Conv. B2 Mon. /Tues. Pronunciation Documents

Hi groups,

For Monday, we'll finish the unfinshed exercises from Facebook, review a little vocabulary, and do a short mixer about reacting to an anecdote. If you didn't print it before, or don't still have it:  Click here.

Then we will do a series of exercises connected with Pronunciation. I don't know if we will have time for  the 3rd one or we will leave it for the next class, but here are the 3 links. The first two have an audio part of me pronuncing the sounds and words.

Vowel sounds with pictures:

and click here to listen  (You have to "descargar" for icon to appear at bottom left.)

2.  Vowel Pairs Pronunciation Chart Click here:

and  Click here  to listen.

3. Chart # 3

AND GREAT SUMMARY OF LAST THURSDAY'S CLASS by Susana (Also valid for Wed.)

Hello all, here is the summary of November 7th, ConvB2.

Last Thursday class was very interesting, it has been centered on Facebook and othersocial networks. First of all we have talked about the problems of their use (or their abuse) with a role playing: a girl bothered by the change of behavior of  her boyfriend, a mother upset by the attitude of her daughter, etc. The consultation of a psychologist is required: what can I do to compete against a smartphone?! People who became dependent on the social networks often seem  to live in a virtual world, they don’t talk very much, except with their electronic devices. We have talkED about other problems that can worry the users: identity theft, ciber-bullying…  

In the second part of the class, we watched a funny parody about the same thing: the dangers of Facebook. The clip is about the relationship between a girl and her boyfriend and their problems due to Facebook. She is angry because her boyfriend has changed his relationship status to “single” and as result of her false and nasty accusations the poor guy is imprisoned for communism! The clip was set in the 1950’s probably because at that time the senator McCarthy presided over the “House Un-American Activities Committee” that promoted people to snitch ON whoever had suspicious ideas. It was called the “witch-hunt” and some of its most famous and sad episodes take place in Hollywood.

B2.2 : About TED talks in last post

The first one about cities is really interesting. You can download and put subtitles in either Englsih or Spanish -- something I just realized!  Please try to watch it : it's 15 minutes but worth it.  See you in an hour or in a week!  :)  Kate

B2.2: More and better help with (finally) sorting out the Perfect Tenses

Hi Classes,

I hope you're enjoying classes thus far and either have enjoyed your long weekend  (Fri. class) or WILL HAVE ENJOYED ONE by the next time I see you! (Sat. group)

Some of you have pointed out ( I think correctly) that the grammar part of our text quite limited so a colleague led me to some grammar links that I'm sharing with you if you felt that the explanations and exercise in the book didn't clarify things for you as much as you'd have wished.

Here they are:

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-use-perfect-verb-tenses-in-english.html (Not calling you dummies here: just means they make very simple to understand!)

http://www.perfect-english-grammar.com/verb-tenses.html

http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar/verbs/present-tense/present-perfect

I'll be happy to look them over if you print or email them to me.  See some of you in 2 days and others on Sat. the 16th.

Oh--- and if you enjoyed the last TED talk on cities ( and how people in poor neighborhoods adapt) I think you will like these!  We can talk about them and the first one BRIEFLY as a warm-up.

Jeff Speck: The walkable city

http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_speck_the_walkable_city.html

Carolyn Steel: How food shapes our cities

http://www.ted.com/talks/carolyn_steel_how_food_shapes_our_cities.html

Con B2: For Wednesday /Thursday Facebook ... and the downsides of social media and the internet

Continuing from the last topic about spying and surveillance, we are going to talk about Facebook, advantages and disadvantages and problems.

I'd like you to see a very funny 5-minute video clip and print and do the exercises.

"Facebook Manners and You"        PLEASE CLICK HERE

B2.2 SATURDAY (Good for Conversation B2 as well)

These are the documents I said I'd post for you.

Vocabulary for Crimes

Click here


Expressions that are fromed with "tener + sustantivo" in Spanish and TO BE + ADJECTIVE  in English.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

Remember: No class next Saturday as it's "Almudena" so you have twice as much homework:
1. p.13 Vocabulary A +B ( very short)
2. Write about an arban legend or myth: 100 to150 words
3. p. 16 Vocabulary A +B (this is a little difficult)
4. Short readings pp. 16-17.

Now we just have to wait for Leo's summary, whoich we need for the people who were absent (Only 4!)

Conversation B2 Great Summary by Miquel

Miquel2 de noviembre de 2013 10:19

Hello everyone, I’m Miquel and here’s my summary of the October 31st lesson of ConvB2.

On last Thursday class we began to talk about the origin and history of Halloween due from four different recaps.

The name of Halloween is a contraction of the expression “All Hallows Eve (or Evening)”, occurring to be the last day of the year in Celtic calendar and when the real world and the spirits world are supposed to be closer. Celtic tradition thinks that bad spirits would come to real world to steal all the harvest so druids get dressed in an evil appearance look to chase them away. Also, in Christian tradition, people used to dress alike to not TO get hurt by bad spirits, and began the tradition of offering fruits and candies to children, being considered evil servants those who refused to do it. That has developed (on) IN the way that we actually know it as the “Trick or Treat”. Also, and Irish farmerS developed a candle-lighted empty pumpkin which folklore has name it as Jack O’Lantern.

Then, we talkED in a debate about the reasons may have Spanish citizens (on) FOR celebrating Halloween: if it’s considered a commercial day or if it’s just an excuse for people to do something funny and different.

_______________________________________________________________________________

For Tuesday, we will see and discuss the scene that we didn't see on Thursday and then talk about the 2 video clips about the NSA spying and "Big Brother type surveillance".  SO we will do something more"fun" and something else more social or political!!

Con B2 Mon- Wed.

Excellent summary of last week's classes by María THANKS, MARÍA!!

SUMMARY  28/10/2013

We arrived to class as each day, and we started talking about the last day’s
absences while we were waiting people to arrive.

We remembered the videos that Kate ordered us to watch and we checked the vocabulary. We have learned from that videos words like “mislead”, “disclosure”, “withdraw” and expressions like “to second guess” or “to rubber stamp” … which is interesting and useful to be able to talk in English about these last cases of tracking between countries.

After that, we reviewed some phrases that Kate gave us to discover what they mean… and I think we all did that almost perfect.

Then, we started the spEAking part, talking each other about  stunning* experiences we have had, like playing with the Ouija board, voodoo and stuff. We really enjoyED this part because, in my opinion, we are very talkative.

In the last part of the two hours of class, we listened to a cassette tape about a SOME curious experiments abut telepathy, but we spent quite amount of time in discover what the recordING meant, because we didn’t know about the relationSHIP between  the photographs and I think that we started the exercise a bit confused.

* stunning is more like “striking” in an attractive way. Better to use here strange, weird, surprising, even striking.

SUMMARY  30/10/2013

We started the class at 15.30. Firstly, in groups of four, we talked about the different texts Kate had given us on Monday, and we compared the vocabulary of each text. Then, we all together spoke about the different origins of the Halloween party and we realized that, after all, there are more similarities than differences, so we are more similar than we thought. With these exercise we had learned interesting words like “goblings”, “mischief”, “merger”, “lawn”, “stingy”, etc.

In the second part of the class, after solving some problems with (searchlight?) the projector??, we were watching two scenes of  from the film “Ghost” and after that, we had to answered questions about these two scenes.

I think it was an interesting activity because in dialogues they use quite colloquial expressions, and this is very useful to face any normal conversation. There were expressions like “blur it out”, “get yanked”, “churning”, etc. We have done it in groups of three.

For Monday, we have to answer the film questions (which are uploaded in the blog I suppose) and watch the Jon Steward video and all the videos we have mentioned in class during these week.