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.

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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.   

Conversation B2 Mon. -Tues.

Please see or resee the videoclip on Surveillance of normal citizens and the John Stewart clip plus the vocab and questions I have written.

To make it easier for you I have made a doc of the vocab. and questions.
 Click here

And here are the links for the video clips again.
http://www.thensavideo.com/

and  

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-october-24-2013/everybody-hates-u-s-?xrs=eml_tds_102513

We will talk about these on Monday plus do unfinished things from previous class.

Have a good long weekend!!

Conversation B2 all 4 Halloween Readings

For those of you who requested this, here's the link: Click here:


In a short time, I will post some questions for the "Surveillance" video clip ( several posts back) . The John Stewart clip already has questions. And comment on the classes for next week.

Conv. B2 for Wednesday and Thursday: questions and roleplay for video scene

Good exercise for pre Halloween video scene.

Click here

B2.2 Friday and Saturday

Very nice and quickly done summary by Eva of the Saturday class below. It's also valid for the Friday class.

Also want to remind you of the homework:

Vocabulary exercise p.10, grammar exercise p.11 and the Reading about "urban myths" on p. 12 with exercise B+C.

I told the Saturday group to think of an urban legend to talk about (and optionally to write it.)

Friday class: Also, think of an urban legend to tell in class, but since you have 2 weeks, you should write it too!

Eva Mayoral26 de octubre de 2013 10:30

Hi everyone , I'm Eva and this is a summary of our last english class.

Firstly Kate tried to remember each name and even if she couldn't remember all of them, i think this made the class more personal, also we can't forget that we have two new partners (Virginia and Leo, sorry if i'm wrong with the names).

 (WE DID A MIXER EXERCISE TO FIND SOMEONE WHO SAID "YES" TO DIFFERENT SENTENCES THAT REVIEWED THE VOCABULARY AND USE OF VERB TENSES.)

Then we corrected the exercises we were told to do for the class and we started with an exercise about problems in the cities, discussing it by groups: A (Tangshan), B(New York), and C (Dortmund).

Later we made other groups composed by one member from each first group, and we show to our mates what we had learned about each city.

Finally we did a vocabulary exercise and also a listening about natural disasters, taking notes to talk about it later.

i hope you guys enjoyed the class,

see you next saturday.

Finally, I'm repasting the link ofr the video clip about poor people who solve problems in a resourceful way. It goes well with the Listening we did. Some in the Friday class said you watched it but no one in the Saturday class watched it.   http://www.ted.com/talks/iwan_baan_ingenious_homes_in_unexpected_places.html.   

Conversation B.2: a little extra fun with Jon Stewart

This episode of "The Daily Show" will probably be more difficult for you than the Malala interview because Jon Stewart is talking at his normal speed, but then you already know the topic, so that will help!

Helpful Questions

1. What 3 countries are upset at the US and why?
2. What do these 2 words mean:
 - awkward
- eavesdropping
- wire-tapping
3. What politicians had meetings with the angry foreign leaders and where?
4. "Who" is Bo?
5. What accents does Stewart imitate?
6. What does he say was Merkyl's reply when Obama asking her "How are you"?
7. How does he imply ( jokingly) that the secret microphone was planted on Angela Merkyl?
8. How does he think the rest of the world feels about the US?
9. What observation does Stewart make about the grammar of Obama's spokeperson in his denial?

Link¨:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-october-24-2013/everybody-hates-u-s-?xrs=eml_tds_102513