HOW TO WRITE A COMPLAINT LETTER

Dear students,
this is the presentation on how to write a complaint letter. It seems some error occurred when I tried to upload the file last week. I'm sorry!
Best,
r

Listening Exercise: "Rebel Restaurant" -The Guardian

Dearest students,

this is the listening exercise we did yesterday (+key). And this is the transcript. If you feel like testing your ears, try other podcasts provided by The Guardian here.

Best regards and have a great weekend,

r

Food and Buying Food -Vocabulary

Dear students,

this is the Presentation on Food (Healty Food, Junk Fook, Buying Food, English Food and Food Idioms!) I presented today in class. Enjoy.

Cheers!
r

PowerPoint Presentation on Shopping and Money

Dear students,
the powerpoint presentation we screened in class today is available here.
I hope you find it useful,
cheers!

Personal Identification - Extra vocabulary //WRITING EXERCISE

Dear students,

as you already know, writing the description of someone you really admire is part of your homework at Easter. Here you are the materials I mentioned in class today. I hope you find them useful to complete the topic on personal identification/description.
Cheers,
r

GIVING ADVICE + ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE

Dear students,

please download the grammar and vocabulary powerpoint we studied today in class:

CLICK HERE!

And here you are the speaking activity proposed by our native lecture: click here to download it.

Weekend Movies: "The Secret of Nichola Tesla" by Crsto Papic

Have you heard the latest news on the development of a new battery that might power our homes in the future? It is said to require solar energy but it might free us  from our current electricity providers and, most important, from their extremely expensive electric bill (read here if you want to know more about it). If you feel curious about the inventor of such a thing, Nikola Tesla, you are welcome to watch the film The Secret of Nikola Tesla, directed by the Croatian director Crsto Papic in 1980, and starring a bunch of good actors, Orson Welles among them. Warning: the first minutes are an introduction in a different language: English starts at 1:20 and the movie starts at 7:42. Youtube provides subtitles if you click on one of the buttons below.

I hope you enjoy the film!

Revision: TRAVELLING

Here's a nice compilation to refresh and enlarge your vocabulary on the topic. To download it, click here.

Weekend Movies: "Citizen Kane" by Orson Welles

Brief analysis:

The fresh, sophisticated, and classic masterpiece, Citizen Kane (1941), is probably the world's most famous and highly-rated film, with its many remarkable scenes and performances, cinematic and narrative techniques and experimental innovations (in photography, editing, and sound). Its director, star, and producer were all the same genius individual - Orson Welles (in his film debut at age 25!), who collaborated with Herman J. Mankiewicz on the script (and also with an uncredited John Houseman), and with Gregg Toland as his talented cinematographer. [The amount of each person's contributions to the screenplay has been the subject of great debate over many decades.] Toland's camera work on Karl Freund's expressionistic horror film Mad Love (1935) exerted a profound influence on this film.
The film, budgeted at $800,000, received unanimous critical praise even at the time of its release, although it was not a commercial success (partly due to its limited distribution and delayed release by RKO due to pressure exerted by famous megalomaniac publisher W.R. Hearst) - until it was re-released after World War II, found well-deserved (but delayed) recognition in Europe, and then played on television.
The film engendered controversy (and efforts at ruthless suppression in early 1941 through intimidation, blackmail, newspaper smears, discrediting and FBI investigations) before it premiered in New York City on May 1, 1941, because it appeared to fictionalize and caricaturize certain events and individuals in the life of William Randolph Hearst - a powerful newspaper magnate and publisher. The film was accused of drawing remarkable, unflattering, and uncomplimentary parallels (especially in regards to the Susan Alexander Kane character) to real-life. The notorious battle was detailed in Thomas Lennon's and Michael Epstein's Oscar-nominated documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane (1996), and it was retold in HBO's cable-TV film RKO 281 (1999) (the film's title refers to the project numbering for the film by the studio, before the film was formally titled).

Source: http://www.filmsite.org/citi.html

Weekend Movies: "The Virgin Suicides" by Sofia Coppola

Dearest students,
here we are a new film for the weekend: The Virgin Suicides by Sofia Coppola (Francis Ford Coppola's daughter, have you heard of her before?). This film is a 1999 American drama starring Kirsten Dunst and Kathleen Turner, among others. IBased on the homonymous novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, the film tells of the events surrounding the lives of five sisters in an upper-middle class suburb of Detroit during the 1970s. After the youngest sister makes an initial attempt at suicide, the sisters are put under close scrutiny by their parents, eventually being locked as birds in their own cage, which leads to increasingly depressive and isolated behaviour... Would you like to know more about their misadventure? Well, watch the film! (no subtitles this time, sorry! But I am pretty sure you will understand the plot quite easily).
Enjoy!!!

Practice Reading

I recommend books every week, but I am pretty sure you didn't have time to read all of them. Therefore, I would like to suggest new ideas today. Do you feel you have to read more texts in English but you don't really have time to read literature? Why don't you try reading short articles like the ones provided by this webpage? They come with activities and quizzes that might help you improve your reading skill. Good luck!

Too easy? Try these texts instead!!!

Weekend Movies

We won't be having a class on Thursday, so I have decided to find a film for you today. The movie we are going to watch this week is Vicky Cristina Barcelona and was directed by Woody  Allen in 2008. This is the story of two girlfriends on a summer holiday in Spain who fall in love with the same painter, unaware that his ex-wife, with whom he has a tempestuous relationship, is about to re-enter the picture...

WATCH THE FILM HERE!

A Book Every Week: Poetry Foundation and Dorothea Lasky

Dear students,
as you know, reading is one of the best ways to learn a language. I usually recommend my students to read short stories, or other forms of narrative such as novels. However, today I would like to refer to the following American webpage: POETRY FOUNDATION. This is a literary organization committed to "discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience"- they say. Well, you can just browse the web and try to discover something you like.

I like reading poems by Dorothea Lasky, for instance. You can see her HERE. But, of course, you might find some other poets to read, enjoy, and even identify with.

Travelling: To Hire, to Rent, to Let, to Lease

Dear students,

just in case you have any problem using these words, here you are some definitions:

TO HIRE = to procure temporary use of a thing or object, or to employ person for wages. 
My father hired a boat and we took a stroll on the lake.

TO RENT = to occupy or use land or buildings in return for regular payment for the use or to allow land or buildings to be used in return for such payments.
She doesn't have enough money to rent this appartment.
Our neighbour rents this land to us at a very small rent a year.

TO LET = to give the use of a flat, a room, a house, in return for regular money payments.
While in town, I saw an announcement for an appartment to be let.

TO LEASE = to give or take possession of land, buildings, things by legal agreement by which somebody is allowed to use land, buildings, etc. for a fixed money payment.
They leased the farm from an old woman.

Listening - British Airways Safety Video

Dear all,

this is the video we watched with Belén today in class. Now you can watch it again, whenever you have time,  in order to note down some new vocabulary or remember the pronunciation of words.
Enjoy and bon voyage!!

Travel, Trip or Journey?

Dear students,
if you need an extra explanation concerning thebasic differences between travel, trip and journey, read this entry. There are some exercises available too.Please, let me know if you have any problem with the use of these words.

See you soon,
reme

Healthy Life Presentation

Dear students,
you can download the presentation on Healthy Lifestyle from here. There was a little problem with the computer last week, so it was kind of difficult to read the vocabulary on the screen. I hope you can reread the presentation now.
Best,
reme

HALLOWEEN, Reading and Listening: "The New Catacomb" by Conan Doyle

Dear students,
this is the video we watched today in class. You can watch it again at home and read the short story at the same time. Just click the links below:

The New Catacomb (Video)

Transcript of this short story (Text)

Enjoy!

A Book Every Week: Mark Strand

Together with novels and short stories, poems are excellent learning companions. They are short, musical and, sometimes, unforgettable. I am especially fond of British and American poetry so today I would like to introduce you to Mark Strand. He is a Canadian-born poet, essayist and translator. You can watch the video below and listen to Mark Strand reciting one of his poems, The Couple. If you feel like reading the poem at the same time or more slowly, click here.

Disease, lllness, Condition, Disorder...

If you feel curious and want to know how to use terms such as "disease", "illness", "condition" and "disorder", visit the following websites (providing you aren't a cyberchondriac!):

A text about the use of the words "disease, disorder and condition"

"Condition" and "disease"...