Psychics and cold reading techniques

Here is an interesting article in which you can learn to "cold read". This is a technique used by some psychics to get information about their subjects. Click on the picture to read the full article.

International Biodiversity Day

To read about the meaning of this celebration, click on the picture.

And here is a beautiful story to make us think:

Teachable: help for CAL teachers.

Browsing through the pages of the Education section in the Times Online I came across this website which offers quality materials for teachers of different subjects. It's worth giving it a try.

Click on the picture and watch the video, although you might get the impression this is like the "Lazy guy's corner" (El rincón del vago), this time for teachers (it was about time, though!).

Then try with some of the subjects below. They are nicely organised not only by subject but also attending to age groups (in the British system) and then again by rating / date / title / contributor.

I hope you find it useful. I have created a new entry under "useful links" on the right for easy access from this blog in the future.

Everyday activities from a multidisciplinary perspective

Here is a link to a video (unfortunately it cannot be embedded), where everyday activities are analysed under a new perspective.



It could be used for elementary levels and for CAL groups, identifying the different disciplines which have connections with what appears in the video. Click on the image to watch it.

The Day of the Dead at the British Museum

Coinciding with the exhibition about "Moctezuma, Aztec Ruler", the British Museum will celebrate the "Day of the Dead" on Sunday 1st November, just after Halloween, in the way Mexicans do. Click on the picture to see how:

The English Blog

The English Blog, by Jeffrey Hill, is in my list of favourite blogs and the following post is a good example of why. Of course, on top of the interesting posts, there are excellent links and resources for students of English:

Regent Street cinema project

The University of Westminter and cinema

If you did not know, I'm working this year at the University of Westminster. I have been very lucky and the Polylang, the modern languages programme in which I am collaborating, is based in the original building at Regent Street.

What I did not know is that this was also the site of the first public film screening in the UK with an audience paying to see a film.

Now the University wants to recover the original cinema under what they call the "Regent Street cinema project" with the intention of (in their words) "transforming the birthplace of British cinema back into a multimedia facility and teaching space for our students and the wider community and putting Westminster back in the Heart of London."

Here is a video about this building and its implications for the cinema industry in the UK, which has been released with the campaign:

Here you also have a link to a slide presentation of the project:

http://www.regentstreetcinema.co.uk/

The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, by Mark Haddon

On Wednesday 6th May we had a lesson in which we talked about different aspects of "The Curious Incident of The Dog In The Night-Time". The debate was very interesting and many ideas were expressed. The general opinion about the book was very positive. Here I leave you a video of a "rapid review" which reflects some of the things we mentioned in class (we dealt with many many more aspects):

We also learnt that  autism and Asperger Syndrome are not exactly the same thing although they share many common features. We finally watched and discussed some videos from a campaign in the UK which is trying to make us aware of the existence of people with behavioural differences caused by this syndrome.

One aspect we mentioned is how some scenes and ideas might seem comical in the book when that is not the intention of the main character, something which is clearly reflected in some of the videos too.

These are the videos:

Finally, here is an interview with the author of the book, Mark Haddon, which is worth reading.

Accents

There is a tendency among English students to think that one particular accent or variety of English is "better" than others. In this sense, Europeans mostly support the British accent while people from other latitudes support the American. I personally love accents and think we should enjoy the variety English has to offer in spite of the extra difficulty they might add to the understanding of a foreign language . As a matter of fact, we should not forget that the standard English we try to learn in our school is spoken by a really low percentage of native speakers and that we will have to deal with infinite variations when facing real situations (starting with the Spanish accent most teachers will probably have).

To start with, I would like you to watch a video from YAPPR, a very interesting link for students of English. They have a wide variety of videos (songs, film trailers, excerpts from TV programmes, etc.) accompanied by their transcription and sometimes translation. You can also join their community and help with the translations and transcriptions.

In this particular video an Australian actor, Simon Baker, is interviewed in a popular American programme, the Late Show, where the speaker, David Letterman, comments on the Australian accent while he praises the actor's ability to hide it in the American series he stars, The Mentalist:

As an intermediate student, can you really tell the difference between David Letterman and Simon Baker? Probably not, so why all the fuss about accents at this stage?

More accents? The following link is just about accents in Britain and includes recordings of different conversations from a wide variety of places around the British Isles:

The following one is a link about North American accents which works in a similar way:

So, now the question is: Why do we use "RP" as our reference in class if so few speakers use it in everyday life? Surf the net and find some information about the concepts of "international English", "standard English" and "English as lingua franca" before trying to answer this question.

To express your opinion on this topic, please use the "comments" link below.

First lesson after Christmas: presents, resolutions and manners.

Yes, the Three Wise Men won this year in class and most students received their presents on January 6th, or so they told us last Wednesday. This is a cartoon we worked on in this class, from "Cartoons for the Classroom":


When we analysed the items, iPods, Macs and their creators came up, and I promised to upload a link to an interesting speech by Steve Jobs, one of the founders of Apple. It comes in two parts, both subtitled in Spanish:

Part 1 (time 8:44):



Part 2 (time 5:48):




Then we talked about new year's resolutions and I asked you to send comments to the post on "Christmas diet and new year's resolutions" (24/12/08), writing about your own resolutions. We have received some interesting ones. Someone sent this (I corrected a little mistake):

"I´ll go to the gym everyday to get fit and to lose weight until I look like a model, after that I´ll look for a young and handsome English boyfriend, for speaking and improving my English"

And that reminded me of an advert I saw during Christmas, which I photographed and attach now:



Is English sexy? What do you think?


At the end of the lesson, we talked about "manners" but we could not watch a video about how good table manners may help you lose weight, so here it is: