Happy 2011!

That's what everybody in English speaking countries will be singing at midnight 31st Dec. (and at 7 AM Jan 1st too) but few really know what the words mean. Its a traditional Scottish song, with words written by Scottish poet Robert Burns, probably inspired by some traditional verse. HERE is the translation into English.

So happy new year everybody!

Merry Christmas

The time has come for Christmas greetings and I'm always quite at a loss as to what to post. So this year it's going to be an invitation to come to the EOI celebration tomorrow (lots of food, drink, live music, and a good laugh)...

Update Thursday 23rd
Thanks everybody who came to the party yesterday, it was really nice to see you all there eating, drinking and having a good time. So I'll change this post a bit and embed this e-Christmas 2.0 sent by Mireia (4C).



Some music ...

	BB King - Christmas Celebration
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

And I'd like to repeat a classic from last year:

Stephen Fry is a well known British actor, writer, and comedian.
Here's the script if you need it (some aspects you've been working on this year highlighted in yellow) .

I wish you a merry Christmas and all the best for the coming year !

Shoot this Bear?

This is, to my mind, a great piece of advertising:




Type anything you want ...Kiss? Talk? Drink?....? and help the hunter rewrite the story!
Make sure you have "English" selected in your language settings (bottom of the page), or click here for the English version.

What is Beauty?

For me, beauty is being able to draw like this!

Denis Dutton is a philosophy professor. Animator Andrew Park has illustrated Denis Dutton's theory on beauty -that art, music and other beautiful things are a need built into our systems, and a core part of human nature with deep evolutionary origins.

*If the drawings and words are not enough, you can turn on the subtitles in English or, alternatively, you can also get the video from 'English Central' , with its hide/show script and dictionary.

Buy Nothing Day

As we were saying the other day, time flies. We were sunbathing on the beach a couple of weeks ago and now Christmas is just round the corner. And what is Christmas about (apart from family getting together, love, and all that)? Shopping, of course. In order to make people aware that we live in a consumer society (really?) and that you don't actually need half of what you buy, Buy nothing day is celebrated every Nov. 27th (OK, it was last week, but you can also make it a 'buy nothing week'. 'Buy nothing day' tries to counterbalance the craze of Black Friday, the day that signals the start of the shopping season in the USA, and that can be as dangerous as this.

This week we are going to talk about shopping, business, work, AND connectors (in order to, although, in spite of, etc.) So before you fall into the Christmas shopping frenzy (in spite of the crisis) think that you can concentrate on learning English -it's safer and you can save money!

Breathe in Breathe out

Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com

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!