Jun

17

Junior 1 - June 16th

June 17, 2008 | | Leave a Comment

Hello there,

So, I hope you’ve been practising your pronunciation after what we talked about yesterday. Remember and practise the UPS and DOWNS of the language. The rhythm of English is very different from the rhythm of Portuguese, and this makes a big difference in terms of understanding and speaking clearly.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t our picture in the newspaper today, but at least we had some fun taking the picture, right?

Anyway, don’t forget to do your homework for next class:

- Workbook - Unit 5 - Lessons 3 and 4.

And remember that your composition is for next Monday, all right?

Cheers!

Jun

17

Youngster 1 - June 16th

June 17, 2008 | | 2 Comments

Dear students,

The final tests are coming. We have two more classes before the final written test, so, please, make sure you study hard, OK?

Today we had an activity on the board recycling PRESENT SIMPLE TENSE - affirmative, interrogative and negative form -, ADVERBS OF FREQUENCY (always, usually, often, sometimes, seldom/hardly ever, never), SUBJECT and OBJECT PRONOUNS and how to form questions.

I noticed that you still have some problems with that. What about trying it out here? Just leave a comment as the answer and I’ll correct it, all right?

1. Write QUESTIONS for the underlined parts of the answers:

a. Mike always goes to the club.

b. Susan and Amanda go to the gym because they want to be fit.

c. My school is in Asa Norte.

d. I start school at 7:15.

e. My sister works in the U.S.

2. Write the INTERROGATIVE form of the sentences below.

a. There is a student in the classroom.

b. Stephen likes pizza.

c. My brother and my sister go to school by bus.

3. Put the adverb of frequency in the right place.

a. I study English in the afternoon. (ALWAYS)

b. We are late to our English class. (NEVER)

c. Mike goes swimming at the weekend. (SELDOM)

4. Rewrite the sentences substituting the underlined words for the correct PRONOUN (Subject or Object).

a. Your friends walk to school with my brother and I.

b. Does David know my sister?

c. His mother is in his school now talking to our principal, Ms. White.

5. Write the NEGATIVE form of the sentences below.

a. Kelly is very intelligent.

b. Linda and Clark usually go to the cinema on Sundays.

c. Anthony rides his bike in the afternoon.

 

HOMEWORK FOR NEXT CLASS

- Workbook pages 52 and 53

- COMPOSITION - rewrite the composition correcting the mistakes. Please, bring me both copies!

 

Cheers!

Jun

11

Junior 1 - June 11th

June 11, 2008 | | Leave a Comment

Hello there,

Just a quick post to inform you of your homework.

- Grammar Booster - Unit 5 - Lesson 2

- Workbook - Unit 5 - Lesson 2

Make sure you also recycle the usage of articles, ok?

Cheers,

Rick

Jun

9

Junior 1 - June 11th

June 9, 2008 | | Leave a Comment

Hello there guys,

So, what happened to the boys in this group? I had only the girls today. Come on guys, you have to show up!

Today we recycled some vocabulary from unit 5. I know you have to study for Sigma tests, but I still expect you to study English, OK?

Make sure you remember the vocabulary we recycled today:

  • Are you ready to order?
  • I’m in the mood for …
  • I feel like …

Hmmm… come to think of it, we couldn’t work much further, huh? Please, make sure you use your dictionary and always check the vocabulary. Maybe the grammar bit is not that hard, but vocabulary is extremely important.

Please, check the Grammar Booster of Unit 5 Lesson 1. There are nice things about non-count nouns there.

HOMEWORK

- Composition - Describing / Advertising a gadget —- DEADLINE: June 11th (Next class)

Have a look at the description we have of the COMMUNICATOR (Unit 4) and use it as an inspiration. Don’t forget to use the vocabulary from unit 4, as well as the grammar structures you have learned so far, OK? That means you may use PRESENT SIMPLE, PRESENT CONTINUOUS and all the rest.

I’m looking forward to reading your composition.

Oh, did you enjoy the song today? I know you told me you don’t know PEARL JAM, but that’s a classic! Come on!!!

Cheers,

Rick

Jun

9

Youngster 1 - June 9th

June 9, 2008 | | Leave a Comment

Hello there students,

Today we finally started Unit 5 and we studied OBJECT PRONOUNS. Just so you remember, they come in the position of the object of your sentence (after the verb) and can substitute nouns just like subject pronouns. Can you still remember all subject and object pronouns? Here you go:

SUBJECT PRONOUNS - I, you, he, she, it, we, you, they

OBJECT PRONOUNS - me, you, him, her, it, us, you, them

How do they work? Well, let’s have a look at the sentences below:

  • Jack likes Susan.

In the example above, JACK is the subject. That means we can substitute JACK for a subject pronoun.

  • He likes Susan.

Now SUSAN, on the other hand, is the object. Consequently, we have to use the appropriate OBJECT PRONOUN.

  • He likes her.

If we change the order of the people, this is what we have:

  • Susan likes Jack.
  • She likes him.

Make sure you have a look at this in your book, ok?

HOMEWORK

- Composition - A DAY IN MY LIFE

Write a composition describing a typical day in your life. What time do you get up? Do you have breakfast with your parent or alone? What do you eat? What time do you start school? What time do you finish school? Do you like going to school? Why? What do you do in the afternoon? What about the evening? Please, include as many details as possible. Don’t forget to use TIME and PRESENT SIMPLE.

Deadline for the composition: June 11th (next class)

Cheers,

Rick

Jun

8

Valentine’s Day is drawing nearer

June 8, 2008 |  Tagged | Leave a Comment

Have a look at this article which tks about love. I found it quite intriguing. What’s your take on it?

Thursday, Jan. 17, 2008

Crazy Love

By Steven Pinker

 

Why do fools fall in love? And when we do fall, why do our faculties of reason–and decency and self-respect and even right and wrong–sometimes not come along? For that matter, why would anyone reciprocate the love of a partner who has come so romantically unhinged?

The thought of a loved one can turn our wits upside down, ratchet up our heart rate, impel us to slay dragons and write corny songs. We may become morose, obsessive, even violent. Lovesickness has been blamed on the moon, on the devil, but whatever is behind it, it doesn’t look like the behavior of a rational animal trying to survive and reproduce. But might there be a method to this amorous madness?

During the decades that the concept of human nature was taboo in academia, many scholars claimed that romantic love was a recent social construction. It was an invention of the Hallmark-card poets or Hollywood scriptwriters or, in one theory, medieval troubadours extolling the adulterous love of a knight for a lady.

For anyone who has been under love’s spell, these theories seem preposterous, and so they are. Nothing so primal could have been created out of thin air as a mere custom or product. To the contrary, romantic love is a human universal. In 1896 a Kwakiutl Indian in southern Alaska wrote the lament “Fire runs through my body–the pain of loving you,” which could be the title of a bad power ballad today. Similar outpourings of passion can be found all over the world from those with broken hearts.

Romantic infatuation is different from both raw lust and the enduring commitment that keeps lovers together long after their besottedness has faded. We all know the symptoms: idealized thoughts of the loved one; swings of mood from ecstasy to despair, insomnia and anorexia; and the intense need for signs of reciprocation. Even the brain chemistry is different: lust is fueled (in both sexes) by testosterone, and companionate love by vasopressin and oxytocin. Romantic passion taps the same dopamine system that is engaged by other obsessive drives like drug addiction.

For all this, there may be a paradoxical logic to romantic love. Imagine a world without it, a world of rational shoppers looking for the best available mate. Unsentimental social scientists and veterans of the singles scene know that this world is not entirely unlike our own. People shop for the most desirable person who will accept them, and that is why most marriages pair a bride and a groom of roughly equal desirability. The 10s marry the 10s, the 9s marry the 9s and so on. That is exactly what should happen in a marketplace where you want the best price you can get (the other person) for the goods you’re offering (you).

But we also know this isn’t the whole picture. Most daters find themselves at some point with a match who ought to be perfect but with whom for some reason the chemistry isn’t there. Why do the principles of smart shopping give us only the rough statistics of mate choice, not the final pick?

The reason is that smart shopping isn’t enough; both parties have to close the deal. Somewhere in this world lives the best-looking, richest, smartest person who would settle for you. But this ideal match is hard to find, and you may die single if you insist on waiting for such a mate to show up. So you choose to set up house with the best person you have found so far.

Your mate has gone through the same reasoning, which leaves you both vulnerable. The law of averages says that someday one of you will meet an even more desirable person; maybe a newly single Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie will move in next door. If you are always going for the best you can get, at that point you will dump your partner pronto. But your partner would have invested time, child rearing and forgone opportunities in the relationship by that point. Anticipating this, your mate would have been foolish to enter the relationship in the first place, and the same is true for you. In this world of rational actors, neither of you could thus take the chance on the other. What could make you trust the other person enough to make that leap?

One answer is, Don’t accept a partner who wanted you for rational reasons to begin with. Look for someone who is emotionally committed to you because you are you. If the emotion moving that person is not triggered by your objective mate value, that emotion will not be alienated by someone who comes along with greater mate value than yours. And there should be signals that the emotion is not faked, showing that the person’s behavior is under the control of the involuntary parts of the brain–the ones in charge of heart rate, breathing, skin flushing and so on. Does this emotion sound familiar?

This explanation of infatuation was devised by the economist Robert Frank on the basis of the work of Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling. Social life is a series of promises, threats and bargains; in those games it sometimes pays to sacrifice your self-interest and control. An eco-protester who handcuffs himself to a tree guarantees that his threat to impede the logger is credible. The prospective home buyer who makes an unrecoverable deposit guarantees that her promise to buy the house is credible. And suitors who are uncontrollably smitten are in effect guaranteeing that their pledge of love is credible.

And this gets us to the dark side of romance. Threats, no less than promises, must be backed up by signs of commitment. A desperate lover in danger of being abandoned may resort to threatening his wife or girlfriend (yes, his; it’s usually a man). The best way to prevent her from calling his bluff is in fact not to bluff–to be the kind of hothead who is crazy enough to do it. Of course, if he does make good on the threat, everyone loses (which is why the judicial system must make good on its threat to punish violent thugs).

This perverse logic of promises and threats lies behind the observation on romance offered by George Bernard Shaw: “When we want to read of the deeds that are done for love, whither do we turn? To the murder column.”

Pinker is the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and the author, most recently, of The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1704692,00.html

Jun

6

Typo…

June 6, 2008 | | Leave a Comment

Typo on diplomas embarrasses Ohio principal

Fri Jun 6, 3:55 AM ET

A Cleveland-area principal says he’s embarrassed his students got proof of their “educaiton” on their high school diplomas.

Westlake High School officials misspelled “education” on the diplomas distributed last weekend. It’s been the subject of mockery on local radio.

Principal Timothy Freeman says he sent back the diplomas once to correct another error. When the diplomas came back, no one bothered to check things they thought were right the first time.

The publisher has reprinted the diplomas a second time and sent them to the 330 graduates.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080606/ap_on_fe_st/odd_diploma_typo

Jun

2

Junior 1 - June 2nd

June 2, 2008 | | Leave a Comment

Hello everybody,

So, today we started talking about food. What a nice topic, huh?! Just make sure you don’t come hungry to class.

Today we covered the TOPIC PREVIEW for unit 5 and we also had a song - BUBBLY. I hope you enjoyed it.

HOMEWORK

- Workbook - Unit 5 Topic Preview (exercises 1 and 2 only)

And here goes the video and the lyrics of the song:

Bubbly

See you Wednesday,

Rick

Jun

2

Youngster 1 - June 2nd

June 2, 2008 | | Leave a Comment

Hello there,

I hope our talk today was profitable and I expect to see some changes starting next class, ok? Can I count on you guys?

Don’t forget to do the GRAMMAR REVIEW for unit 4. And don’t forget there is a QUIZ - UNIT 4, next class.

See you Wednesday,

Rick

May

30

CAE - May 30th

May 30, 2008 | | Leave a Comment

Hello there sailors,

Today we didn’t really have time for much apart from correcting homework and doing a mock test - Reading.

As the CAE exam is just around the corner, I’d like to ask those of you who are going to take the exam to walk the extra mile and do some reading. You can visit any website that publishes texts written in GOOD English. My personal recommendation is the Guardian Unlimited - www.guardian.co.uk

HOMEWORK

Exam maximiser - page 120 on. There is a practice exam at the end of the Maximiser. You can do papers 1, 2 and 3. You can email me your writings for paper 2, ok? And feel free to do more than only 2. One thing I need you to do when writing is timing yourselves. Do not forget you only have 2 hours to write two 250-word text, all right?

Check the mock test you did in class today at home, before I give you the answers.

Enjoy the weekend!!

Cheers,

Rick