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.

ABILITES

Abilities and resolutions are somehow connected, especially when we think about learning new skills. Most of the times, what we can do and what we would like to be able to do are two different things and that means needing a lot of will and effort to gain a new ability. One of these abilities is learning a new language, which is what we are trying to do with English, isn't it?

In class we heard the song "Spanish Lesson" by

Madonna, where she becomes the Spanish teacher in spite of being far from speaking the Spanish language. We have to thank her, though, for her love of Spanish culture and the "type-1 conditional sentence" she introduces: If you do your homework, baby I will give you more.

Here is a link to the song: SPANISH LESSON

And now a little homage to someone who is able to surprise us with his skills on the court. Click on the photo and read the article in the Australian press (The Australian on line):

Appearances

WHAT DOES HE/SHE LOOK LIKE?

This is a link where you can find some vocabulary (a lot, actually) about physical appearance. It is from a site to learn Spanish but the list is as valid for learners of English:

WORDS TO DESCRIBE PHYSICAL APPEARANCE, FROM

FALSE APPEARANCES

Who are these people?

They look like celebrities but they are not, they are Sophia Loren's, Robin William's and Prince's look-alikes.

Definition of "look-alike" (Wikipedia): A look-alike is a living person who closely resembles another living person. In popular Western culture, a look-alike is a person who bears a close physical resemblance to a celebrity, politician or member of royalty.

Definition of "impersonator" (Wikipedia): An impersonator is someone who imitates or copies the behavior or actions of another.

While look-alikes base their skills on mere resemblance, impersonators use make-up and other elements (clothes, wigs, etc.) to look like the person they try to copy but remind us of the person mostly because of their behaviour, voice and/or way of acting.

Who does she remind you of?

Watch the video and you will have not doubt about it:

Students sometimes impersonate their teachers or fellow students. Do you know of any cases? Did they get into trouble? Do you like that idea or you find it offensive?

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:

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2009!!