B2.2 Nov 22-23 Excellent summary by Hicham of the Saturday class

Saturday 23th November class summary

Hi mates, I’ll try to make a summary about the last class Saturday 23th November. The class had many sections like conversations in groups, Reading and listening.

Kate began the class talking about the 50^th John F. Kennedy (JFK) assassination anniversary.  She told us that the murder is still for her a personal historical marker and described her feelings the few days after she learned about it. She mentioned also what John Kerry (US secretary of state) talked about in his latest interview; that he has serious doubts that Lee Harvey Oswald (the murderer) acted alone in killing JFK and “Who really killed JFK?” is still the million-dollar question for the past five decades.

The second section was a group conversation about our personal historical marker while Kate was picking up some mistakes to discuss afterward. The most common personal markers were without a doubt the 11^th September and 11^th March terrorist attacks in New York and Madrid.

The third section was making difference between British and North American stereotypes in a list.

The fourth section was reading and discussing texts on the page 17 about people describing what strange and weird customs they found in others countries. The one that most caught my attention was that in China they use separate taps for the cold and hot water in the same sink and you should to fill up the sink first to have the water at the desired temperature. (Actually that was England, which makes it more unbelievable! Kate)

In the fifth and final section we had a listening about three people explaining their own perceptions about British stereotypes, like all Scottish people wear kilts and British recite Shakespeare verses and so on.

Homework for the next Saturday:

Do some exercises at the beginning of the third Unit.

Write a paper about Spanish stereotypes.

Some learnt vocabulary:

Rant (v): To complain hardly about something.

Acquire (v): To obtain something.

Get away with a mistake/error/crime (v): To not be punished for it.

Acquit (v): To absolve someone of a crime.

Fishy:  Inspiring doubt or suspicion.

Left leaning (Politics): Democrat, Liberal, Socialist, Communist…

Right leaning (Politics): Conservative, Neo-Conservative, Republican, Libertarian, Constitutionalist.

Banter: Teasing, joke.

Bug (v): To annoy, disturb, irritate, bother.

Kilts: Scottish skirt.

This is a link to a short video clip from the TV series The West Wing. It is related to the idea of misconceptions and cultural identity. We can't dedicate much class time to it, as we have so much to cover. But try to see it and we will use it in the 1st 5 minutes as a warm-up. 
  
Link: http://www.upworthy.com/we-have-been-mislead-by-an-erroneous-map-of-the-world-for-500-years?c=ufb2

(There is a sub-title option but a lot of the subtitles are wrong!)

A few vocabulary items:
- dues / dues-paying members = fee or quota one must pay to belong to a group or club / poeple who pay this
- bias = prejudice
"blow your mind"  = shock you /"romperte los esquemas" (colloquial)
freak me out = similar expression

A few ?'s:
1. What are the common misconceptions the visitors to the White House point out? What is the goal of the group they belong to?
2. What is the cause of these common misconceptions and how would they like the US President to correct them?
3.. Why do these common misconception show a prejudice?
4. What has probably been the negative result?
5. What is "freaking out" CJ Craig ( the woman)?