Plurilingualism: how to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull

Although we have been getting news of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull practically every day since its eruption started, you rarely hear its name on the news.

Firstly, its real name is Eyjafyoll, as the rest makes reference to the glacier which covers it and not to the volcano itself. You can read more about this and about the fun Icelandic people are having with the mispronunciation of this landmark in Telegraph.co.uk : British attempts to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull causes hilarity in Iceland

As for the pronunciation, here is a fragment from abc.NEWS.com which is available in yahoo.news where an Icelander pronounces it. But she does not make clear the fact that the real name is shorter. Maybe she wants to keep the difficulty for the fun of it.

How to Pronounce Eyjafjallajökull

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Election Day Vocabulary

Tomorrow, 6th May 2.010 is election day in the United Kingdom.

Students sometimes ask about the vocabulary related to this, especially on the voting day.

Here is a piece of authentic material which can be used in order to extract information about the terms listed below.

Students should suggest a definition and/or their translation into their language after reading it. Click on the pictures to see them better.

Tip: you can role play a voting situation when they have to elect their class representatives.

Local Goverment Elections

Parliamentary Election

Poll Card

Polling Station

Ballot Paper

Polling Booths

Ballot Box

Presiding officer

Life-cycle: John Lewis's ad

As a teacher, I tend to choose materials by how useful they are in the learning context but some other times their artistic or entertaining value makes them worth mentioning.

Here is an ad for John Lewis which has both. When I first saw it I really liked it but it also made me think about how good it was to introduce the topic and vocabulary of the different ages we go through in life: childhood, adolescence, maturity... (see other suggestions below)

It seems I'm not the only one who liked it, as it has gone viral on YouTube this week. Here is the video and a link to MailOnline, where you can read an interesting article about it.





The £6m ad that's got Britain talking - and sobbing

Added on May 9th:

Why the John Lewis advert has us hooked

More ways of exploiting the advert:

* "Can" for abilitiy: the song, Billy Joel's She's Always A Woman is based on the repetition of the structure "she can ..." to make a list of the "abilities" a woman may have (from the point of view of the singer, of course). This can also be used as a topic for discussion at higher levels.

*Descriptions: students may describe the different actresses and see their similarities and differences (on top of age). Actually, at a certain point, they might notice some slight change in height in one of them. Also the background changes but here is where the ad has received the only negative criticism, as it does not seem to change in time.

*Biographies: the story in the ad could be used to invent a biography and add details which are not mentioned, like the woman's job, her husband, where they live, etc.

More suggestions?

Logorama: A Story with Brand Names and Logos.

Logorama from Marc Altshuler - Human Music on Vimeo.

Teacher helps pupils cheat

GCSE: the General Certificate of Secondary Education is "an academic qualification awarded in a specified subject, generally taken in a number of subjects by students aged 14–16 in secondary education in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland" (Wikipedia)

Public school: although it may sound like a contradictory term, a public school is that which is run by private hands, as opposed to a state school, which is run by education authorities and on public funding.

Teacher at princes’ school helped his pupils to cheat in French exam (Timesonline)

Gordonstoun teacher banned after pupils get exam 'tip-off' (News.scotsman.com)