Passive Voice

(Reblogged from Grammar.net)

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non-commercial purposes only.

English: A Stress-Timed Language - American Pronunciation

(Reblogged from Rachel's English)

English is a Stress-Timed language. That means you need contrast between stressed and unstressed syllables—unstressed words may reduce, and will be low in pitch and flatter in shape. In other words, you DON'T pronounce every word fully and clearly!!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION:

In this American English pronunciation video, we're going to go over why some words sound different when they're said on their own than they do when they're said as part of a sentence, like 'for', 'fer'. 

A lot of people think, when they're studying a language and they're new to it, that they need to pronounce each word fully and clearly in order to be well-understood. But in English that's actually not the case. English is a stress-timed language. That means some syllables will be longer, and some will be shorter. Many languages, however, are syllable-timed, which means each syllable has the same length. Examples of syllable-timed languages: French, Spanish, Cantonese. So, when an American hears a sentence of English, with each syllable having the same length, it takes just a little bit longer to get the meaning. This is because we are used to stressed syllables, syllables that will pop out of the line because they're longer and they have more shape. Our ears, our brains, go straight to those words. Those are the content words. When all syllables are the same length, then there's no way for the ear to know which words are the most important.

Speaking Exchange

A group of young Brazilian students were keen on learning to speak English fluently. At the same time, lots of elderly people living in residential homes in the USA were longing to talk to someone. The idea was to connect them via Internet.

Would you like to experience this type of  “exchange”?

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non commercial purposes.

Look Up

"Look up from your phone, shut down that display. Stop watching this video, live life the real way".

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non commercial purposes

Interviews for World's Toughest Job

Millions of people saw a job posting by a Boston agency for a "director of operations" position, but only 24 people applied.

In today's tough job market, why did so few people show an interest? It could be because of the requirements of the job.

The website rehtom.net posted the job and paid for ads, hoping to get the right applicant. So what is required from the right applicant? Here's a partial list:

• Must be able to work 135 or more hours a week
• Ability to work overnights
• Willingness to forgo breaks
• Work mostly standing up and/or bending
• Must be able to lift up to 75 lbs. on a regular basis
• Crisis management skills a must
• Ability to manage a minimum of 10-15 projects at one time
• Ability to coordinate multiple, often conflicting, schedules
• Ability to work with associates with minimal ability
• Demonstrated knowledge and experience in negotiating, counseling and culinary arts
• Understanding of finance
• Understanding of medicine
• Positive disposition at all times

So who would hire for a such a job? Only one way to find out. Watch this video to see the interviews and real-time reactions. Believe us, it's worth it to watch to the end.

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non-commercial purposes only.

The Benefits of Reading Books

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non-commercial purposes only.

THX1138

THX1138 Director's cut: The Future Trailer

Set in the 25th century, the story centers around a man and a woman who rebel against their rigidly controlled society...

In an overpopulated futuristic Earth, a New York police detective finds himself marked for murder by government agents when he gets too close to a bizarre state secret involving the origins of a revolutionary and needed new foodstuff.

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non-commercial purposes only.

The Power of Ideas

“The Power of Ideas” is a new contest launched by Cambridge University Press Iberia addressed to Primary School teachers and students.

They believe in the power of ideas and imagination to change reality, to create new things and to improve the world around us.

The idea is to invent one or several powers that people could possess and explain how they could use it to change things. You can participate individually, in small or big teams but an English teacher must take part in the project’s conception.

You must upload your ideas to http://www.quickminds.es/the-power-of-ideas/participa/1 in several formats: video, audio, picture or pdf. Each project must include a description of maximum 50 words in English.

The prizes are as follows:

1^st - 4,000 euros

2^{nd -} 3,000 euros

3^{rd -} 2,500 euros

4th - 2,000 euros

5th - 1,500 euros

And a special prize for the school which submits more projects (3,000 euros)

If you are keen on participating, remember that the deadline is 20^th October 2014.

You can read all the information in Spanish by clicking here: http://www.quickminds.es/the-power-of-ideas

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non commercial purposes.

Hurricane Carter

Rubin "Hurricane" Carter (born 6th May 1937, died 20th April 2014) was an American middleweight boxer.

In 1966, police arrested Carter for a triple homicide in the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey. Police stopped Carter's car and brought him and another occupant, John Artis, to the scene of the crime. There was little physical evidence. Police took no fingerprints at the crime scene and lacked the facilities to conduct a paraffin test for gunshot residue. None of the eyewitnesses identified Carter or Artis as the shooters. Carter and Artis were tried and convicted twice (1967 and 1976) for the murders, but after the second conviction was overturned in 1985, prosecutors chose not to try the case for a third time.

Carter's story inspired the 1975 Bob Dylan song Hurricane and 1999 Norman Jewison's film starring Denzel Washington. From 1993 to 2005, Carter served as executive director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted. 

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non-commercial purposes only.

3 Things I Learned While My Plane Crashed

Ric Elias had a front-row seat on Flight 1549, the plane that crash-landed in the Hudson River in New York in January 2009. What went through his mind as the doomed plane went down? At TED, he tells his story publicly for the first time.

Original TED Talk with English subtitles at: https://www.ted.com/talks/ric_elias

Labor Walk of Fame 2.1

The following are our best students for the second term:

ESO 1A: Unai Rial, Xacobe Piñeiro and Gonzalo Torres - 9.2

ESO 1B: Raquel Cordeiro - 8.8

ESO 2A: Álvaro de Prado - 9.5

ESO 2B: Rodrigo Otero - 7.96

ESO 3A: Andrea Cobo - 8.55

ESO 3B: Irene Sánchez -9.57

ESO 4A: Asta Rohde -7.78

ESO 4B: Paula Suárez - 5,74


Congratulations!

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non commercial purposes.

Graduation Speech: ESO 4 2013-14 3rd Term PBL Assignment

ESO 4 Students,

This is your PBL assignment for the 3rd term. All of you have to WRITE and DELIVER your GRADUATION SPEECH.  You have to imagine you are going to stand in the school Assembly Hall before your teachers, classmates, parents and guests at your ESO graduation ceremony (to be held on June 20th) and deliver your speech, which must be at least 350 WORDS LONG.

The best student will be offered the chance to deliver his or her speech at your graduation ceremony... in English!! Of course, he or she will get extra points in the final mark for that effort.

ESO 2 & ESO 3 3rd Term PBL

ESO 2 & ESO 3 Students,

This is your PBL assignment for the 2013-14 3rd term. You have a double task concerning 20 inspiring children books quotations:

• You have to find what book each quotation belongs to and the author of each of those books.
• You have to translate the quotations into the language of your choice, Galician or Spanish.

And these are the quotations:

1. If things start happening, don't worry, don't stew. Just go right along and you'll start happening too.
2. The greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.
3. True friends never ask for anything.
4. Be who you are and say how you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.
5. It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.
6. Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.
7. You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing.
8. There is no place like home.
9. We all can dance when we find music that we love.
10. Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, when one only remembers to turn on the light.
11. I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, as long as I'm living my baby you'll be.
12. I love you right up to the moon — and back.
13. If you have good thoughts... they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.
14. It is when we are most lost that we sometimes find our truest friends.
15. The moment where you doubt you can fly, you cease for ever being able to do it.
16. ...The more he gave away, the more delighted he became.
17. No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
18. I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. I know I can.
19. Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow.
20. Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.

Every group must email their answers BEFORE Sunday 18th May at precisely 23:59:59. No mails will be admitted after the deadline, so please do not wait until the very last minute and get down to work as soon as possible.

You must fill in the "subject" section of your mail messages with YOUR GROUP IDENTIFICATION and the word 'PBL'. You must also include the names of each and every group member and the percentage of work that every member has carried out.

Points will be deducted for every instruction you do not follow.

NB:

ESO 3 students must print this post and bring it to class next Tuesday 22nd April.

ESO 2 students must print this post and bring it to class next Wednesday 23rd April.

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non-commercial purposes only.

Opportunity

Opportunity is missed by most people 

because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Thomas Alva Edison

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non-commercial purposes only.

April Fools' Day 2014

April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day is a day celebrated in many countries on April 1st. The day is named for the custom of playing practical jokes and hoaxes of varying sophistication on friends, family members, enemies, and neighbours, or sending them on a fool's errand, the aim of which is to embarrass the gullible. Traditionally, in some countries, such as the UK, Australia and South Africa the jokes only last until noon, and someone who plays a trick after noon is called an "April Fool". Elsewhere, such as in Canada, France, Ireland, Italy, Russia, The Netherlands, and the U.S., the jokes last all day.

My heart almost stood still

(Reblogged from Letters of Note)

On the evening of February 1st, 1924, the New York Symphony Orchestra played Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at Carnegie Hall in New York, conducted by Walter Damrosch. Thankfully for those who couldn't attend, the performance was broadcast live on the radio. A couple of days later, the orchestra received a stunning letter of thanks from the unlikeliest of sources: Helen Keller, a renowned author and activist who had been deaf and blind from a young age. It can be read below.

Eight years later, Keller wrote an equally evocative letter in which she described the view from atop the Empire State Building.

(Source: The Baton, Volumes 2-3, via Marcus Williams; Image: Helen Keller "listening" to the radio, c.1929, via Angelfire.)

93 Seminole Avenue,

Forest Hills, L. I.,

February 2, 1924.

The New York Symphoy Orchestra,

New York City.

Dear Friends:

I have the joy of being able to tell you that, though deaf and blind, I spent a glorious hour last night listening over the radio to Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony." I do not mean to say that I "heard" the music in the sense that other people heard it; and I do not know whether I can make you understand how it was possible for me to derive pleasure from the symphony. It was a great surprise to myself. I had been reading in my magazine for the blind of the happiness that the radio was bringing to the sightless everywhere. I was delighted to know that the blind had gained a new source of enjoyment; but I did not dream that I could have any part in their joy. Last night, when the family was listening to your wonderful rendering of the immortal symphony someone suggested that I put my hand on the receiver and see if I could get any of the vibrations. He unscrewed the cap, and I lightly touched the sensitive diaphragm. What was my amazement to discover that I could feel, not only the vibrations, but also the impassioned rhythm, the throb and the urge of the music! The intertwined and intermingling vibrations from different instruments enchanted me. I could actually distinguish the cornets, the roll of the drums, deep-toned violas and violins singing in exquisite unison. How the lovely speech of the violins flowed and plowed over the deepest tones of the other instruments! When the human voice leaped up trilling from the surge of harmony, I recognized them instantly as voices. I felt the chorus grow more exultant, more ecstatic, upcurving swift and flame-like, until my heart almost stood still. The women's voices seemed an embodiment of all the angelic voices rushing in a harmonious flood of beautiful and inspiring sound. The great chorus throbbed against my fingers with poignant pause and flow. Then all the instruments and voices together burst forth—an ocean of heavenly vibration—and died away like winds when the atom is spent, ending in a delicate shower of sweet notes.

Of course, this was not "hearing" but I do know that the tones and harmonies conveyed to me moods of great beauty and majesty. I also sensed, or thought I did, the tender sounds of nature that sing into my hand—swaying reeds and winds and the murmur of streams. I have never been so enraptured before by a multitude of tone-vibrations.

As I listened, with darkness and melody, shadow and sound filling all the room, I could not help remembering that the great composer who poured forth such a flood of sweetness into the world was deaf like myself. I marvelled at the power of his quenchless spirit by which out of his pain he wrought such joy for others—and there I sat, feeling with my hand the magnificent symphony which broke like a sea upon the silent shores of his soul and mine.

Let me thank you warmly for all the delight which your beautiful music has brought to my household and to me. I want also to thank Station WEAF for the joy they are broadcasting in the world.

With kindest regards and best wishes, I am,

Sincerely yours,

(Signed)

HELEN KELLER

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non-commercial purposes only.

My Relationship with my Phone

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non-commercial purposes only.

10 Great Irish Tries

To celebrate Ireland's brilliant victory in 2014 6 Nations Championship, we give you "10 Great Irish Tries" as chosen by Irish broadcaster, journalist and rugby union pundit, George Hook. Please notice his Irish accent.

This magnificent selection includes a remarkable hat-trick by Irish legend Brian O'Driscoll.

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non-commercial purposes only.

The Holstee Manifesto: Lifecycle Video

The Holstee Manifesto is a call to action to live a life full of intention, creativity, passion, and community. 

The LifeCycle Film came about as a desire to bring the energy and passion behind the Manifesto to life through something we love--biking. As we seek to live mindful lifestyles that leave a positive impact on the people and world around us, biking has become a passion that is much more than a transportation alternative. It is a way of fully experiencing the city we love and all of its details.

This Film is a celebration. It is a celebration of gatherings, of diversity, of life, and of the beauty of shared experience. We hope you enjoy.

)

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non-commercial purposes only.

Don't Worry

(Reblogged from Brain Pickings)

On 24th November 1942, Clare Boothe Luce wrote a letter to her 18-year-old daughter Ann, at the time a second-year student at Stanford University, which included the following paragraph:

Don’t worry about your studies. When you want to do them well you will do them superbly, but for the moment the main thing is to get what little happiness there is out of life in this wartorn world because “these are the good old days” now.

Unfortunately, a little more than a year later, Ann, Luce’s only child, was killed in a car accident.

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non-commercial purpose only.