New Materials (kind of a test, really...)

Need to practise your Reported Speech?

Here's a link to some GoogleDocs for you to download. I have also placed the link in the Classroom materials section for easy access.

International Women's Day

There are so many international days that sometimes we forget some really important dates. One of them is the International Women's Day (IWD), a day -8th march- when we celebrate women's achievements in different fields throughout history.

Even if you are a man, please remember that half the world's population are women, and they share with you the right to be respected as human beings and treated on equal terms.

Do the activities on this site and practise your reading... You will find crosswords, quizzes and also send E-cards from there. Surprise your colleagues --or better still, your teacher!!!

English with Cris

This post should actually be in the links section, but I think Cristina's English blog deserves to be mentioned here because of its freshness and general quality (even though she says she's just "starting"). I am sure that I will visit it very often, and you too can improve your skills if you browse it regularly.
Check it out!

Dickens, Dickens, Dickens...

It is everywhere: on 7th February 2012 (that's tomorrow) we will be celebrating  the 200th anniversary of his birth in Portsmouth, England.

Charles Dickens was (and still is) one of the most famous English writers, and his books are among the best-known in all English literature. You certainly know Oliver Twist and David Copperfield, but other titles such as Little Dorritt, The Pickwick Papers, Great Expectations or A Tale of Two Cities are considered masterpieces of 19th century book writing and sold by the thousands even today.

He had a special fondness for poor people, and he himself suffered hard times in his early life. His novels describe the Victorian age better than many history books and are a good source of knowledge about that period. The best way to celebrate his birthday, then, would be to read some of his works.

You can also visit any of the many websites that are dedicated to Charles Dickens. The official anniversary website is here. You will find lots of links to TV and radio shows there, for example.

And here there are activities suitable for students.

You can read the full Spanish version of A Christmas Carol here.

Enjoy your Dickens day :-)

¡Qué perfume de flor de cuchillo!

In his poem "Canción del Jinete" Federico García Lorca identifies blood with flowers. He is not alone there: during the month of november, it is traditional in English-speaking countries to wear a poppy in remembrance of the soldiers fallen in the great World Wars  and other conflicts of last century.

During the First World War there was intense fighting in Flanders, (west Belgium). The battlefields were devastated and covered in mud and dirt. People died and so did plants and trees. But when spring came, red poppies flowered and brought hope to the soldiers who had survived the winter. Their red colour could be seen as a symbol of the blood of the dead, and their germination was also a symbol of the will to live on.

John McCrae wrote his poem "In Flanders Fields" in 1915, where he speaks of the poppies growing in the battlefield. And Moina Michael replied with "We Shall Keep the Faith" in 1918, promising to wear a poppy in honour of their dead. The tradition had began.

I would recommend you to read both poems and pray for peace.

The European Day of Languages

We missed it again! :-(
Last 26 September we should have celebrated the linguistic diversity that exists in our continent. Unfortunately we couldn't prepare things in advance and we did not do any special activity. So WE ARE SORRY!!!

If you want, though, you can check out this link where they give us some basic facts about all European languages (they say). Speakers of Asturian may miss some references to our local llingua; nothing is perfect, as it seems :-)  .

Kubla Khan and Coleridge's handwriting

Welcome to the first post of this course.

Today we have been discussing surrealism in writing with BA1A. Coleridge's Kubla Khan was mentioned as an example of a poem composed while sleeping.  Jorge Luis Borges mentions that Kubla Khan had Xanadu built after dreaming about the palace, so Xanadu appears to be a place that first comes up in dreams for artists to work on. Interesting!

Here are the first lines of the poem:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree :

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.
                                           (lines 1-5)

Now look at a sample of the poet's writings on the left. How would you describe his personality by studying his handwriting? Was he arrogant, outgoing, intelligent, shy... ? Was he pessimistic or optimistic? Use what you learnt in today's class and try to guess.

You can read more about Samuel Taylor Coleridge here.