FLYING FISH

NB2
- Homework: Grammar, inits 47 about questions and 97 about linking words.
- Speaking: With photos with the handout I gave you to state your ideas and follow a logical order.This activity took us a great deal of time.
- Book Review: In spite of being posted in this blofg since October, nobody didn´t even have a look at the rules and ideas . I made copies and we went thorugh them in detail. Here you have the BOOK REVIEWS.

NI2
-Homework: Grammar, unit 24. Wk.p. 17
- Speaking: Photo description and mistake correction.
- Vocabulary: St.B. p. 148. Science and Technology with very useful words of today´s life like modem, memory stick, a book mark and so on. We did the activities and then you tested your partner´s memory.
- Speaking: St.B. p. 27 Science and computers.
- Phonetics: St.B.p. 27 the "Y" sound which can be pronounced in several ways . Listen to some statements and check your pronunciation mistakes.
- Homework: Speaking: Describe a photo .

Thank you Alberto for your song.Your contributions are always welcome. I wish my students did the same!

MIMIC OCTOPUS

NB2
- Homework: Grammar, units 45,46 about questions
- Grammar: Grammar, unit 47 , more questions: what colour, what size, how tall..
- Grammar: Linking words: and, or, so because. Unit 97. A story to complete with linking words and unfinished sentences with a linking word given.
- Phonetics: St.B.p. 23. Letter "a" e.g: panic, later, saw dance, along. Listen repeat and classify.
- Speaking: Retell the story of Hannah and Jamie following the drawings.
- Listening: St.B.p. 23. End of Hannah´s story. complete the blanks and then listen to the end of the story making guesses about what´s going to happen.
- Homework: Grammar, units 47,97 and speaking

NI2
- Homework: Workbook . two readings, one on page 12 and the other on page 16.
- Grammar: futer perfect and continuous. Grammar Bank,p. 132 ,we saw the rules and the exercises, and also in your grammar ,unit 24 where we saw the rules with more detail.
- Practice : a handout with the future continuous and another with mixed future forms: simple, perfect, continuous ,going to, present continuous..
- Homework: Grammar, unit 24, about futures and workbook p. 17
Romina, thank you again for the songs you send me. they´re of a great help.

LET´S GO TO THE THEATRE !!

FOOD FOR THOUGHT ,A PLAY IN ENGLISH

- DATE: MONDAY,30TH
- PLACE : CASA DE LA CULTURA DE LA FELGUERA
- TIME: 19,00

This play is for all the levels, so, please , go because you´re going to have a great time, I promise.

GLOBAL WARMING

Neyla, thanks a lot for this video

NB2
- Homework: Wk.p.16, grammar, unit 107,108, both chapters about the prepositions "in,at, on".
- Grammar: Questions with:
- auxiliaries :do/does/did
- subject and object questions
- prepositions at the end
- Wh- questions
- Listening: St.b.p. 22 "One October Evening"Listen to the story . Books shut.
- Reading : Same page. Order the sequence of the story. Play the tape again to check.
Answer questions about the reading.
- Grammar: St.B.p 22 .Linking words: so, but, because, although. St.B.p. 128 Grammar Bank .we saw the rules and did the exercises.
- Vocabulary: St.b.p.23 Verb phrases, e.g. knock on the door, be in a hurry..
- Homework: Grammar, unit 45,46 about questions

NI2
- Homework: Wk sections 1C and 2A
- Speaking: Picture description with photos and the instructions I gave you for this purpose. Time to get it ready then a description of the photo and finally correction of mistakes on the blackboard. The second stage was to do the same activity in pairs.
- Listening: "The Changing Face of Beauty" linking it to the video we saw last Thursday. Exercise and audio.
- Book Review: I gave you a handout with vocabulary , structures and content to make a good book review. I´ve got copies and you can also download it if you click the label "book review" and find it because the same topic is dealt with for NB2 students. Make sure you get your level. A book review has to be ready for mid-December. Remember you can borrow books from the library of the English department.
- Homework: Wk, Reading p. 12 and another reading on p.16.

Thank you very much, Romina for this song.

BROOMTAIL FISH

In this photo you can see a colorful www.virtourist.com/africa/redsea/07.htmbroomtail wrasse (cheilinus lunulatus). The family of wrasses (labridae) is one of the most diverse Among the fish. They vary from several cm in size to almost 2 meters long. This broomtail wrasse was more than 30 cm long.

A feature of this family of fishes is specially curious: they are born as females, but can change sex to male if needed. Wrasses are active predators, they hunt smaller fishes and shellfish. Probably the most known is the cleaner wrasse, a small fish feeding on parasites, pieces of dead skin and scales. Other fish concentrate in their "cleaning stations" and willingly submit themselves to this service.

www.virtourist.com/africa/redsea/07.htm

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,
And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.
Ali ibn-Abi-Talib (602 AD - 661 AD),

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.
Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC),


The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)

Friendship make prosperity more shining and lessens adversity by dividing and sharing it.
Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC),

Being friendless taught me how to be a friend. Funny how that works.
Colleen Wainwright

Do not protect yourself by a fence, but rather by your friends.
Czech Proverb

Never explain--your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.
Elbert Hubbard (1856 – 1915

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.
George Washington (1732 - 1799)

In prosperity our friends know us; in adversity we know our friends.
John Churton Collins

Adversity does teach who your real friends are.
Lois McMaster Bujold,

www.quotationspage.com

NB2
- Homework: Compositions about describing a drawing.
- Test: Listening . Here you have the exercises ,audio and answers.
Reading: With the passages and the answers
- Speaking: I gave you another drawing. We dealt with the vocabulary which was related to the beach and you did the activity with the notes at sight.

NI2
- Homework : Reading. St.B.p.25 "Eternal youth", with an exercises about formal and informal register and a multiple choice one.
- Speaking: St.B.p,24 about ages, the best/wort age of your life and so on, after that some questions about cosmetic surgery with its advantages and disadvantages.
- Listening: A video about Cindy Jackson , a woman who has undergone more than 20 cosmetic surgery operations. Exercise :order que questions first and then write down the answers and script . I´m awfully sorry, I don´t know how to work with videos in my blog yet. I promise I´ll post it next week.
Here is another interview .
- Homework: Picture description , Wk. 1C,2A.

PHOTO DESCRIPTION 2

This is a Photo of a protected natural space whose name is Sanabria.

In the middle of the photo, there is a glacier lake with crystal water.

At the botton there is a beautiful bathing area when you can sunbathe. On the

Left of this area there are some trees without leaves because it´s winter

and some heavy rocks.

There is a person in the middle of the photo, under the trees and beside the lake,he may be fishing.

Although it is a sunny day, the person is wearing warm clothes, so I think the temperature is low .

At the top of the photo, there are high mountains with a bit of snowon them.

In conclusion, I recommend to visit this place.

EFRÉN PALACIOS FLOREZ

SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the greatest fourteenth century text. It was written by an unknown author between 1375 and 1400. The story begins at Christmas time, and there are many symbolic elements. The Green Knight is a color which symbolizes Christmas. Also, changing seasons and the coming of winter symbolize the passing of life and reminds us that Death is unavoidable. The author also skillfully illustrates human weaknesses in the descriptions of Gawain's temptations.
The story tells about adventures of Sir Gawain, who takes the Green Knight's challenge. One year after cutting Green Knight's head off, which did not kill him, Gawain has to travel to find the Green Knight and take his blow in return. He finds a strange castle, and while he awaits there for the final day, his knight's ethical code is put to a test by the host and his wife.
In this part, Green Knight, in an unmannerly way, enters the hall where King Arthur and his Knights feast and cleverly gets them committed to take his game without revealing what it is he wants to play.
In this passage from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Green Knight enters the hall on his horse. King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table are having their feast. They are astounded to see a green knight on a green horse. They don't take any action; instead they stare at the stranger. The Green Knight challenges the king and his companions to take his game. He is arrogant, and he uses their pride to get them committed to his game. He is successful, as the king promises to take the game, although he does not know what it is yet.
The Green Knight comes into the hall where King Arthur and his knights feast on a horse, and does not greet anyone. He carries a huge axe with "The Spike of green steel" (Norton 207) and with green engravings. He carries no armor and no other weapons. When he enters, not only he does not greet the people present, but he looks down rudely at them and asks: "Where is the captain of this crowd? Keenly I wish to see that sire with sight, and to himself say my say."
The knights of the Green Table are so surprised, they fail to protect their king. They stare at the Green Knight, for they have never seen such a sight. They do not take any action, waiting what he will do. King Arthur answers saying he is the head of the party and invites Green Knight to introduce himself.
The Green Knight is not kind, for does introduce himself when asked. He says that he comes in peace for he has no armor, but first he tells them how brave they are: "If you be so bold as all men believe, you will graciously grant the game that I ask by right." This is only to get them to take his challenge. And King Arthur promises somebody will take his challenge: "Sir courteous knight, if contest bare you crave, you shall not fail to fight."
This passage reveals the way The Green Knight gets King Arthur's promise to take his challenge without knowing what the challenge is. The Green Knight appears as a rude, but clever challenger. He plays on their pride in a way they cannot refuse his challenge and keep their honor. From this point on, the knights are committed to the challenge, and this becomes the prediction of the next part of the story.

NB2
- Homework Grammar, unit 106 about the prepositions in ,at and on.
- Grammar: Grammar, unit 107,108 with more uses of these prepositions.
- Speaking: 6 students talked about their summer holidays.
- Grammar: A handout with practce of tenses: simple past-past continuous.
- Speaking: a thorough practice describing a drawing. This activity took a great deal of time.
- Listening. Song: Imagine. Exercises and audio
- Homework: Grammar, unit 107,107 about the prepositions in,at, on.

NI2
- Homework: Let me tell you that I was a bit cross with you when I realised that very few students had done their homework. It´s you who are going to sit the exam , so you´re supposed to do your best in order to achieve your goal, otherwise you´ll fail. As simple as this.
Reading. ST.B.p.22, grammar, unit 39,49, the remaining exercises we hadn´t done in the previous class.
- Listenning: St.B. p. 23 "It´s my Party" using conditional 1 and 2.Exercise , audio and answers
- Speaking: St.B.p. 24 "Do you want to be young for Ever?" Picture discussion .
-Listening: St.B.p. 24 An interview to a doctor who made a research abouth the "superyoung" and the factor that help to be young.
Listen to some extracts and write the exact words.
- Speaking: St.B. p, 24. Formation of abstract nouns from adjectives.e.g. insecure-insecurity.
- Homework : the speaking activity about the different ages , their advantages and disadvantages and your personal experience. Reading: St.B.p. 25 "Eternal Youth" with a multiple choice exercise. Tomorrow we´ll do some picture description, so get it ready.
some more exercises on conditionals and the answers.

SALAD CORAL

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970),

To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.
David Viscott,

All love that has not friendship for its base, is like a mansion built upon sand.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox,

There is no remedy for love but to love more.
Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862),

Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
Iris Murdoch (1919 - 1999)

We can only learn to love by loving.
Iris Murdoch (1919 - 1999),

Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.
Jeanne Moreau

The first duty of love is to listen.
Paul Tillich (1886 - 196

NB2
WARNING: You were very talkative on Monday in spite of my warnings. Please , remember you´re here to learn English and since this is not a bar or a café ,you have certain duties and one of these is that you have to remain silent when the teacher is speaking. I wouldn´t like to take serious action , so take notice of this.
- Homework: Grammar, unit 14, wk: p.15
- Reading: A photocophy titled "It was a cold, dark, night".A predicting story using the simple past and the past continuous.
- Listening and reading: As you had problrms with the last listening we had done on Thursday , we did it again. St.B.p. 19 . "The lovers of La Bastille". First, we read the introduction and then the listening activity.
- Vocabulary: St.B.p. 19. Prepositions in, at ,on. for place and time. Vocabulary Bank, St.B.p. 148. Here we saw the prepositions in detail.
- Speaking : I gave you a really important photocopy with the instructions to describe photos. It´s essential for you to learn how to describe a picture and you have all the steps in that paper. We saw it in detail.
- Homework: A drawing for you to describe (you can star on Tuesday and the deadline is Thursday, this means everybody have to do it that day) ,grammar , unit 106.

NI2
- Grammar: Grammar, units 38,39,40 about conditionals and the structures "Iwish; if only". We just did the activities I was most interested in , the remaining exercises were left for homework. This activity took us longer than I expected because of the writing and speaking practice. More conditional exercises and their answers.
- Listening: St.B. p. 25. People talking about alternative medicine with a matching exercise and a note taking and summarising one. As they spoke quite fast , in the end we listened to it with the script on p.124 at sight.
- Homework: Reading.St.B.p. 22 and finish the exercises on conditionals.

Celine Dion . I love you

PHOTO DESCRIPTION 1

This photo was taken at my godson´s birthday.
In the background of the photo there are a lot of tables. Over a table there is the birthday cake with a candle.In the blackground I can also see a green umbrella. My godson is wearing a red dungarees with a white T-shirt. He has a dummy tied in the dungarees. He is wearing a white hat. He is like a rap singer. I´m wearing black T-shirt and jeans and white glasses. This day was a very funny day and the weather was perfect, it was a sunnyand warm, perfect.
My godson and other people had a good time because my godson didn´t stop playing and we laughed all his pranks.
I hope we can repeat more birthdays for many years.
PAULA GRANA GARCIA

This is a Photo of a landscape. There is a couple of women with warm clothes. They could be having a photo takien. In the middle of the photo the women are crouched down in front of a ship. They are wearing black coats, jeans, and scarves. One of them is wearing a white cap. In the middle of the two girls there is a panel with information about the ship.

This fantastic ship is long and it is painted in red and green. It is hard to see its sail

In the river there are two white ships too. On the right, the more modern ship is covered with a roof and windows. On the left there is the oldest small ship.

In the background there are small bushes in the river banks You can see the roof of two houses and other trees.

The season seems to be autumn because the women are wearing scarves and caps and the trees have the colour of this season.

This photo reminds me of my last holidays in Denmark. I went in October with an other girl to see my best friend Marina.

PAZ GARCIA ORVIZ

This is a funny photo of Oxford with my school friends. I met them in Regent School in London and I had a good time that month with them.

In the middle of the photo there are four girls and a boy jumping in a pedestrian zone near some trees. They look happy and they are smiling. On the botton, you can see their shadows what show their body reflection like a mirror. On the right I ´m wearing a pink and white sweater which I bought in Oxford the same day when this photo was taken since that day it was sunny but the temperature was cold.

On the right a boy is looking at the scene and he seems surprised, he might think “This people are crazy!”. He doesn’t seem to be cold because he is wearing a t-shirt.

In the background there is an old building, it may be a castle or a church. There are many windows but all are closed. Next to the castle, there is a modern building with big windows and a tall chimney, you can see people inside .It might be a restaurant or a typical souvenir shop. Near the door, I can’t make out what the woman is doing, but she looks as if she is wearing a traditional dress and she is waiting for the customers.

ROMINA ALONSO ALONSO

Romina, thanks a lot for the song.

PEOPLES OF BRITAIN 5

Peoples of Britain
By Dr Simon James
The 'Dark Ages'

Were the 'Celts' displaced or absorbed by the invaders?
In western and northern Britain, around the western seas, the end of Roman power saw the reassertion of ancient patterns, ie continuity of linguistic and cultural trends reaching back to before the Iron Age. Yet in the long term, the continuous development of a shifting mosaic of societies gradually tended (as elsewhere in Europe) towards larger states. Thus, for example, the far north-western, Irish-ruled kingdom of Dalriada merged in the ninth century with the Pictish kingdom to form Scotland.
'It was once believed that the Romano-British were slaughtered or driven west by hordes of invading Anglo-Saxons, part of the great westward movement of 'barbarians' overwhelming the western empire.'
The western-most parts of the old province, where Roman ways had not displaced traditional culture, also partook of these trends, creating small kingdoms which would develop, under pressure from the Saxons, into the Welsh and Cornish regions.
The fate of the rest of the Roman province was very different: after imperial power collapsed c.410 AD Romanised civilisation swiftly vanished. By the sixth century, most of Britannia was taken over by 'Germanic' kingdoms. There was apparently complete discontinuity between Roman Britain and Anglo-Saxon England; it was once believed that the Romano-British were slaughtered or driven west by hordes of invading Anglo-Saxons, part of the great westward movement of 'barbarians' overwhelming the western

NB2
- Homework: Grammar, unit 24
- Speaking: Five students talked about their summer holidays and were given a mark.
- Listening: Holidays, the last part of a set of three .EXERCISES,AUDIO : ACTVITY 2, ACTIVITY 3, ACTIVITY 4, ACTIVITY 5, ACTIVITY 6, ACTIVITY 7 . SCRIPTS. Here you´ll find all the activities related to this topic.
- Reading: St.B.p. 18 "A Moment in Time" dealing with the simple past and the past continuous. A read and match exercise.
- Grammar: I wrote a few examples on the blackboard with the use of these two tenses and once you got it ,we went to St.B.p.128 to see the rules and do the exercises. We also saw in your grammars , chapters 13,14
- Reading:St.B.p.19 "The Lovers of the Bastille" . A couple who had their picture taken without knowing it.
- Listening: About the same French couple but many years later. True-false statements which seemed to be more difficult than the other listenings we had previously done. I suggested that you should listen to the CD at home and do the exercise again.
- Homework: Grammar, unit 14, Wk.p. 15

NI2
- Homework: Grammar, unit 111. Yet, still and already.
- Speaking: Describing a photo. As nobody had done the activity, I encouraged you to do it in written form. So, send me both a picture and its description following the guidelines I gave you and I´ll post them in the blog.
- Grammar: Conditional sentences. TYPES 0,1,2 , sorry if you see the exercise of linking words first, carry on moving the mouse and the conditionals will come out soon. TYPE 3, ANSWERS.
- Speaking and Reading: A fotocopy to match sentences with LINKING WORDS.
- Homework: Do the grammar activities , you also have to pick up a photo , describe it and send it to my blog, so that I can post it.

PEOPLES OF BRITAIN 3

Peoples of Britain
By Dr Simon James
Before Rome: the 'Celts'
The defeated Iron Age tribes of Britain
At the end of the Iron Age (roughly the last 700 years BC), we get our first eye-witness accounts of Britain from Greco-Roman authors, not least Julius Caesar who invaded in 55 and 54 BC. These reveal a mosaic of named peoples (Trinovantes, Silures, Cornovii, Selgovae, etc), but there is little sign such groups had any sense of collective identity any more than the islanders of AD 1000 all considered themselves 'Britons'.
'Calling the British Iron Age 'Celtic' is so misleading that it is best abandoned.'
However, there is one thing that the Romans, modern archaeologists and the Iron Age islanders themselves would all agree on: they were not Celts. This was an invention of the 18th century; the name was not used earlier. The idea came from the discovery around 1700 that the non-English island tongues relate to that of the ancient continental Gauls, who really were called Celts. This ancient continental ethnic label was applied to the wider family of languages. But 'Celtic' was soon extended to describe insular monuments, art, culture and peoples, ancient and modern: island 'Celtic' identity was born, like Britishness, in the 18th century.
However, language does not determine ethnicity (that would make the modern islanders 'Germans', since they mostly speak English, classified as a Germanic tongue). And anyway, no one knows how or when the languages that we choose to call 'Celtic', arrived in the archipelago - they were already long established and had diversified into several tongues, when our evidence begins. Certainly, there is no reason to link the coming of 'Celtic' language with any great 'Celtic invasions' from Europe during the Iron Age, because there is no hard evidence to suggest there were any.
Archaeologists widely agree on two things about the British Iron Age: its many regional cultures grew out of the preceding local Bronze Age, and did not derive from waves of continental 'Celtic' invaders. And secondly, calling the British Iron Age 'Celtic' is so misleading that it is best abandoned. Of course, there are important cultural similarities and connections between Britain, Ireland and continental Europe, reflecting intimate contacts and undoubtedly the movement of some people, but the same could be said for many other periods of history.
The things we have labelled 'Celtic' icons - such as hill-forts and art, weapons and jewellery - were more about aristocratic, political, military and religious connections than common ethnicity. (Compare the later cases of medieval Catholic Christianity or European Renaissance culture, or indeed the Hellenistic Greek Mediterranean and the Roman world - all show similar patterns of cultural sharing and emulation among the powerful, across ethnic boundaries.)

NI2
- We saw the mistakes you dad made in the tests you had done last week
- Homework: Grammar, units 103, 110
- Speaking: With the rules and instructions to make a good description of a photograph , you spent most of the time practising descriptions of several kinds. It was very good practice.
- Vocabulary: About Health and Medicine.
- Grammar: St.B.p.21 About the zero and first conditionals . Grammar Bank,p.132, the rules
- Homework : St.B.p.132 the two exercises , some volunteers to describe a photo. Grammar, unit 111: still,yet,already.

PEOPLES OF BRITAIN 4

Peoples of Britain
By Dr Simon James
Britain and the Romans
Almost everyone in Britannia was legally and culturally 'Roman'
The Roman conquest, which started in AD 43, illustrates the profound cultural and political impact that small numbers of people can have in some circumstances, for the Romans did not colonise the islands of Britain to any significant degree. To a population of around three million, their army, administration and carpet-baggers added only a few per cent.
'The future Scotland remained beyond Roman government, although the nearby presence of the empire had major effects.'
The province's towns and villas were overwhelmingly built by indigenous people - again the wealthy - adopting the new international culture of power. Greco-Roman civilisation displaced the 'Celtic' culture of Iron Age Europe. These islanders actually became Romans, both culturally and legally (the Roman citizenship was more a political status than an ethnic identity). By AD 300, almost everyone in 'Britannia' was Roman, legally and culturally, even though of indigenous descent and still mostly speaking 'Celtic' dialects. Roman rule saw profound cultural change, but emphatically without any mass migration.
However, Rome only ever conquered half the island. The future Scotland remained beyond Roman government, although the nearby presence of the empire had major effects. The kingdom of the Picts appeared during the third century AD, the first of a series of statelets which, during the last years and collapse of Roman power, developed through the merging of the 'tribes' of earlier times.

NB2
- Tests were given and doubts were solved.
- Homework: Grammar. Units 11,12. about the simple past.
- Grammar. unit 24. about regular and irregular verbs.
- Listening: Holidays. activities 3,4
- Speaking: "What did you do in your last Holidays?" . five students gave a speech about the topic and were given a mark for it.
- Reading: "When in Rome". A story cut up in pieces you had to put together so as it made sense.
- Homework: Grammar. Unit 24, activities

-NI2
- Homework:Revise and check. ST.b.p19, Graammar, units 99,100,
- Grammar: Unit 103 . Position of adverbs.
- Speaking: Position of adverbs, a game.
- Vocabulary: Unit 2a .St.B.p.147. Health and medicine. We saw the sections: At the doctor´s, symptoms, Medical conditions, Alternative Medicine. It´s quite a big vocabulary load, very useful, though. This activity took a great deal of time.
- Speaking:"Are you a Hypochondriac?" , a quiz to do with your partner .
Homework: Grammar, units 103, 110.

PEOPLES OF BRITAIN 2

Peoples of Britain 2
By Dr Simon James

First peoples
The first 'Britons' were an ethnically mixed group
From the arrival of the first modern humans - who were hunter-gatherers, following the retreating ice of the Ice Age northwards - to the beginning of recorded history is a period of about 100 centuries, or 400 generations. This is a vast time span, and we know very little about what went on through those years; it is hard even to fully answer the question, 'Who were the early peoples of Britain?', because they have left no accounts of themselves.
'Throughout prehistory there were myriad small-scale societies and many petty 'tribal' identities...'
We can, however, say that biologically they were part of the Caucasoid population of Europe. The regional physical stereotypes familiar to us today, a pattern widely thought to result from the post-Roman Anglo-Saxon and Viking invasions - red-headed people in Scotland, small, dark-haired folk in Wales and lanky blondes in southern England - already existed in Roman times. Insofar as they represent reality, they perhaps attest the post-Ice Age peopling of Britain, or the first farmers of 6,000 years ago.
From an early stage, the constraints and opportunities of the varied environments of the islands of Britain encouraged a great regional diversity of culture. Throughout prehistory there were myriad small-scale societies, and many petty 'tribal' identities, typically lasting perhaps no more than a few generations before splitting, merging or becoming obliterated. These groups were in contact and conflict with their neighbours, and sometimes with more distant groups - the appearance of exotic imported objects attest exchanges, alliance and kinship links, and wars.

NB2
- Homework: wk.p. 13,14. Grammar, unit 10. Photocopy, unit 46
- Review of irregular verbs. A game :three in a row
- Speaking : simple past in the topic of holidays , unit 48, most common verbs used. a composition about your last holidays must come out of this activity.
- Grammar: Units 11,12,more simple past in negative and interrogative.
_Listening: holidays. We only had time to do the first two activities ,so when we finigh I´ll post them here.
- Speaking: How to get a speech ready. Tips to make a coherent ,logical speech.
- Homework: Get the speech ready and grammar, units 11,12

NI2
- Homework: St.B. p.19 Revise and check, Grammar, units 99,100
-Grammar : Adverbs. unit 103. And two games on adverbs and some rules about their position
- vocabulary: Unit 2 "Health and Medicine" St.B.p. 147. We saw all the activities on this page and devoted quite a long time to see some differences, e.d. feel sick- be sick, hurts_aches.... A checking-your-partner activity to see how much he remembers.
- Speaking: St.B.p. 20 "Are you a Hypochondriac?" We had fun with this exercise.
_Homework: Grammar, unit 103,110.

SEA MONSTERS

NB1

• Homework: a photocopy with questions and short answers and questions about origins.Workbook p. 7
• Vocabulary: Review of numbers stressing the difference 14-490,16-60...A number dictation
• Spelling: How do you spell your name/surname?. The alphabet tree with the sounds and the alphabet to classify. A power point with acronymns like CD,NASA;FBI... and what they stand for.
• EO: Cards to complete with names, surnames, nationalities, e-mails and phone numbers. Practise questions. Write a parragraph using his/her name´s ....
• Grammar: St.B.p. 9. Possessive adjectives: my, your, his, her,..... Listen and complete the chart with the possessive adjectives. Grammar Bank, St.B.p.122 Rules and exercises, workbook p, 8 some more exercises on possessive adjectives.
• Homework for Thursday: Two handouts with the verb to be in affirmative, negative and interrogative. Study the new grammar items.
  

PUFFER FISH

Biologists think pufferfish, also known as blowfish, developed their famous “inflatability” because their slow, somewhat clumsy swimming style makes them vulnerable to predators. In lieu of escape, pufferfish use their highly elastic stomachs and the ability to quickly ingest huge amounts of water (and even air when necessary) to turn themselves into a virtually inedible ball several times their normal size. Some species also have spines on their skin to make them even less palatable.

A predator that manages to snag a puffer before it inflates won’t feel lucky for long. Almost all pufferfish contain tetrodotoxin, a substance that makes them foul tasting and often lethal to fish. To humans, tetrodotoxin is deadly, up to 1,200 times more poisonous than cyanide. There is enough toxin in one pufferfish to kill 30 adult humans, and there is no known antidote.

From: National Geographic

NB2
- Homework : I collected the compositions you had for homerwork. Let me remind you that if that particular day ,you can´t come to class, just send it to me through the "contact" section in my blog.
- Grammar:St.B.p. 17 simple past tense . Grammar Bank p. 128 with the rules and exercises and p. 155 with the list of irregular verbs. We read them out and checked their meanings. Then I gave you some photocopies about SIMPLE PAST and we did many of the exercises.
- Phonetics: The correct pronunciation of the simple past can only be reached by listening to songs or watching TV. We saw some basic rules on St.B.p. 17 and practised the most common regular verbs.
- Listening: St.B.p. 17 "A holiday where everything went wrong". you had to correct the wrong statements . Remember that you have the CDs ,so you can listen to these class activities whenever you fancy.
- Homework: Grammar, unit 10 "was/were". Workbook.p. 13,14 and do the remaining exercises of the photocopies about the simple past.

NI2
- Homework: Phrasal verb exercises .
- Grammar: St.B. p. 146: adverbs which are often confused, e.g. specially -especially. late-lately.
St.B.p. 15 .Writing: Joke where you had to insert adverbs to make it more vivid and interesting. Grammar, units 99,100 about adverbs. We saw the rules and the activities were left for homework.
- WritingSt.b. p. 156. How to make a composition more lively by using adverbs and intensifiers .
- Reading: ST.B.p. 16 with true-false statements and a vocabulary exercise.
- Listening: Meeting people using different registers , and a listening of a speech given by the director of Studies to students starting a summer course. Remember that you all have the CDs to listen to these activities .
- Reading: St.B.p. 17 Understanding signs and some very common daily life expressions you must learn so as not to seem rude.
- Homework: Revise and check. St.B.p 19. Grammar, unit 99,100.

A POEM BY DAVID ROSENTHAL

This is the most famous shipwreck in the world. Her name´s Thistlegorm , a British vessel sank by the Germans in II WW near Sharm el sheik, Egypt. Cousteau discoverded it in the 60s, but he didn´t say anything. it wasn´t until the 90s that two divers rediscovered her by chance . As you can see it contained motorbikes, lorries, cars, ammunition and many other things. the experience is a true adrenaline rush . If you like diving you shouldn´t miss this shipwreck.


EL VISITANTE

Tal vez había estado enfermo muchos años
o en prisión, o en otro país
cuya tierra aún llevaba incrustada
en las suelas de sus botas. Con sombrero de piel
y grueso abrigo, arrastraba los pies por caminos embarrados,
contemplaba las ventanas iluminadas, trataba de entender
las señales de las calles: todo era familiar y no lo era,
como si las mismas moléculas en el aire hubiesen cambiado.
Lloraba en los portales, conversaba con sombras,
intentaba eludir los espectros, y entonces un día
¡desapareció! "Tan de repente como apareció", dijo la gente.
Tal vez regresó a aquel otro sitio...
Quiero decir aquel de donde tal vez vino.

("The Visitor" se halla incluido en The Journey, 1992, de David H. Rosenthal.
Traducción: J.O.)

David H. Rosenthal (1945 - 1995) was an American autor , poet, editor, and translator. He wrote mostly on the history of jazzmusic and was also an important translator of Portuguese and Catalan literature. He was my best friend´s partner for quite a long time. I first met him when they were living happily together in Barcelona; soon after he was diagnosed an illness and went to the USA for treatment, unluckily he died and left my friend Mª Luisa in grief.

NB2

Test. Unit 1 . Here you have the TEST, ANSWERS and AUDIO 1 and AUDIO 2 . An extra listening and reading.

NI2

- Test . Unit 1.Here you have the TEST, ANSWERS , AUDIO1 and AUDIO2

- Reading: St.B.p.14 . We checked the answers to the reading which was about British and american humour.

- A photocopy of PHRASAL VERBS for homework.The answers are HERE