Are we equals?

Following our class discussions about this topic and the readings in our book, I'd like to share this clip with  you.

The English Civil War: an interesting video about the battle of Nantwich

Amazingly enough, one of the latest multimedia clips on the Internet version of The Guardian newspaper is about the English Civil War -as we've just seen a text about it and we're focusing on history vocabulary, I thought you may find it interesting.
The clip is a bit difficult but if you read this Wikipedia entry, everything will be a bit easier. As you can read there, Nantwich is a town in Chesire (in the North West of England). It was occupied by Parliamentary forces and sieged for 6 weeks. After a famous battle, the siege was raised, which  meant a turning point for the war.
There's an annual re-ennactment of this battle in the town -it takes place on January 25th and the documentary focuses on this re-ennactment.
In the documentary, there's a historian, who is not too difficult to understand. However, some of the local people who appear in the clip have a broader Northern accent and are more difficult to understand.
Anyway, if you want to watch it, here is the link.

Scott and his expedition to the South Pole

Our blog is back. We needed a fascinating story like Scott's expedition to the South Pole to be back on line! Well, if you are interested in this explorer and the controversies around his character and death, you can read the following:
1. Wikipedia article on Scott
2. Doomed expediton to the Pole, 1912
After such a lot of reading, what's your opinion about Scott? Do you think he was a brave explorer or a selfish character?

Some ideas to improve your writing

You should all have handed in the following compositions by now:
- About myself
- National stereotypes
-A joke
-An interview
Last Friday I set writing assignment number 5, the 'For and Against' composition on page 34 in your books. We also had an interesting class discussion about how to write better compositions. Here are some ideas that can help you:

1. Consider a writing assigment as a process: think about it carefully, note down ideas and words you want to use, write a first draft, enrich that draft, read it several times, correct it, write the final version and, finally, hand it in. Even when we write in our first language, we don't usually write good compositions
2. Sometimes, you'll need to do some research on the topic, particularly if it's something you don't know about. The Internet may be usefulf but don't copy and paste from the Internet, just read and get information
3. Before you hand your assignment in, it may be interesting to give it to a classmate to have a different opinion. You can swap writings and note down your opinion and some ideas to improve each other's composition
4. At this level, you need to move on and stay away from plain structures and vocabulary. A nice way to enrich your writing is to write down a list of vocabulary or expressions that are related to the topic and you've recently learnt and force youroself to use it.
5. Link words and connectors are essential to give your composition cohesion and to make it more sophisticated. Make sure you include a wide variety of connectors: it may be interesting to have a check list of connectors (for example, the ones on page 34 in your books) and, again, force yourself to use them. Introduce a variety of sentence adverbs to start some of  your senteces as well: anyway, apparently, gradually, ideally, in fact, obviously, eventually, basically...
6. Think about the register you want to use in your composition. Ask yourself if its a formal or informal text that you are writing: use formal vocabulary or more informal words according to the type of audience or to the type of text you are writing.
7. Reading a lot will eventually help you to write better compositions.

Kate's Thanksgiving Presentation

In case you want to watch the youtube videos from Kate's presentation on Thanksgiving, these are the links (Thanks, Kate, for both your interesting presentation and the links):

Friends episode with the turkey on Joey's head
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJY6L52RhUs

Presidential turkey pardon (longer version)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78ofgmnAj1Q

The first Thanksgiving video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFDSobNnfQs

How Hollywood stereotyped the Native Americans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hJFi7SRH7Q

The Addams Family Values Thanksgiving play
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptLD0kCoHG4

Video about poverty on Native American reservations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq0Joi1ELps

Sight for sore eyes: Stem cells restore vision

Following our scienfic reading, a really interesting video on growing stem cells to cure blindness.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/video/2010/nov/23/sight-eyes-stem-cells-vision

Keeping healthy: a daily walk and an interesting article

I just came across this interesting article in one of my favourite newspapers, The Guardian. The article is about how a daily 30-minute walk can help people keep fit and healthy.As health and keeping fit have been our most recent topics, I thought you'd may be interested in reading it. Hope you like it.
In praise of the daily walk