Spreading the good vibes

Hi guys,

This is the last post before the exam, so I figured you could use some time off and watch these people turning a dull routine visit to the gas station to fill up the tank into the funkiest, funniest moment ever! Worth the watch, really! Check out their singing..  there's some real talent hiding out there... Don't miss the couple's good vibes!

Click here to watch the video

Our six-word memoirs

The very last piece of writing students produced in class was an effort of synthesizing their life experience into six words. In the style of such great authors as Ernest Hemingway, who wrote his six word story "For sale: baby shoes never worn", Advanced students wrote up the following memoirs that I present below. Thanks to everyone for your effort this year!

Much to learn, little time available, Santiago Sancho

Come back to the lovely childhood, María Fernández

Be patient, think twice, then shoot, Oián Sánchez

I was always living life late, Esther Zurdo

Never give up, always discovering myself, Almudena García

Imagine dragons, ride them, wake up, Virginia García

Work hard, play hard, then relax, Jesús Vegas

Follow the beats of your heart, Natalia Díaz

Pretty girls should never laugh aloud, Simona Rad

Infinite possibilities are waiting for you, Óscar Carrillo

Hot in summer, party and nothing, Jesús Abad

Live fast, enjoy the moment, restart, Raúl Zaragoza

Never came what I was expecting, Eduardo Gallego

Enjoy dancing with a good dancer, Carlos Fraile

Out risk, out risk, out triumph, Carmen de Blas

Smile, your enemy hates that, Ainhoa Luque

Imagine a better world, build it, Lara Garrido

Day without smiles, sadly missed day, Silvia Manchado

Present is alive, past is dead, Lisardo Prieto

Trying to try the best everyday, Luis Carnerero

Open your mind, close your eyes, Carlos J.López

Fake or Real? II

And this is one of the most visited videos in 2011, a breathtaking recording of animal interaction in a nature preserve called Kruger, in South Africa. Judge by yourselves: fake or real?

Pretty amazing, huh? But there's always room for some critical reflection here:  Do you think the man may be somehow involved in the way animals interact here? Maybe you wanna think about the dimensions of park safaris like this one...

Fake or Real? I

... I know you guys were all heart broken the other day in class... But believe me, it's always better when we see and face reality as it is, and are not deceived by the appearances, don't you think? Now you can tell your friends that the poor lemmings never commited suicide. It's been a ubiquitous myth, but we buy it no more. And where does that myth come from? In 1958 Walt Disney produced White Wilderness, part of the studio's True Life Adventure series. This documentary featured a segment on lemmings, detailing their strange compulsion to commit mass suicide. But this was all fake! In fact, it was staged: the lemmings supposedly committing mass suicide by leaping into the ocean were actually thrown off the cliff by Disney filmmakers! The epic "lemming migration" was staged using careful editing, tight camera angles and a few dozen lemmings running on a snow covered turntable.
As Karl S. Kruszelnicki puts it in his article, considering a company like Disney, where one rodent, namely Mickey Mouse, was Royalty, it's rather odd to think that Disney could be so unkind to another rodent, the lemming...

Read more about the lemming suicide myth here

¡Este jueves hacemos huelga!

Lesson Number 1 in Phonetics

More on puzzling science tricks

Here I suggest a new listening task for you guys: it consists in catching the expressions the experimenter uses to describe some of the actions that he's carrying out in this video. They all involve an action verb. You just have to listen out for the sentence where this action verb appears, and write it down. Find the lists of verbs below. Then click on the key to the listening practice at the bottom of this post to find out how accurate you were with this information filling practice.
1) fill -->
2) place over -->
3) invert -->
4) support & remove -->
5) pour -->
6) overflow -->
7) place & turn upside down -->
8) come out -->
9) tip -->
10)cause the water to come out -->

PS: Didn't you just love his goggles?? Hey, maybe that blue coloring is totally radioactive!

key to the listening practice

Spoken Word

Following up on rhymes, I'd like to present to you one of the latest version of this entrenched form of popular culture in English: Spoken Word. This is a word-based performance art, which generally consists of story-telling or poetry. The link that follows was sent to me by one of your fellow students,where you can see Sulibreaks, a British spoken word artist telling us why he hates school but loves education... Thanks, Miguel, for the videolink!

I will not let an exam result decide my fate. Spoken word

Vincent Malloy's Rhymes by Tim Burton

This week we spent some time in class reading and listening about nursery rhymes, like the very famous Humpty Dumpty, or Mary, Mary, quite Contrary nursery rhymes. Then we learned that there's much more to these rhymes than one could have actually thought at first. The tradition of rhyming in English is really long and rich.
Here follows another example of nursery rhymes made into a short horror film, written, designed, and directed by Tim Burton. Vincent Malloy is a young boy who wants to be just like Vincent Price... And who's Vincent Price? Well, a famous actor from Hollywood, but most significantly the voice-over on Michael Jackson's Thriller. Who can possibly ever forget that eerie rap, huh?

Before watching it, please open the gapped transcript and try to figure out the missing ending words in each verse. You'll see it's just a piece of cake. After that, watch the video to check your guesses. Enjoy!

Vincent Malloy's gapped transcript

Vincent Malloy Short Horror Film

Mayday!

This is a very short video to cheer you up, guys: It will help us realize that Spanish speakers are not the only ones struggling to catch what British say... and terribly missing the point sometimes!

German Coastguard Sinking

And remember: the only way to make progress is actually putting the foot in it, hopefully not in such dire circumstances as the poor German coastguard above!

Ok, most of us had to agree, after the debate we held in class, that money does make the world go around, right? Just like Liza Minnelli sang in this very famous musical play Cabaret, back in 1966... Yet, it can't be all that matters to be happy and enjoy life, can it? And even though economists nowadays seem to be ruling our lives with their technical mumbo-jumbo, we should go back to a grass-roots understanding of economy, our economy.
For the time being, and to make sure we know our whereabouts when dealing with business matters in English, here follows a nice link to a set of listenings all devoted to practicing business-related words and expressions in English. Please, since we have no time to work on this in class, could you just click on those you may find more interesting for your career? Good, thanks. By the way, the transcripts come in very handy too.

Business Language to Go, by the BBC

Food for Thought: TV Series Made in America

A few weeks ago we were discussing  parenthood issues in class, remember? We actually watched one episode of Modern Family, in which we saw three  intertwined families dealing with their garden-variety family life, from the most stereotypical one to the gay couple and their adopted Vietnamese girl. Well, after watching it we had a class-discussion on the different issues depicted, and one of your fellow students wrote up a review which brings up one issue we didn't comment on but it's certainly important. Please, click on the link below to find out more about this. Thanks, Garasi, for your work and for sharing your opinion with us.

Garasi's review of Modern Family

But does speed yoga exist for real?! We need a Slow Revolution

Now that we're done with the mid-year exams, we might as well just stop for a while, have some time off to think and reflect on what we have achieved this year, which is quite a lot! (more than we would think, for sure), and shake off the stress we carry around as we are in motion, fast motion, from work to school, from school to our daily chores, etc... People from the Slow Movement know about this feeling, and some years ago started sending out this message for us to regain a more humanlike pace, and stop living like powered up robots. 

What follows is a description of this movement posted in wikipedia, and a really nice talk by worldwide-known advocates of Slowness. 

The Slow Movement promotes a cultural shift toward slowing down life's pace. It began with Carlo Petrini's protest against the opening of a McDonald's restaurant in Piazza di Spagna, Rome, in 1986 that sparked the creation of the Slow Food organization. Over time, this developed into a subculture in other areas, such as Cittaslow (Slow Cities), Slow Living, Slow Travel, and Slow Design.

And now watch the video. I suggest that you sit back on your chair, breathe, make yourself comfortable, and, importantly, leave the cell aside, no whatsapps to be checked and that kind of stuff... just relax and listen to these people talking about how to start shifting our minds.

Human Planet

Human Planet is a British television documentary series produced by the BBC with co-production from Discovery and BBC Worldwide. It describes the human species and its relationship with the natural world by showing the remarkable ways human have adapted to life in every environment on Earth.

After watching the episode Arctic: Life in the Deep Freeze, now it's time to check your answers to the questions discussed in class, so click on the link below to find out!

Answers to the discussion questions

Britart: Banksy is back!

Banksy is a pseudonymus England-based graffiti artist, political activist, film director, and painter. His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humor with graffiti done in a distinctive stencilling technique. Such artistic works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls, and bridges of cities throughout the world. To see a slideshow of his best creations, click on the link below, and then watch the video to hear more about his last exhibit in the Bristol City Museum, and complete the quiz questions to test your understanding.

The slideshow: Best of Banksy

Banksy at the Bristol City Museum

What's the key to being a great dad?

After watching the episode of Modern Family which deals with parenting issues, now it's time to review the words and expressions we worked on together in class. Below you can find the vocabulary sheet and the video, in case you wanna watch it again: A second viewing is surely gonna be of great help to understand all the things that are going on during this episode, and to catch all the jokes!

vocabulary sheet

download the video here

download the subtitles here

A short story for our literary club: Alice Munro

Wintertime is really at its peak right now! Just the perfect time for some cozy reading on the couch, huh?  I suggest expanding our English vocabulary and our understanding of the human soul as we read a short story from one of the greatest contemporary Canadian writers: Alice Munro. The story "Chance" was published in 2004, in her book New Selected Stories. The idea is to have a brief literary workshop in class in a couple of weeks, when all of you have read the story and reflected on the discussion questions below. Also, and for your convenience, check out the glossary I made for you, before and while reading, as you like.

The story "Chance", by Alice Munro
Glossary from Munro's "Chance"
Discussion questions

In case you feel like listening to more stories by Munro, here's a couple of audio files containing two stories from Munro's last collection, Too Much Happiness, really recommendable too!

Free Radicals

Some Women

Hieronymus Bosch

The triptych of The Garden of Earthly Delights (1503-1504) 

Hieronymus Bosch, born Jeroen Anthonissen van Aken (c. 1450 - August 9, 1516) was an Early Netherlandish painter of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Many of his works depicts sin and human moral failings. Bosch used images of demons, half-human animals and machines to evoke fear and confusion to portray the evil of man. His works contain complex, highly original, imaginative, and dense use of symbolic figures and iconography, some of which was obscure even in his own time.

The video that follows is a short extract from a full documentary film produced by BBC FOUR, called Hieronymus Bosch and the Delights of Hell. While concentrating on the artist's central themes and imagery, the film also examines the medieval culture in which he worked. The extract below corresponds to part 1 (out of 5), and lasts 10 minutes. It has no English subtitles, except for the part they speak in French, but the narrator speaks fairly clearly and slowly. Now that we have analysed The Conjurer in class, maybe you feel like exploring more of his groundbreaking paintings. If so, the  BBC FOUR documentary can be a good start!

And remember we're going to a British Art Show this Friday in downtown Madrid! Click on this link to find out more about it: Treasure Island: British Art from Holbein to Hockney.