Preparing your monologues

Hi everyone!

I just found this wonderful site to help you with your monologues: it's called Splendid Speaking and it "supports advanced learners of English who want to develop their top-level speaking skills and communication strategies."

Each week, they tackle a specific issue on how to talk better English. Take, for example, this lesson about "how to captivate your audience with memorable introductions".

They also offer you the possibility of subscribing here! "For immediate access to transcripts for current and previous Splendid Speaking podcasts, and to be alerted to new materials on the website, sign up now for our weekly newsletter."

You can also access their blog from here.

Enjoy!

New Writing Exercise!

Do you remember Essay Punch? The website that helped us write a paragraph about who you'd take to Hawaii? Did you find it useful and/or enjoyable?

I've just found out that they have a new (and free!) exercise available for you. This time the instruction is the following:

"One of your friends knows all about dolphins. Another can sing all the songs Michael Jackson ever wrote. Almost everyone has an interest, talent, or hobby that makes him or her an "expert" in some area. Describe an activity or area about which you are especially knowledgeable."

Would you like to try writing a new paragraph with them? Remember: you just have to go to the home page, select "Start Writing Now" (which is on the left, at the beginning of the list), and follow the instructions.

When you think that your paragraph is ready, just send it over to me and I'll have a look.

Good luck!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

The big Irish party is taking place TODAY, 17th March. It's St. Patrick's, the day of the patron saint of Ireland. All around the world people feast this event. Are you in for any party tonight?

To read some info on St. Patrick, click here.

Irish are everywhere! Would you like to see how the party is celebrated in Chicago? Access this site then. They even dye the river green!
Here is how they celebrate it in Dublin. Have a look at a slideshow of this year's parade in New York too.

To watch a video about the history of the event, click here. It's only 3:33 minutes long, but you have more videos on the same site (just select them on the right).

The Simpsons go green too! Click here to watch the clip.

Finally, to take a quiz on "All things Irish", click here.

Just one more thing to say: Slainte! ("Cheers" in Irish)

Why Men don't Listen and Women can't read maps

Remember Ted Talks? I wrote a post about them not long ago. Well, there's something pretty similar in a different site called FORA.tv.

Here's a description of the website:

"There are brilliant ideas, expressed everyday in public discussions and events, all over the world. Don't miss them. FORA.tv delivers discourse, discussions and debates on the world's most interesting political, social and cultural issues, and enables viewers to join the conversation. It provides deep, unfiltered content, tools for self-expression and a place for the interactive community to gather online."

And this is where I found three mini-videos about the topic we saw last week in class- Dr. John Gray talks about several issues from his book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus:

- Listening Techniques for Men (5:09 min)
- How Women cope differently with Stress (4:17 min)
- Why Mars and Venus Collide (0:50)

Enjoy these and other topics. See you tomorrow!

Writing Week (II)

Here we go again. I found some "jewels" to keep on working in this "writing week". Let's see some of them:

PARAGRAPH WRITING (revision)
If you want to remember what we did the last day, there is a website for children where you can watch this video about how to write a paragraph. Then you can take a quiz, why not? To test whether you got the idea. Here is an
"easy" one and here you are a "hard" one.

CHOICE OF LANGUAGE
Choosing one or another word has a direct effect on the text you're writing. We'll work on it in class, but here I collected a series of tales that were written "in a different way". They're the "Politically Correct Bedtime Stories", by James Finn Garner. The words in these tales are carefully chosen! Some examples:
- Politically Correct Three Little Pigs
- Politically Correct Little Red Riding Hood

HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR VOCABULARY
- Reading lots and lots.
- Doing specific exercises. More exercises here. You need a lifetime to do them all!
- Going to specific websites. Examples:
*how to record vocabulary
*how to improve your vocabulary
*dictionary entries
*finding new ways to say something

PUNCTUATION BASICS
You can have a look at a very useful site you might already know: click here for a thorough explanation of the comma, the period, the colon, etc.

More explanations and exercises on commas here.

Easy exercise: capital letters and full stops. Another one on commas. REALLY NICE!
Medium difficulty exercise: apostrophes and commas.
Hard exercise: look at a text with and without punctuation.
Punctuation games by the British Council: punctuate different texts correctly.
Exercises on commas.

After having overcome your "commaitis", you can try to write longer sentences here.

THE WRITING WEEK

Hello everyone! I know you can't wait for "the Writing Week". This week we'll be looking at:

- Brainstorming and drafting techniques
- Basic paragraph writing techniques and exercises (select "Start Writing now")
- Revision and error analysis strategies
- Punctuation basics
- Vocabulary improvement

Finally, I do believe that one of the best ways to improve your writing is WRITING. Especially writing to English-speaking people. So a very good idea is to find a penpal that's learning your language, and collaborate to unite efforts in your learning process. Therefore we'll also have a look at:

- Social Networks to learn English, namely:
Language Exchange Community
Italki
place4langs
Friends Abroad
TalkConmigo
Huitalk
xLingo
WeLang

Never before has it been so easy to practice a language! Hope you make the most of it.

Spain seen by the British

Would you like to find out how Spanish elections are seen from the outside?

Click here for an interesting article on them.

Here for a video on the "Muñecos del Guiñol" that have been made of our politicians.

Here to read an "election guide" for foreigners.

Here to read about the current allocation of seats in the parliament.

Not interested in politics? Still interested in how we're seen from the outside? Then this is your site. A list of articles on other subjects by the Financial Times.

Not interested in serious reports? Ok then. Then visit this page to discover what most strikes British people about the Spanish character. It's good fun!

Enjoy!

Speech to the Troops at Tilbury

Delivered by Elizabeth to the land forces assembled at Tilbury
(Essex) to repel the anticipated invasion of the Spanish Armada.

My loving people,

We have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit our selves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust. I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field. I know already, for your forwardness you have deserved rewards and crowns; and We do assure you in the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you. In the mean time, my lieutenant general² shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject; not doubting but by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people.

Video link here. The speech starts at minute 3, approx.