That's what a 31 year old passenger told the officers who were giving him detailed instructions on the new methods.
- Text and video HERE
- And the interview with John Tyner, the offended passenger, explaining what happened HERE

Apart from having to take off my jacket, my boots, my socks, my belt, my watch, and having a lady searching all over my body because the metal detector (search arches) invariably keeps beeping when I walk through it, I've always been treated nicely (!). As a passenger, you want to be as safe as possible once on the plane, but whether these invasive security measures are useful or not to prevent a terror attack is a real mystery to me.
PD: By the way, some of you mentioned yesterday that you didn't like to fly Ryanair. READ what happened the other day on a Ryanair flight.

Road to Grammar

This is a website devoted to language learning with lots of quizzes and explanations on every aspect of the language, from very easy to advanced (as usual, click on the picture). There is a Games section which I find highly addictive - I particularly like FLUENT and WORD SLAMM (a kind of scrabble). There is also a 'Road to Grammar' version for kids, so everybody in your family can play.

Have fun!

PD: Talking about words that English has borrowed from other languages, we mentioned the other day that 'machismo' is one of them, and you can read it HERE in the Independent's article on recent changes in surnames in Spain.

Bits and Pieces

What can I do to improve my Reading Co? What can I do to improve my listening skills? It's so frustrating, I never understand anything! How can I remember all these words? How can I ....? OK, you are lucky to be studying English in the 21st Century. Here are some recommendations:

For you listening practice, try English Central -best Learning English website of the year 2010. There are lots of short videos -pieces of news mainly- and you can choose if you want them with or without subtitles in English, you can click on a word and see the definition, you can record yourself ... there are lots of things you can do that sure will help you improve your listening skills. Japanese technology at its best and it's FREE -you only have to register. But...oh no, not again!...REGULAR practice is needed. Click on the logo below and you'll be taken to the English Central website.

Newsy videos (also in the 'video bits' section) is also a very good site which offers the different sides of a story and -a bonus for you- the transcript.

The "Reading Comprehension Practice" is a new section on the blog where you'll find the type of texts and Reading compehension exercises used for the Cambridge First Certificate exam, and also for the EOI Level 4 exam (Reading Co. only).

Remember that regular use of your workbook is also essential and it will help you refresh things done in class. And last, but not least, I know you have ALL started to read the "Curious incident...", but just in case you haven't, here's a small presentation to help get you started.


Class time is NOT enough, so remember to take your regular homeopathic doses of English !

-And can't you just give me a pill that I can swallow and get it over with? Sorry, no pills now, maybe in the 22nd Century.

**By the way, how many relative sentences with a preposition can you find in the video?

The Tell-Tale Heart

We've had enough horror stories lately, and I'm not particularly fond of the genre, but you know that I do like E.A.Poe: The Tell Tale Heart, first published in 1843, "a story told through the eyes of a madman who, like all of us, believed he was sane. "

True!—nervous—very, very nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?’’


The story is a psychological portrait of a mad narrator who kills a man because he didn't like his 'vulture eye' and ultimately his guilt and madness give him away in the final hallucination that the man's heart is still beating under the floorboards. HA-HA-HA...

This is just a pre-view. You'll have to go to other versions to see the complete story. It's a really short piece, so you can read it HERE

- Columbia pictures 1953 Animation , narrated by James Mason.

- Vincent Price version HERE. You probably recognized Vincent Prince's laugh as part of the rap he performed in Michael Jackson's Thriller, already a classic for Halloween.

- And some more music: Alan Parson's Tell-Tale Heart in Tales of Mystery and Imagination, a record inspired in Poe's work.

**If you like E.A.Poe and want to see different versions of 'The Raven' (The Simpson's included), go to last year's entry.

Happy Halloween, or castanyada, or whatever you celebrate!

Innit?

The other day we were talking about tag questions, and we mentioned that sometimes all the variety of tag-questions including the use of all the auxilliaries is sometimes reduced by teenage slang to 'innit?' (isn't it?). Ok, Emma Thompson doesn't like that, and she doesn't like the teenage use of 'like' either. You can read it HERE.

Slang : very informal language that is usually spoken rather than written, used specially by particular groups of people. In The Sun you can find a glossary for different types of slang from various occupational and lifestyle groups (hip-hop, police, etc).
DON'T use that in your compositions, ya smell me?

Our House

Download this mp3 from Beemp3.com

Have you seen our house? Our provisisonal provisisonal house is not in the middle of the street, it's up in 'La Collada'. Classes re-start Thursday 21st, 17:30. The show must go on.

Torn

This is not the post I had in mind, but as you problably know the wind has torn the roof off the building and all the 3rd floor classrooms are, as you can imagine, destroyed and flooded. You've probably received the 'avis urgent' we've been sending this afternoon to all students, and we have also posted an 'official' message in our school web page .
We've been working this afternoon trying to rescue what's left of our computers, beamers etc and still have to assess the damage done.
So I'm sorry to say next Wednesday, Thursay and Friday classes have been cancelled.
Now we are definitely torn and homeless. But let's be positive and think that every cloud has a silver lining.

	Natalia Imbruglia - Torn .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Please check the EOI Garraf webpage for official updates on the situation.

The answer, my friend, may be blowing in the wind. Who knows?

*** Update Oct 13th:
As you can see, I've posted a slide show so that you can have an idea of the damage. This is not going to be repaired anytime soon. Our laptops and beamers are OK. We are the trolley teachers.

Fantasy Festival time

Imagine your are nine years old and your favourite hero knocks on your classroom door. That's what happened to Beatrice Delap, who wrote to Captain Jack Sparrow asking for help to raise a mutiny against her teachers at Meridian Primary School in Greenwich, south-east London.
Watch the video, read the story HERE ... and depending on who you call I'll join you in the mutiny.

• a heartthrob: a famous man, often a singer or an actor, who is attractive to many women
• to turn up: to arrive or appear somewhere, usually unexpectedly or in a way that was not planned

And a tribute to John Lennon in his 70th birthday

	The Beatles - Rain .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Here his 10 best songs (according to The Huffington Post) on video.

*** Update October 10th

OOOps, and a tribute to Solomon Burke, the king of soul ("everybody, needs somebody"...remember?), who passed away this morning in Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, on his way to a sold out show.

Minimal pairs

Sorry I don't want to repeat blog entries but the other day we were talking about pronunciation, and I think this story is particularly funny and illustrative of how a sound can completely change the meaning of a word:

These words are called “minimal pairs”, and here (and in your multi-rom) you have many other good examples:

http://www.shiporsheep.com/page1.html

(By the way, sorry about the dirty words -I hope nobody takes offence ... and thanks Anna, happily living in London this year, for sending the link last year).

And now, talking about pronunciation and current events at the same time, in this Daily Express cartoon you can see that problems are pretty much the same in Britain as in Barcelona. The lady is reading a newspaper that says "Yobs rule Britain", but you know that Job/Yob are two different things, don't you?