TESTS 1-2 FINAL MARKS

Hello!

How are you spending your winter holidays?

I simply love them!

I'm sharing a link to the document in which you will be able to check the marks you've got in Tests 1 and 2, during the April - June term.

Click here to see your marks.

I will see you soon.

The arts

Hello!

These are the paintings we used in class. Look at the paintings again and comments on the features which you find most important.

• What do you like most about the painting?
• If there anything you don't particularly like about it?
• Would you buy either of them?
• If so, where in your house would you hang it?

The Card Players

Paul Cézanne

Bathers at Asnières 

Georges Pierre Seurat 

What do you think of this painting? 

What type of painting is it?

If you had the money, would you buy it?
It is called Women of Algiers, by Pablo Picasso.

Find information about it on the web to know more about it.

Read the following news story. Would you have paid that amount of money for it?

Illustrating the difference

Hello!

Today I came across this picture on my Twitter account. 

Which of these two situations best describes you today?

https://twitter.com/bbcle/status/613645834262069248/photo/1

Listen up!

Hello!

As you may well know, listening is one of the four macro skills we need to develop as we are learning a new language. For some people, this may prove to be a daunting experience, but is this really so?

Read the extract from a book below and give your opinions on this matter.

Reasons for listening

Most students want to be able to understand what people are saying to them in English, either face-to-face, on TV or on the radio, in theatres and cinemas, or on tape, CDs or other recorded media. Anything we can do to make that easier will be useful for them. This is especially important since, as we said on page 78, the way people speak is often significantly different from the way they write.

Listening is good for our students’ pronunciation, too, in that the more they hear and understand English being spoken, the more they absorb appropriate pitch and intonation, stress and the sounds of both individual words and those which blend together in connected speech. Listening texts are good pronunciation models, in other words, and the more students listen, the better they get, not only at understanding speech, but also at speaking themselves. Indeed, it is worth remembering that successful spoken communication depends not just on our ability to speak, but also on the effectiveness of the way we listen.

One of the main sources of listening for students is the voice of their teacher (see page 37 for a discussion of the way teachers should talk to students). However, it is important, where possible, for students to be exposed to more than just that one voice, with all its idiosyncrasies. There is nothing wrong with an individual teacher’s voice, of course, but as we saw on page 79, there are significant regional variations in the way people speak English in a country like Britain. For example, the ‘a’ of ‘bath’ is pronounced like the vowel sound in ‘park’ in some parts of Britain, but like the ‘a’ in ‘cat’ in others. In grammar, certain varieties of English within the British Isles use ‘done’ in sentences like ‘I done it yesterday’ where other varieties would find such tense usage unacceptable. In vocabulary, ‘happen’ is a verb in standard southern English, but in parts of Yorkshire (in northern England) it is often used as an adverb to mean ‘maybe’ or ‘perhaps’ in sentences such as ‘Happen it’ll rain’. And if there are many regional varieties in just one country, it is obvious that the different Englishes around the world will be many and varied. Students need to be exposed to different Englishes, but teachers need to exercise judgment about the number (and degree) of the varieties which they hear. A lot will depend on the students’ level of competence, and on what variety or varieties they have so far been exposed to.  (Harmer: 133)

From: Harmer, J. How to Teach English (2007). Pearson Education Limited.

1. How do you feel about listening?
2. What type of listening activities are you usually involved with in your everyday life?
3. Do you ever listen to English outside your class?
4. What do you do to cope with the difficulties that listening presents to you?

Evelyn Glennie

How to truly listen

Watch the video. 
As you listen, take down information to answer the questions below, which will serve as ideas for class discussion.

• If you want to watch the video without subtitles, click here.

• If you prefer to watch the video with subtitles in Spanish, click here.

• If the neither of the links above seem to work, click herehttps://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/my-drive.

Example:
What does she aim to teach the world?
She wants to teach the world how to listen.

1. What point does she make about reading music, about its translation and interpretation?
2. Why does she say she can ‘get more dynamic with less effort’?
3. What does she say about the time you need to get to know the instrument?
4. What difference does she refer to as regards the way percussionists and musicians play the same piece of music?
5. How long has she been playing?
6. What is different about the way she ‘listens’ to sounds?
7. What did her early training sessions consist of?
8. What reasons did she give to express her disagreement when she was not accepted at the Royan Academy of Music in London?
9. What happened when she was finally accepted there?
10. What does she say about current music halls?
11. Why does she insist on the idea of giving time to a piece of music?
12. What does she say is one of the best things about being a musician?
13. What does she illustrate through the example of imitating rain by clapping?
14. What did her first instructor ask her to do about the drum? Why?
15. What does your emotional baggage do to you in a music hall?
16. What is her final piece of advice for people going to concerts?

WRITING: CORRECTION CODE

Hello!

You are going to read a sample answer for the essay you wrote about living in the countryside. As you will see, it contains example mistakes with the corresponding clues so that you can work out the best way to correct them yourselves.
To see the sample answer, click here.

Eat your heart out

Hello again!

This time I am inviting you to take a look at webpage which shows what people from different parts of the world eat on a typical day.

Click here to have access to the article.

Which of them do you identify with?
Share your views.