Apart from St Valentine's day, February 14th 2010 is the first day of the Chinese new year, the year of the Tiger. The Chinese New Year day is always the second new moon after the winter solstice and therefore it changes from one year to another.
According to Chinese tradition, parents give their children clean, fresh banknotes at the start of the new year in order to bring them good luck. What happens when there is shortage of new bank notes or they are difficult to find?... it's time for a new business opportunity... read more here.
How much of a pizza lover are you? I just came across this report on Naples pizza. It's good news for pizza lovers. Have a look at it. You can read the report, listen to it and check the vocabulary. Nice and short exercise. Don't miss it!
Leave a comment on the blog about your favourite kind of restaurant when you eat out.
If you could choose would you prefer to live in a penthouse in fifth avenue, NY or in a picturesque cottage in the English countryside? Throughout history people have lived in many places, some more comfortable, luxurious or expensive than others. Here you have a nice exercise about places where people live and adjectives that you could use to describe those places. Have a go at it and send your teacher a short composition explaining where you would choose to live if you could and why.
Saint Valentine's Day is celebrated on 14 February, but how much do you know about the origin of this celebration? You can read and answer the questions about this text.
Feb 14 can be a wonderful day to fall in love -why not?, or at least to try. If you don't happen to be an expert, here you are given a few hints to help you to say 'I love you' with a guarantee of success. (Don't take it too seriously).
I found this cute song and I'm sure our classmate Juana Mari will love it.
Today we'll have a look at Conditional Clauses Type II, the so-called hypothetical conditions, because:
a. we don't expect the action in the if-clause to take place Ex: "If all the wars stopped, the world would be a much better place to live in." (unlikely to happen?)
b. the supposition in the if-clause is contrary to known facts or very unlikely to happen. Ex: "If I could fly I wouldn't have to spend money on buses." (contrary to known facts -people don't fly).
Type II conditionals are mainly used to make hypothesis, express wishes and give advice. Again, for more information on grammar and usage of this type of conditional sentences read these notes and visit this tutorial.
Conditional clauses are quite a difficult issue in English -they're also quite difficult to master in our own language and very often we hear people using the wrong tenses.
I have prepared some notes to help you get a clear idea of how conditional clauses work, the tenses we must use and the functions we can express with them.
We usually refer to Conditional clauses Type I as "Open condition" because we view the condition expressed in the if clause as something likely to happen. Ex: "If the weather is nice tomorrow, we'll go to the beach."
As you will see when you read the notes, we use this type of conditionals to express: general and particular cause-effect, advice, threat, offer, comments, etc...
Here you will find some exercises to practise Conditional clauses Type I
And yet another link dealing with grammar and exercises on Type I conditional clauses.
Good luck!
And now a little present: a beautiful poem called "If" by 1907 Literature Nobel Prize winner, Rudyard Kipling. Click here to read several translations of the poem If into Spanish; you can choose your favourite. And now, are you ready now to watch this magnificent video by George Horne? He has some excellent works, maybe you want to take a minute to see some of the things he does.
I had never seen Paris in the snow. It's freezing cold, but it's just as beautiful as ever. I'm having a wonderful time with my family -specially with my little grandson, Leo. From Paris a thought for my students in Spain. See you very soon.
Spanish schools tend to celebrate the International Day for Peace on January 30th, the day of Mahatma Gandhi's death.
Many other countries and also the UN, celebrate this day on March 21st. The date is not so important as long as we take the opportunity to reflect about the meaning of peace and what we can do in order to achieve it.
Peace One Day has a website full of ideas and initiatives to bring peace to the world. It is worth paying a visit (watch video Peace one day in 60 seconds). Jeremy Gilley, founder and chairman of Peace One Day brought up the idea to fix in the calendar one day of ceasefire and peace. That day ended up being Sept 21st. In the following video he explains how he did it.
If you feel like reading a bit more about War and Peace in Art, here is an interesting article.
"The Teacher" from the BBC is going to help us today to become familiar with some "colour idioms". Have a look at this video explaining some idioms connected with colour green:
There is an important group of pairs of adjectives in English ending in -ed or -ing. Their correct use is confusing for many students. In this crossword you can practise some of them. Good luck!
Last January 12th the Caribbean country of Haiti was struck by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake. This is how the BBC reported this terrible event the following day.
A week later the government has reported more than 100,000 deaths, and thousands of people are still missing. Relief teams and aid are arriving from all over the world but there are terrible problems of organization and infrastructure to reach the victims.
Our class is going to the theatre tomorrow. We're going to watch "Pygmalion" a classical play by George Bernard Shaw. If you want to find out a bit more about the company which is going to perform, click here. I hope we all enjoy the show and have a good time. See you there!
If you wish to have a look at the script of the play, here it is.
Some days ago we talked about "purpose clauses" (they answer the question "what for?") and today we want to talk about "clauses of cause and reason" (they answer the question "why?").
If we look carefully we will realize that they are two different concepts. Broadly speaking we could say that the "purpose" looks ahead and generally has to do with ourselves, with our personal intentions or objectives, while the "reason" usually looks back and often has to do with other people's impositions upon us. Some people mix them and when you ask "why?" they answer... "in order to..." or when you ask "what for?" they come up with "because..."
The Beatles have an appropriate song to illustrate this question: "Tell me why" (lyrics)
And of course they also have a song to illustrate the answer: "Because" (lyrics)
A New Year is knocking at the door. Let's let it in. Every new year comes full of blessings if we only open our hearts to appreciate them.
Singing the Auld Lang Syne at the stroke of midnight has become a tradition in English-speaking countries and others. If you want to learn more about this tradition, read here.
Hogmanay is the name given to the celebrations of the New Year in Scotland. It is a very exciting celebration especially in Edinburgh. Read more about it.
Have you ever wondered why we say "a tall basketball player" and not "a basketball tall player", or "an expensive gold watch" instead of "a gold expensive watch"? The order of the adjectives is important in English and it is not an easy topic for Spanish students. As a general rule we know that most adjectives are used in front of the noun (not after it as in Spanish), and we also know that the basic order of the adjectives is this: qualitative adjectives, colours and classifying adjectives. If you want to learn a bit more let me tell you that when I was a boy I had a mnemonic sentence which helped me to remember the order of the adjectives: "Very Soon a Slow Old Train Should Come From My Province". Have a look at these notes I have prepared for you and you'll see what I mean. When you are ready have a go at these exercises.
Apart from St Valentine's day, February 14th 2010 is the first day of the Chinese new year, the year of the Tiger. The Chinese New Year day is always the second new moon after the winter solstice and therefore it changes from one year to another.
