- Dear all, I'm uploading an exercise we're doing today. It's been designed by a teacher of the department, Nicola Holmes, to whom I want to express my gratitude for being so generous. It's a really good listening we can do together today. Please have this file open in your devices BUT ONLY LOOK AT THE FIRST PAGE.
- In preparation for the class I recommend you to be in front of a biggish screen, to be able to see the exercise, and have, if available, headphones on, as we're doing quite a lot of listening. TODAY'S CLASS:
- We exchanged information about pangolins and bats.
- We listened to Mar's presentation on a voluntary project she did last year involving blind people and guide dogs in the USA. Thanks a lot Mar, I'm linking the vocabulary document you prepared.
- We did Nicola's exercise on a COVID 19 survivor in Wuhan. This is the exercise, together with the transcript and key. Here you have the audio. This was the first ingredient of hope.
- We also had a look about another hopeful side, the beginning of the spring. We saw a short video to extract the four activities the specialist recommends to do at the beginning of the spring in your British garden.
Homework: on spring.
Choose one of these topics and tell us something about it for next class. You can prepare your presentation and send it to me too!
- Dear students, last Wednesday some of you connected over a videoconference using a link I sent you five minutes prior to the class.
- Although it is not like face to face interaction, I think it more or less worked well. I particularly like the chat part to be able to use it as a kind of blackboard. Each session is theoretically 40 minutes long but we can probably have three in a row or one long one if the system allows it again.
- Last Wednesday we had a little warm up about the reading you had done on nuclear energy. This could have been recorded and sent to me, you can still do so.
- We then shared the proposals Bill Gates had in his 2015 TED Talk and extracted some interesting vocabulary from it.
- We plunged into coronavirus language with Alanna Shaikh's recent TED Talk, for which we answered the questions I had given you in the last entry.
- We revised Stress and Intonation in English. The most interesting idea is that English is a stressed, not syllabic language.
- We then practised the pronunciation of contracted 've with a BBC site.
- I also showed you an extraordinary part of the BBC site, News Review, in which they do as I always tell you to do: pick up some words for vocabulary adoption. In the one we did they picked up: unprecedented, bouncing back and soar.
Homework:
- We're reorganising our presentation schedule, decide if you want to prepare a short presentation for the rest of the class and let me know. I'm also ready to give you a hand if you need it.
- Have a look at the videos below and organise information about these extraordinary animals. You can send it to me in a recording for me to give you feedback on the speaking production but it will be the topic of next class's warm-up:
- Dearest students,
I hope you're doing well.
At this incredibly strange and defying hour we can maybe open a space of some quiet learning of English together. Let's see.
I really hope you can be safely at home all the time it's possible and that you and your loved ones are also doing well. Let's also hope the coronavirus is feeling as baffled as the image shows on the left and thinking about surrender, let's hope for the best.
As for the school, all the courses are following in distance learning and all administrative work can also be done remotely from the safety of all the staff's homes. The telephone is working in the mornings and administrative emails are going to be answered too.
Each teacher started to organise work last Thursday. It took me some more time because the school was told to keep open on Thursday and Friday and there was some organising work to do, sorry for that.
We've decided to design some work for every in-person class that we were having. That work is going to be set and sent to students in the form each teacher prefers and we are also going to receive productions and give you feedback.
Of course I want to use our blog to set our work, as we already know it well, but I'm also thinking about other platforms that may be useful to offer some better interaction. I need some time to check but I hope to have something ready for Wednesday morning. The idea is to try to be connected together during the time of our class, that is Wednesdays 18.30 to 20.30, for which a more flexible platform could be of great use. I don't want to confuse you (and me! ;-)) with many or complicated ideas, I want to find one that gives some flexibility and stick to it.
Until Wednesday morning, let me go on only with our blog, resuming from the last class we had last March 4th, that now seems like a year ago. This is more or less the class belonging to last Wednesday, March 11th, the day classes were cancelled to try to stop the rapid spread of the virus in Comunidad de Madrid
- You were going to read something about nuclear power (have a look at the previous entry). This was because we were having discussions on the two most extraordinary feats human beings had achieved, the landing on the moon and the development of an energy, the nuclear one, that could wipe us out from the planet. We had already done the first part. This is my adaptation of the class:
1. After reading about your favourite among the topics on nuclear energy I gave you, organise a short recording (three or four minutes) about what you've read and send it to me. Tip! Pick up interesting vocabulary you'd like to adopt and try to adopt it in the recording you send me. That is, try to use new structures and vocab there. I'll give you feedback on it.
2. As interesting as it may be, nuclear energy is now completely outdated, compared to coronavirus, and I think we should be prepared to speak and listen about it in English too.
Most interestingly, Bill Gates started a TED Talk, back in 2015, about infectious viruses talking about nuclear disasters. This talk is very interesting, only 8 minutes long and I'd like you to see it and write down the different proposals Bill Gates makes. Also please decide on TEN interesting words from the talk.
3. After that, we could have had a very good conversation together in class. We may be able to have it next day over the platform, but let's get some specific vocabulary about coronavirus itself. Last Wednesday, an American specialist, Alanna Shaikh, gave a very clear and interesting TED Talk on the coronavirus outbreak. I've planned the following questions for you to try to answer:
1. Is Alanna Shaikh a good source of information on coronavirus? Why?
2. What is a coronavirus and where does the name come from?
3. What are its symptoms?
4. What examples of evasions and dishonesty does she mention?
5. Why does she mention Chad of the Democratic Republic of Congo?
6. Why does she mention the supply system?
4. We were also going to practice pronunciation. I've been checking some websites and I think we could start with this one. I've picked an exercise about Intonation and Stress. I think it's very well explained and it gives you some practice. I'd like you to have a look at it and do the exercises. You can tell me about how it works for you on Wednesday.
