Merry Christmas

Happy Christmas Eve and Merry Christmas! I hope you have a happy holidays with your family and friends and an amazing New Year!

I also hope that Santa give you a lot of gifts tonight , so I made a little video with the song "Santa Claus is coming to town", singed by Frank Sinatra.

It's just a little Christmas Carol video to wish you Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

See you next year, and I hope you like it!

The digital Story of Nativity (or Christmas 2.0)

This original viral video has probably already reached you through Facebook or some other social network, but I thought it was cool so I'm embeeding it here.

Reported Speech

Here we have 3 great power point presentations created by a teacher called Antonio Romero who very generously uploaded them in Slideshare for everybody to use. I'm sure we can all benefit from it.

We'll be looking at:

1. Reported speech statements
2. Reported speech questions and suggestions
3. Reported speech commands

Reported Speech I: Statments

View more presentations from Antonio Romero.

Reported Speech III: Questions and Suggestions

View more presentations from Antonio Romero.

Reported Speech II: Commands

View more presentations from Antonio Romero.

If you feel you need to revise verbal tenses, please see related posts below:

• Grammar exercises online for further practice (1st term)
• Future tenses: explanatory video on YouTube
• Past verbal tenses
• Verbal tenses revision chart

Funny answer-phone message

This week’s homework assignment is a video related to education.

This is a real answer-phone message of a school in Australia, but thanks to the video you can read the transcript of what is being said  in the message. 
The first 30 seconds is an explanation of the context in which the message was created and then you can listen to the message itself.

It is thought-provoking and funny from the content point of view, but also it is full of interesting language and collocations from the linguistic point of view. I hope you can benefit from it, next class you can tell me any interesting vocabulary you wrote down. 

Feel free to leave a message below! 

How would you describe this message? Realistic? Exaggerated? Cynical? Ironic? Do parents justify too many things about their children? Do your own parents easily justify your absences or used to do so when you were younger? What do you think?

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Vocabulary work:

1. a policy requiring students and parents to be responsible for...
2. teacher's are being sued by parents
3. failing grades / passing grades
4. automated message
5. make excuses
6. to swear at staff members
7. raise your child
8. the teacher's fault
9. your child's lack of effort
10. move to another country

The Lady Gaga Phenomenon

This week in Vilaweb newspaper there is an article about "The Lady Gaga Phenomenon".

Do you like her? Would you have liked to be in Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona last week?

Men should do 50% of housework

As far as I am concerned, most of the women wish their husband would help with housework. As I see it, the men should do it.

Firstly, I think in today’s society, there is equality of the sexes, women works like men. Now, women aren’t the ones who only do the housework but they have had such huge change as well. They earn money too, sometime they earn more than men! They share house spendings with their husbands, so it is clear that the husband must help their wife to do their housework. Furthermore, I believe that doing the housework is really simple.

Secondly, in my opinion, they are also having the responsibility to do it because he is a family member. If the husband has time, most of the wifes hope they will help them. If men love their wifes enough, they won’t leave their wife doing a lot of housework alone afterward women work hard.

To sum up, if men love their wifes enough, they should do some housework. Don’t let the women get so tired!!

My opinion about FaceBook

The social networking world is getting bigger, actually, each time everything is being computerized and everything is shared online; photos, music, videos, etc.

FaceBook is one of the most popular social networking, along with Twitter, but each has different aspects that stand out. FaceBook, its purpose was to share your pictures with your friends, so that they could comment on your pictures. With the growth of this great FB company, has also grown and evolved, now not only to share and discuss your photos and those of your friends, you can now share videos, play games, organize parties, chat and many things that I have not discovered or that I didn't mentioned yet.

I'm an active user of Facebook, but not only of FB, also of other social networks, because FB only plays a role and it does pretty well. As I mentioned, their role is to share pictures, but not only share and its ok, you can tag your friends in pictures, create albums, organize, etc. Although it has interesting features for me is a bit ... dull.

Now I will compare it with another social network, where I'm very active; it is Plurk. Although It has different functions, I want to mention that Plurk is more entertaining, I mean, you can earn "Karma" and when you get 100 "Karma", you are like a veteran in Plurk, whereas in FB you don't earn anything, you could be considered your friends as points, but I don't see the point in adding people that you didn't know, and consider them like your friends.

I guess on this side, I believe that FB is boring, because there is some competition to reach a level. Also, I must stress that the social networks that I have compared, Plurk and FB, have different functions.

To sum up, FB does what it has to do, a social network to share your memories captured with your camera and comment on such moments, but still missing something that will make it better.

My Ideal Home

The house where I live now, it's not very large, but it's comfortable, welcoming, I have everything that I need and it's my home, but of course it is never enough.

When I have my own home, I would have a normal house, not too big, not very small, normal size, It should have 3 rooms, one for me, one for guests and the last would be my place of work or study, also a living / dining room, a kitchen, a washing room and, of course, the bathroom.

The location, I wish it were in constant contact with society and the city. Close to all necessary places, supermarkets, clinics, shopping centers, public transport, etc. Because, if I need something urgent, or go somewhere, I have all that I want near me.

In addition to a good location in the city, it would also be great if the house was close to my workplace. I would not spend money on public transport or fuel (if I have car).

Furthermore, for me, my ideal home would be a place with everything you need close, but it is clear, if I want to relax and have fun it would be better the mountains or the beach. To live, I'd be much better in the city.

My First Date

My first date was 4 years ago, I was 13 and I was in high school, I was still living in Peru.

I met a girl who lived in the same area as my cousin, we started talking and became friends; from that moment I began to like her.
One day I called her home and she answered, I talked with her for a while and I wanted to ask her out and go to the cinema, spent a few minutes and I told her. She accepted I was really excited; we arranged to meet for the Friday in the afternoon of that week.

When the day came, I was really nervous, I wanted to go, but at the same time I didn’t, because I wanted to tell her my feelings, until I get the mood and I went.
We went to the cinema and we saw a comedy movie, we had fun watching the movie, then we went to eat at a fast food restaurant and we spoke, we walked down the street and we started to fool around until we kissed. After that we didn't say anything and I accompanied her home and I left.

A few days later we were chatting in Messenger and I told my cousin that she was the girl that I liked, he told me that I should tell her something, even he told me words to say her. I told her that and she agreed to be my girlfriend.
We dated almost 1 and a half year, we finished well, and now we are good friends.

Opinions of London

London is one of the most visited cities by tourists.But what to do like about London? Can we identify the main problems they have while visiting the city?

There are several positive things that tourists mention. For example, night life is excellent. There are world famous musicals, classical orchestras plus concerts for all musicals tastes.There are many places to eat and a great variety of international food,too. Travel in the capital can be expensive,although there are the cheap saver tickets, especially for families.

However, there are many things which tourists would like to improve. For example, the accommodation is expensive but this is probably the same in all capitals. Tourists not always feel safe. Public transport costs more and they think the underground is old and expensive.

To sum up, on the one hand tourists find London an exciting capital city with lots of things to do and see.On the other hand, they think it's too expensive.

Watching you

Hey guys! I found a really beautiful song about the relationship between a father and son, and I tried to make a great video. I don't know why, but this video was so difficult to make for me, so I'm not really happy with the final result. For this reason, I also will share with you the official videoclip and another video about the characters of Full house (Padres forzosos) Jesse and his twins Nicky and Alex, its a really beautiful video. Well, watch what you prefer! Hope you like it! PS: my video has subtitles in Spanish and English

Mi video:



Videoclip:



A fan video (full house):

Rafa Nadal: From Right to Left

Hi guys!

I found this video a few days ago and I want to share it with you.

This video is about Rafa Nadal, who was close to win the tittle of Master of the tennis but lost against Roger Federer a few days ago. In this video, Rafa talks about how he passed from right-handed to left-handed to play tennis.

The video is in Spanish with English subtitles.

Enjoy!

MY NEIGHBOURHOOD

Living with neighbours can be difficult. We are free to live wherever we want and there are people with different personalities and not always compatible with each other.

In my view, relationships are complicated specially when the neighbourhood is full of different cultures. It's racism, sometimes it's the people who live there and sometimes it's the immigrants, the problem is that both don't respect other cultures. Iwish it weren't so.

When racism doesn't exist, the problems don't disappear. Neighbours will always argue for one reason or another.

I think that people wouldn't have problems, if they understood each other, but it's almost impossible. we should try to live our life and respect the life of others.

HOUSE HUNTERS, YOU'RE LUCKY!

Would yo like to live inn a warm attic in the centre of Badalona?

It's a friendly three-bedroom apartment. It has a bathroom, a kitchen and a spacious living room with a balcony that has a breathtaking view of the beach. Fortunately, during the morning it's very light, especially in spring, because no block of flats is as tall as it.

The block of flats is right in the middle of the town so it's very convenient for public transport, the tube and the train station are a five-minute walk. It's perfectly situated near a lively area of restaurants and shops but it isn't too noisy because it isn't crowded like a city.

This apartment is ideal for a family with two or three children and no problem with pets, the neighbourhood is used to it.

The competiton between Spanish TV channels.

Lately, two of the most important TV channels in Spain have started a war for the audience. They take it so seriously, that they don’t even care to pay a penalty to change the schedule. Personally, I think that this is stupid. Doing this, they just get people confused, and those people don't watch anything because they don't know what is on TV now.

Firstly, TV is for entertainment, not to make people get stressed because they have to be all the time trying to find out what is on TV tonight, or how they can do it to watch their two favourites programs that now are emitted on the same day.

At first, channels just took care to put a new programme the day that it could compete with the programme from the other channel. But now, this has become a total obsession. For example, the channel Telecinco, changed the broadcast programme the day before so as to compete with the other channel.

Secondly, and for me the most worrying, channels try to make new programs like programs that have more viewers on the other channel. The bad thing is that the programs with more viewers are the “heart” programs. In these programs there are "journalists" talking about people's personal life, who sometimes go there voluntarily and earn money to talk about their own life.

As I see it, they should be ashamed because they just make trash TV and that is making kids irrespectful to the other people.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm so tired to see every day the same programs, programs that I hate actually, and see that there isn’t anybody who does something to change that, except one or two programs that in fact have even been denounced by those channels. We have to make something to change it.

In conclusion, TV channels are only concerned to make more and more money, and they forget that there are things more important like being a good example for kids.

A NIGHTMARE JOURNEY

A few days ago, I had to go to school but I woke up so late. I had to run but I was late. When I arrived no one was waiting at the door, which was closed. I realized that It was holiday and I didn't have to go to school until the next day.

Afterwards, when I decided to come back, it started to rain. I didn't have an umbrella and the bus stop was near. When Ihad walked a few minutes Ilooked into my wallet, I didn't have enough money for the bus. I went home on foot and when Iarrived I was completely wet.

That night was the worst night in my life, I caught a bad cold. The next day I couldn't go to school and all this because I'm very clumsy.

A week holiday break in March

This year a new law been passer in Catalunya that adds a week holiday in the second quarter, in return we start the course a week earlier in September.
That is good news because the second quarter is the longest quarter of the entire school year and this is the one which has got less festivities for students to enjoy a relaxing day apart from the weekends. This week is a good opportunity to relax and re-start the quarter with ne forces that will be useful for students so as not to be so tired mentally and they will be able to study with more agility and they will be able to get better marks.
Besides, the fact that they take us away a week from three consecutive months doesn't affect us too much but that they placed this week in mid-year after many months of study may involve the change between stress and lower marks and relax and better marks.
Despite this, this reform also has negative things.
In Barcelona, the week holiday is in March and a few weeks after it there are Easter holidays, while in the rest of Catalunya this week is in February and therefor the quarter is more streamlined.
Besides, only students and teachers enjoy this week but not parents. If both parents work they have a big problem to deal with their children during the week holiday break.
In brief, I think it is a good measure for students but I wish this week would be more centralized in the quarter and it would be in mid-February instead of March.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/spa/clay_shirky_how_cellphones_twitter_facebook_can_make_history.html

I want to share with you all this video that I have found in the web. The topic of this video is the social networks, I leave this video so that you can see it.

I hope that you like, it treats about how social media can do history.

MY OPINION ABOUT FACEBOOK

Nowadays everything is easier with new technologies, we can communicate with foreign friends, share our photos, experiences...
But what about social networks, specifically Facebook?

I would say that Facebook was set up by Mark Zuckerberg in order to connect with family and friends. This social network is spreading more, specially among teenagers.

Personally I think Facebook is fairly important, we can do anything online of all issues but we must be careful with privacy, we aren't famous but If we aren't in control of our privacity, strangers will be able to see our photos, our wall, publications as well.
I wish is didn't happen!

In my view, we should all pay attention to the small print in social network's contract, even if we're busy.
It's widely known that there are people who spend a lot of time in front of the computer. As I see it, it isn't suitable, we can enjoy more meeting our friends.

To sump up, I want to recommend the Facebook's film to people if they are interesting about this matter.
It's worth watching!!