Christmas is getting closer: Advent Calendar

This picture, which might look like a Christmas present wrapper, has been taken from the Advent Calendar 2008 in The Big Picture section of The Boston Globe. The Advent Calendar uses images of the outer space taken by the Hubble Telescope. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did, still do and hope to do in the next days (I mean until the calendar is complete). Just click on the picture and relax:

Unit 2: Superlative Spain?

We are Spanish and live in Andalucia, the land of exaggeration and overstatements (sorry about the cliché) and the ideal place for superlatives. Seville, being the biggest town and its capital, is well known for that and for the superlatives that its inhabitants often use to describe it. But before going into superlatives, let's consider the other side of the story, that of those people who decided to come to our country as visitors (or even decided to stay among us).

----------------------------------------------

SOME ADVICE

Advice about traffic in Spain for British nationals from

Click on the picture, read the advice and then think about an answer for the question:
Do we seem to be the best drivers?

----------------------------------------------

HOLIDAYS IN SEVILLE

Worst vacation day ever: an American "tourist" tells about a bad experience in the province of Seville. Click on the picture and read the experience and the comments other people write.



What do you think? What was wrong from your point of view? How could you make it better next time (considering there is a next time)?


I definitely want to go back sometime: Fortunately, there are people in the same community of travellers, who were luckier when they visited Seville:

www.travbuddy.com

----------------------------------------------

MOVING TO SPAIN (AFTER A HOLIDAY?)

How can I move to Spain for a couple of years? Click here and read the full question, the basis on which Inatizzy (nickname) made his/her decisions and the advice received, especially that from Librarylis (nickname again). What do you think?

From Norwich to Gran Canaria. This is an excerpt from a BBC local radio programme in which a citizen from Norwich (Norfolk) tells his experience after living in Gran Canaria for 15 years. He made his decision after a holiday:

LISTEN HERE: It's not all sun, sea and sangria

Do you think he is considering the possibility of going back to the UK?

----------------------------------------------

FINALLY, THE SUPERLATIVES

For this purpose, I have chosen Ben Curtis, a British man who has lived in Spain and loves it, something he shows in his blog "Notes From Spain". Click on the picture to get there:


What do you think? What would you add?

It's nice to hear praise but let's go now to the negative superlatives. If you decide to click on the next link, be open-minded and consider what you might include in the list of

the 10 most annoying things about Spain

In his blog, you can also read about :
The 10 most annoying things about the UK
The 10 best things about the UK

Now you can compare both countries, but do not forget that those are personal opinions which might coincide or not with yours.

----------------------------------------------

SUPERLATIVE SEVILLE

Taking into account Ben's experience I will not go into negative features, in case someone might feel offended. So,

which do you think are the 10 best things about Seville?

Send your answers by clicking on "comments" below.

A story with a musical background, by María

In class we worked on the creation of four characters for a story. One of them was Mary and this is the story María (the name is just a coincidence) wrote for her out of the outline we managed to make up. She also suggested some music to listen to while reading it:

The music: Weary Blues, by Madeleine Peyroux




The story:

MARY´S LIFE

I was born in 1926 in a beautiful house which is actually opposite the place where I live now. Of course, many things have changed since then…
My mother was a pretty, high-society girl who fell in love with a charming man, my father, being too young. Youth is as amazing as dangerous because it makes you do things that you know are wrong, and so my mother did.

The handsome man was working as a musician in a nightclub where every night you could hear the most beautiful music in the whole world: some kind of mixture between American jazz and European folk music that researchers nowadays would call Cabaret. My father played the trumpet in a very special way.

My grandparents could not agree with this relationship, so my mother left home when she knew she was pregnant.

My first memories are really kind: mum was a very affectionate woman who always had a smile in her mouth, and dad was incredibly talkative and sociable and he sang to me whenever he could do it. My childhood is full of music and happiness. But things changed gradually because of my father´s job. He spent the nights out (playing his trumpet and who knows…) until one day when he didn't come back home. I was eight. Hard years had just began. Since April 1936, everything went from bad to worse: mum went extremely quiet, extremely sad, extremely moody. After seven years of sadness and poverty I ran away from home, looking for a happier life. It wasn´t easy to find a job, but after two weeks I got it: in a nightclub!!! Singing the songs my father had taught me. Such is life…

Nightlife "ain´t no good life" because it has a lot of dangers: there are drugs, alcohol and bad people. My life was getting horrible and I needed to find someone reliable and sensible but I couldn´t trust in anyone until Alice arrived and picked me up from the gutter.

I´ve been living with her for 25 years. She´s been my partner, my lover, my mother and, lately, my nurse which is something that´s really worrying me. My health is very delicate and I think she´s getting tired about it.
She has been in Amsterdam for two months, working as a shop assistant in an underwear boutique and I think she has met a new love there. Perhaps she´s going to leave me, maybe I´ll have to spend my last few days on my own…

Unit 2: Numbers, money, decimals and fractions.

Here you have a tool to learn how to say big numbers:



CAN YOU SAY REALLY BIG NUMBERS? CLICK HERE


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you get confused with prices, coins and notes, these are interesting links. They are originally intended for British children:

HOW MUCH IS THIS?

MONEY MAZE



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is a a Spanish webpage where you can read an explanation on how to say decimals and fractions in English. You can also hear them:

DECIMALS AND FRACTIONS


---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, take a look at some bizarre numbers, averages and percentages from

Numbers, Averages And Percentages

What do you think about these last numbers? Are they reliable?

Unit 2: Money

Time is money. If you have some spare change of about 15 minutes, you might find the following video about money vocabulary of interest:

Misterduncan's lesson on money:

If you love lists, this might be your link for vocabulary on money: CLICK HERE

Now a question: Is money evil?
Another question: What is the last sentence in the video? Clue: it is a conditional sentence.

María sent the answer: "If a dollar was a chicken would the chicken be evil?" Well done!

Shania Twain, a Canadian singer, sings her vision on money and shopping (read the lyrics on page 20 of the Student's book or here):

Ka-ching:



MORE SPECIALISED LANGUAGE FOR BUSINESS ENGLISH TEACHERS AND LEARNERS:

1) Try to complete the following crossword (if you can't, use help buttons):

Crossword Puzzle: Marketing Vocabulary

2) Page with exercises about Business English, including grammar, vocabulary and language skills:

LINGUARAMA

3) Click on the following link to read a text on different cultural views and how they may affect business and answer the questions at the end. It comes from the same link above (linguarama).

Click here to read the text.