Here are some notes on differences between US English and UK English. As you know, there is no “correct English”, just different varieties generated by the sociological and geographical fact of communities in their locations (culture). In Spain, for instance, Andalucian Spanish (the variety used by Lorca, the poet, for instance, Victoria Kent, politician during La República española, and María Zambrano, philosopher) is as correct as Castellano Spanish (the variety used by Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, the writer and thinker, for instance, or Rosa Montero, the journalist and writer). In both regions there are people who speak badly and write worse, and people who speak and write perfectly well!
Back to English, then there’s the linguistic fact of a kind of International English, which is always about picking the most understandable choices in particular contexts.
Because there is no “correct variety” you can use any, but you should try to be consistent, particulaly in Writing Assignments or Exams, of course. Have a look. (I’ll improve these notes some day — it’s a complicated issue, language and identity — but for the time being, it’ll make do!)
Alberto sent a very interesting video: people from Gibraltar. They speak English using words in Spanish, too, so we could say that it’s the European version of Puerto Rican Spanglish! Enjoy!
Some days ago I wrote I didn’t know anyone, I didn’t know the people I love, in this post, and some people I love have reacted — disagreeing! My partner. He agrees we never know anyone, even ourselves, in some ways, but in relative terms he believes I know him! An old student of mine. She wrote to say she was surprised about me saying that because in her view I was one of the most receptive people she knew. She was often surprised in class at what things I knew about them!
So I’ve been mulling over this. Consequently, tonight I had a dream. My dream reminds me of a childhood chain of events: when I was a little girl, and because I was a girl and not a boy (I’m sure this would not have happened to me if I had been a boy, I mean), I used to inform my mother of who was a good person and who would hurt her. My mother was very generous and people used to use and abuse her in all kinds of ways (though she never saw it this way), so I was always trying to prevent this from happening. As it usually turned out, I was right with people — it’s really easy to detect love and kindness, or material interest in people’s approach to you, really, in my view. The irrational, illogical and unconsciously patriarchal conclusion (unconscious because my mum was a protofeminist) was that I was a witch, I could guess!, it was magic! — instead of “She can gather info and put it together and give it a useful interpretation!” The interpretation was not that I was especially intelligent or receptive in something. (Actually, the other trait of my intelligence, having a very developed imagination, was also distorted at school, of course: in boys it could be a sign of intelligence, in girls it was dangerous, always.)
Because I was a little girl “She’s a witch” was meant to be funny, but in the same way I knew that little girls have to be very careful when going on adventures on their own (I don’t mean careful about wolves, for instance, but about men and even boys), I knew that being “a witch” was a poisonous “gift”. I hated my mum saying that, especially because the focus would shift to ME and she would certainly ignore my advice. But now I can explain it: girls, little women, have been considered non-un-anti-intelligent for centuries in patriarchal societies, so if they were, it was something evil, really. Actually all patriarchal dogmas say women are inferior to men, lazy, evil, and that is why men have to control women. It’s very recent men have become real parents, fathers, and men and women have started to believe in human rights. And it’s very painful to realize how we, the species, have been able to believe that women were inferior for such a long time. This is just our beginning towards this kind of justice, of course. I mean, it’s still few of us women who can lead the kind of life I’m leading: chosing, deciding for myself, getting respect from people.
Anyway, going back to my topic. There’s something else I remembered. As a teenager I remember not wanting to look at portraits because I felt — in this adolescent radicality that later on makes us laugh in wonderment — I would learn intimate stuff about that person, when the fact was that that person was not wanting to tell me about it. 😀 Weird! But it seems somewhere in me, in that complex road to self-repression, I knew that if I contemplated the world I could find out stuff. As a teenager, I was still a girl, so this was no valuable trait I should work on. The result was that I spent my teenage in my own world, a non-stop daydreaming experience, isolated from people, not understanding anyone, not being understood by anyone, a total-exposure to the adolescent stage.
And after all that, I left my mum’s home, and started becoming my own person. It’s taken me over 30 years to realize that my problem was not that I was “a witch”, “had too much imagination”, “was in my own world”, and the things that teachers concluded when I was in primary, that I was a bit mentally retarded. My problem was that I was a girl in a patriarchal world, that is hostile and worse still, doesn’t allow people to see how hostile it is to the human beings who are born with a vagina. Hostile to their intelligences (the mind-heart), not only to their bodies. When I was thirty lots I realized far from being little intelligent, I was intelligent above the average. At least, I was someone who decided to use and develop her intelligence, which makes your intelligece richer, of course! But here — it’s now that I’m 50 I realize perhaps I had this complex, the complex of not knowing the people you love!
So — I have just realized that perhaps the feeling I didn’t know the people I loved came from a kind of trauma… ! 😀 Perhaps I’m just as able as anyone to know the people I love!! 😀
Wow! Can we really say we know ourselves?! 😉 Not as something definite, for sure. If your mind is open, you keep learning, if you keep learning, you keep evolving, changing…
Got a very bad back, but hopefully my PT will put me in shape again. The earn-a-living-week is about to start and I need my body!!!!
From our adult language school in public education, got still a few Writings to publish and a few videos to edit, with Students’ work, but it’s Exam Month, and we’re all day at the School wasting time (and me hurting my back with all the not-possible-to-lie-down-a-bit every 5 hours) and doing the most horrible thing on the planet (in the educational context) which is Murdering a Love of Learning, sorry, I mean, giving and checking exams.
Away from paid work…
My friend Hilal from Turkey is here, so I’ve videoshot an interview to her on her activism (feminist antimilitarist) and events in Turkey. It’s about 100 minutes! So I might not be able to edit it as fast as I’d like to. This week I’m also interviewing Howard, the chairperson at War Resisters’ International, in English, too. I’ll be able to use this video in my future English courses, so it’s exciting. Once I videoshot a (pragmatic) pacifist friend of mine from London, and here is what we came up to! He came to my groups at the state-run school where I worked to tell adult learners about this all: http://www.eoigetafe.es/ingles/pages/activities/culture/london/cockney.html
More… it’s spring. People are popping up everywhere, like mushrooms after the rain.
I’m also in touch these days with old friends from Blue Gate (the only anarchist-working social place I’ve ever been in, and I tell you, it was all about nonviolence, freedom, respect and cooperation) in Greenham Common Wimmin’s Peace Camp. We’re working on this project: http://www.mujerpalabra.net/activismo/greehamcommon/greenham.htm
(to leave a track of its existence, because History is full of omission of good things we humans did, and very especially women)
Apparently, the peace movement is being “colonized” or “infiltrated” by “spiritual/religious” people who have the mission to spread the word that feminism is evil and we should stop raising issues because everything is all right. The bad thing about this is not that they think so. It’s that they try to defame, hurt adorable nonviolent critical thinkers like feminists, who have never in their lives tortured, killed or abused anyone, but just posed their criticism, and decided to live the life they wanted to live.
As a species we’ve always been into ignoring or murdering people with great ideas for us all, so it’s not new. But since the 20th century we’ve realized we can be much better, and that our past gods were far too violent to follow. Anyway,
Will they wipe us out as usual, or will rational empathy survive and turn us into the cooperative peoples we should be, instead of the violent peoples the exploiters push us into being for their own benefit? It’s scary. Why can’t people keep living their own chosen lifestyle and allow the rest of us to lead our own? Why are those believers so hostile and aggressive to non-believers? Supposing they’re right, they’ve just got it all on their side to win and we to burn in hell for not not believing…? I really think that if there is a god of some kind, it can’t possibly be this cruel.
En la asociación educar en la Noviolencia seguimos trabajando a tope, con ilusión y buenos resultados tanto aquí como en América Latina. Sin embargo tenemos una dificultad que hace años no conseguimos superar. Y es que nadie nos paga por nuestro trabajo ni tenemos ninguna subvención.
En estos momentos en que hay que hacer la Declaración de la Renta algunas personas hacen Objeción Fiscal a los gastos Militares.
Aquítienes información sencilla y detallada sobre le tema. Estaría bien que revises esta posibilidad antes de entregar tu declaración de la renta. Parece difícil pero es menos de lo que imaginas. Si tienes alguna duda nos puedes preguntar.
Te informamos que si decides hacer Objeción Fiscal a los Gastos militares, puedes hacernos el ingreso de esa cantidad a nuestro grupo. Lo puedes ingresar en la cuenta 2038-1095-78-3001298231.
Si no haces Objeción Fiscal, igualmente nos puedes ingresar una ayuda pues tenemos serias dificultades para dar continuidad a nuestro trabajo.
There’s a site for indie writers called Smashwords, and I’m reading the guides because I think I might put together a collection of stories based on stories I tell in class… I was thinking it might be called “Stories our teacher tells us!” 😀
Then, I was wondering if I should have a second second for “Talks & Discussions” because in this way I might be able to include some of the Speeches I give every now and then! 😀 I’m thinking of pieces on love and living, sex (Having Orgasms is Good for People!), death, attitudes to learning, exams… and language matters, like the recent piece — I would have to review — on The language problem in monolingual communities…
Well, it’s all an idea I had two days ago!!! 😀 And far too busy now to work on it!
I’ve been looking for the sheet I wrote answering this question by women artists, thinkers and activists. At that time, the 90s, it was not that funny because people did not know these women… Still today, most people don’t know those women writers.. Sigh! Anyway… I haven’t found it in my computer, so I suppose I should start looking through my papers! But they’re all scattered in various houses where I lived, so I suppose that’ll be something I won’t manage to do!
Oh, poor women! It’s so hard to get you into most people’s minds! But that doesn’t mean they did not exist, in spite of all the injustice and obliteration…
I do remember one I wrote. It’s what GERTRUDE STEIN would say: “A chicken crossing the road is handsome and convincing.” 😀 Hey, found one on the Net: VIRGINIA WOOLF, “She wanted a room of her own.” 😀 She did, she did!!!
In the comments below I’m posting some answers I’ve found on the Net – by valuable men AND women. You can also post some if you like. Hope you enjoy them!
A wonderful presentation by Juancar, who in spite of being an Intermedio 2 student (B1), shows an Upper Intermediate or B2 level in this outstanding exercise! You will learn or clarify some key concepts that lead to a good life! Come on, listen to him! And if you like it, remember to send the link to more English learners! The exercise of listening and reading corrected mistakes helps you develop the skill of listening to yourself and fixing your mistakes as you speak.Thanks, Juancar, impressive work!
Btw, I posted a note under the video, on the correction included about the phrasal.
PS: I’m not sure I’ll manage to edit the videos I videoshot in the Avanzado 2 group… 😦 But I’ll try my hardest. I’ll keep you posted, don’t worry!
Damyanti (hi!) has lost two people she loved very recently and I’m really sorry. She was asking for prayers and I wanted to keep her company but I couldn’t like that, so I posted a hug, which is another way of keeping people company when they’re hurt.
I’ve always thought spiritual people, or believers of religions, must feel really lucky in life (well, they actually call faith “a gift”) because I imagine it must be amazing to reunite with your loved ones after death, or to have some sort of awareness that all the suffering is over, all the injustice.
I think my mum died on a May 30. It was 1990, in another life of mine. I’ve had so many lives, but all of them over here. And because of that, because the only place where I know she is is in my mind (my heart-mind, for being a feminist allows you to understand that the mind is where you can reason and where all feelings are produced), I try to think of her every now and then. I’ve often thought I didn’t really get to know who she was, the person she was. I’ve often wondered why this happens to me. I never develop the feeling that I know the people I love. And when I hear someone saying, “I know you” or similar sentences I get sad, because I never say that.
I wish I knew the people I love.
Although it is also true that I tend to love everybody I relate to — in my own way, I mean, I’m an independent person, and loving for me is not about dependence, but just a feeling you share that connects you to people while they are around.
Perhaps the only person I know a bit more is the only person I’m in love with, because I think that when you fall in love with someone it’s because you KNOW (perceive) something about the beauty of that person. We share such a cheerful and loving love, so quiet and deep, so independent and collaborative, :D, that if I weren’t so very busy every day, with tons of interesting and exciting things — fighting injustice and violence, creating curiosity and transmitting joy and passion!! A dream? — (that I suppose I can do because I enjoy this loving ground), I would hug this person and be unable to move away ever.
I know there must be thousands of persons each of us can love because I know the story of your half-orange is not true. On my part, I’ve found this person (never wanted to form a monogamous couple, really, but… :), and the love is so strong that I feel that if anything should happen, I would probably kill myself.
But then — I think, century after century human beings have survived loss, including the most painful kinds of losses, so perhaps if I should remain alive, I should simply put my life into some good use, like move to places that are too dangerous for most people, to help out…
Well, the course is over. Our amazing shared journey of discovery has come to an end. But there’s no time for heartbreak. Exam month is here and we have to fucking survive the experience! So come on!!! Go for it! If you haven’t developed the habit of using English every day, esp. by listening to it, start your intensive two weeks now till the exam, and then keep it up, to move into LEARNING FREEDOM, into becoming an INDEPENDENT AND RESOURCEFUL LANGUAGE LIFELONG LEARNER! This kind of people, :D, can also sign up for courses, but when they do, it’s just to meet other people and work with them, not because they really need any excuses to use their English! (love bubbles – pompitas de amor). 🙂
Yesterday and today were my last lessons as a teacher in public/state-run education in this Autonomous Community, where I have been a teacher since 1980 whenever I was in Madrid, and since 1996 in public education, first secondary and then adult language education.
I never go out with students for drinks till they get their certificates, but today I did, with the very interactive Avanzado 2 evening group, my dear wild ones. We had a couple of drinks, a couple of laughs and got a drive home!
I would like to thank you all for a wonderful journey this year. It was hard for me physically, after being ill last year, and being new again (yet again! I’m the oldest newbie everywhere!), and in the context of very hard working conditions for public teachers, but thanks to your work and our relationship I have been able to get in touch again with my old-new self. And this has been very important. I have to say that being ill had almost pushed me into depression (I had one once, years after my mum’s death, and it’s hell, nowhere anyone should ever be), but I was lucky enough to avoid that and just keep it all in the physical area of migraines. Well, this year, the fact that my work was a source of curiosity, and passion, and fun, I’ve managed to avoid migraines for most of the time, and I wouldn’t have without you all making my professional life meaningful, rewarding and again fun!! 😀
So enjoy your English, enjoy preparing the exams and the exams themselves, and then don’t give importance to the results, whether they are good or bad, because they have no true importance. The important event was the journey, and the ways in which learning and sharing have actually changed your lives.
Biggest hug (but I’ll keep posting for you because I have Juancar’s, Ana+Ángeles+Bea’s and Oscar+Chema’s video to edit!) 😀
PS: The book I’m using to learn about dreams and how to work with dreams is “Dreamtime and Dreamwork. Decoding the Language of the Night“, edited by Stanley Krippner (Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., 1990). It’s very expensive (specialized book) but I bought a few much cheaper copies via Iberlibro from the USA — second-hand. If you don’t spend over 100 euros, you pay no taxes, so it’s just the price Iberlibro shows: the cost of the book, which might even be less than one euro (for some) + the shipping costs (which range from free to 3 euros to 7 euros), and the longest time it’s taken for a book from the West coast in the USA to reach my home has been a month, but it’s usually 1 or 2 weeks.
With all my love, as usual, and hoping you’ll all enjoy it. If you find it useful for learning English, remember to share the link. In this way, people will see that it is possible to learn languages in public/state-run adult language schools! In defense of public education!
Why people should include women when they name human beings. For unconscious sexist behaviors, mostly. (Conscious sexists simply do it on purpose!) In case ideological conditioning doesn’t allow to read or listen to feminists, here is a Spanish university transmitting the same ideas:
I’m pasting a message a student has sent me. Tere is asking you all, people using EOIs, to sign if you agree with the petition. It’s about the fact that course fees in Madrid are about 300 euros a year when in other Autonomous Communities they are around 50 euros because it’s still PUBLIC EDUCATION! Public education is not a business. It’s contribution is CULTURE not MONEY.
People, please, spread the word among people living in Madrid or using EOIs. The more signatures you get, the more chances there’ll be of achieving CHANGE!
¡Hola!
He generado y firmado una petición dirigida a la Comunidad de Madrid para que los precios por estudiar idiomas en nuestra comunidad no sea 4 veces mas caro que en la comunidad Andaluza, por ejemplo, en Charge.org
Me parece un tema muy importante, y me gustaría que tú también lo apoyases. Aquí está el enlace:
I need to fix the broken link on Talking People, but I published my workshop on Lexical Creativity in case you want to print it. It’s an interesting workshop, and great fun too. I did it with Avanzado 2 students at that school and they created amazing words. We published some of those here.
Yesterday I heard “frenemies,” and example of what we call “blends” in Linguistics (friends + enemies). This one is quite quite recent (less than a decade?)! Do you know it? You can post the ones you know, if you like. Actually, I believe “follamigos” (which does not have the same meaning as “frenemies”) comes from imitating not only this kind of word formation in English but also thanks to this word in English.
With the Lexical Creativity workshop I help students learn about word-formation (morphology) and how we create words in a language. Morphology helps you decipher the meaning of some of the words you might not know, too… And learning about linguistic creativity also helps you get some jokes because, it’s a fact, in all languages we make up words and expressions, but in English it’s mighty easy!
The book I’m recommending (pic) is expensive because it’s specialized, but if there are any language teachers out there, they’ll surely enjoy it!
Please, spread the word. The more visits the video gets, the more people will want to see it, and the more we’ll be spreading good ideas for the classroom experience, linking academic learning with LiFE!! I included the pics of Cake Days!
If anyone appearing in the pics did not sign the permission, and doesn’t want to appear, I will downloaded and blur his or her face, OK? No problem!
I have tried to update the following Pages (right-hand column):
Avanzado 2
Intermedio 2
Learn 2 Learn
Topics
Music
(For Avanzado 2’s who are still looking for the Sample C1 Exam, it’s not here, it won’t be here. It’s where we say in class, ok? I can write the path again on the whiteboard. Just ask.)
I’m really bad at using blogs. Kind of hopeless. All this should be easier. The tags, I think, and the categories… those are the keys, I think. Mine are in a total chaos!
But just imagine we’re hit by a meteor!!! I mean, I can’t possibly spend more time working on this blog. Time flies!! (Demented laughter)
Audio Listen & Repeat based on a Speaking activity – Spain on holidays(Today in Intermedio I said I hadn’t recorded this audio, but I did!! It’s the paper classroom copies I’m giving away)
this week in class, at Plenary. You can do any of the activities we worked on throughout the course, both in the oral presentation (monolog) or interaction (dialog) format. You can also do the ones I designed for you. These two will be announced on the whiteboard, both for Avanzado and Intermedio students:
1. Two English-speaking friends of yours are coming to Madrid for a visit. Draft a plan for their one-week stay. Mention:
things you can do together
food and drinks
souvenirs or things to take back to remember the trip
2. Your (adult language) School is going to publish the end-of-course issue of its English magazine. Plan what needs to be in it. Mention:
Events, stories… to include (things happening in the School, in the city/town, abroad)
Because for 40 years we were told that in Spain people should speak Spanish, and people who belonged to bilingual cultural backgrounds were persecuted and banned from speaking their other language (which terrified everybody all the same), there is a Spanish-nationalism tradition in monolingual communities in Spain that exhibits (and exposes) this fact: those people’s very-aggressive hostility to bilingual communities. Why should they feel like that? Why such self-justified bellicose outrage? And what if there is resent among people’s whose language was banned? (Obviously, those who feel that need to overcome it, after decades of language revitalization policies and the end of past persecution.) What’s the big deal their heart warms more when they speak the language that was once persecuted? (If you were forced to stop speaking your family’s language, how would you feel?) Why should their heart necessarily love more Spanish than their community’s language? (I don’t mean to justify intolerance on anyone’s side, of course. I’m a free thinker and as such, I’m critical of all nationalisms, because nationalism is not — in my view — about collective identities but about collective impositions.)
In monolingual communities we are confronting a problem and people consistently refuse to tackle it: we need to consider, at least in Madrid, the kind of monolingual people who are always accusing bilingual people of intolerance are not aware that they are perpetuating a tradition which we should have already long overcome — the Spanish democracy re-started in 1976 and the 1978 Constitution included the acknowledgement that Spain was a multilingual country, a country where different cultures coexisted with the Spanish culture.
The 1978 Spanish Constitution recognizes the linguistic diversity in Spain in Article 3.3 where it states: “The richness of the linguistic varieties in Spain is a cultural heritage that will receive special respect and protection”. Co-official languages in Spain: Aranese (in danger of extinction), Basque, Catalan/Valencian and Galician. Other languages in Spain
Since the 1990s I’ve been bringing up this issue in my lessons, especially when I had Advanced level English students. I’ve tried to make people think critically about the biased opinions monolingual people help spread, distorting in this way the educational process of language and cultural respect to diversity in Spain. To this day (2013), I’m still shocked at the strength of people’s misperceptions, at how they defend these biased opinions as if this was a fundamental ideological issue in their lives, yes, a question of patriotism… Why should someone living in Madrid, an Autonomous Community in Spain, have a say about whether a Catalan person should not prefer to speak Catalan in Catalonia, another Autonomous Community in Spain? Why should they feel they can actually say / they have a “right” (!) to say that Catalans have to speak Spanish in Catalonia, when we’ve had Autonomous Communities – protecting cultural diversity – since the 1970s and 80s? From a democratic or linguistic stand, there is no way language and cultural diversity can be seen as threatening or negative for any community or any part of a community.
By-default-mentality people (“ordinary” people) in monolingual communities in Spain say things as false, unfair and openly impolite as this — and it makes me feel so ashamed and overwhelmed that I can’t even react properly in spite of my knowledge and my role as a language teacher: “Galicians don’t know how to speak / write Spanish” (!! against ALL evidence!), “Catalans / Basques have to speak Spanish whether they like it or not because we are in Spain” (!! Francoist mentality!). Just two grotesque examples (grotesque, if we consider it from an informed and democratic standpoint). The fact is that monolingual communities speak only one language, and bilingual communities speak two, and they do. Why should monolingual people be unable to understand that there exists bilingualism in Spain? And that speaking your mother language or languages is a human right? And that languages that have been banned (!!) have needed language revitalization policies – which we have fortunately had since democracy started? Shockingly enough, in Madrid the educational authorities are pursuing bilingualism – not Quality Foreign Language Education, bilingualism they call it — with… English!, a language which is not in people’s cultural background, except people like myself, children from culturally-mixed marriages at the time when Franco, the dictator who isolated Spain from being in touch with the world (with the social movements in the 1960s for instance) welcomed US American airbases in the country. Except minority cases like my own, English is and will be a Foreign Language in Madrid (which doesn’t mean people can’t learn it well and also in the public education system, where we have qualified teachers like myself!)
People in monolingual communities in Spain like the Autonomous Community of Madrid should stop making the ignorant “jokes” and comments on bilingual people we hear every day. This shames us all. This speaks of people’s ignorance and prejudice, it does not “defend” any legitimate Cause. When we tackle the language issue we should exert some minimum respect, and express our questions and comments as such, rationally and with empathy (tactfully at least), because in our past there has existed a terrifying language reality that has made a lot of people suffer and we should not pretend Nothing happened. We should not use our questions and ideas as weapons for showing despise for a different language community. We should question our own perceptions and feelings (in monolingual communities), too, admitting we also have a trauma, the trauma of believing there are languages which are more important than others and should be imposed, if necessary.
Thanks, Juancar!! I hope it’s useful for you too. I corrected all the minor mistakes. There were no major mistakes. I’ll bring a copy of this AUTORIZACIÓN PARA SUBIDA DE VÍDEOS! 🙂
Isabel! (intermedio 2), I have checked and in my computer the link to the audio of phrasals is correct! Please, have a look here: http://www.talkingpeople.net/tp/usefullanguage/sentenceforgrammar/phrasals1_b2.htm
By the way, Intermedio 2 students! NOBODY DID A DIALOG BASED ON THIS AMAZING ACTIVITY AND MATERIAL I PREPARED JUST FOR YOU!!! How can this be?!
Here is the other story I have on the Talking People podcast. It was part of Letters from YT (Your Teacher), a series of letters I used to send out to old students from the TP eCampus! (I’m not doing that anymore, but I might, some day!)
Dishwashers, for Sandra Pò (another activist friend of mine)
On World Book Day there were two groups where we took pics: one Intermedio 2 and one Avanzado 2 group. The quality is not good — they’re pixeled and blurry. But I’ve sent out the bunch to a group of people in each group, hoping they’ll forward them to more people.
Here’s my question: if I distort them further, by turning them into watercolors, do you think we could send them to the School’s website and so that I could post them here and publish them on talkingpeople.net?
A HUGE THANK YOU TO JUANCAR EINSTEIN WHO TODAY GAVE A TALK ON EINSTEIN AND ALLOWED US TO VIDEOSHOOT IT!!! The School where we meet has created this year a YouTube channel and it’s almost empty, so this is a great present for us all!
IF ANYONE WERE WILLING TO ALLOW US TO VIDEOSHOOT, PLEASE, TELL ME. So far, I’ve arranged to bring the video recorder next Tuesday, but I can bring it any other day. Just let me know!
On the 27th and 28th of May. Then Exam Month begins for teachers, who will be giving the Written (Reading, Listening, Writing) and the Oral exams to everybody in all the levels.
In our last lesson together we can review Exam Strategies, if you need that, and mostly check you’ve got the right attitude to overcome the obstacle and even enjoy it! Most importantly, I hope people will speak at plenary (instead of in small groups, so I can also listen/hear and spare the eavesdropping part!), tell us whatever they wish, their life stories, or develop topics we’ve been learning to tackle, whatever. (I’ll bring an audiovisual as a contingency plan, anyway.)
If you can’t control your fear and wish to insist in brainwashing yourself into failure (read Don’t buy exams, if you haven’t), please, don’t count on me for that, and spare us all of that kind of session. We’re lovable people who support you. Why should you do that to anyone? And me as a teacher, well, I’ve worked for your learning, so hearing it all about How you are going to fail, how little you learned or studied, and the like makes me sick and — more dangerously — furious. I’m a professional: I don’t need your final mark to know if you have reached a level, for the case of the people whose work and progress I’ve witnessed.
So please don’t come to me with Self-destructive stories or ideas. When I get pissed off, I start getting ideas about how pacifism is actually an option! 😀
So let’s celebrate… (not a party, no!!!, ugh!) knowledge!!!, the wonderful learning year we spent together! Celebrate by showing all you learned! (Well, I had to try! 😀 My ideal final lesson is me sitting and just listening to students do things!)
Alberto (Avanzado 2) has sent us this email, with the info that they’ll be showing Old Movies in Original Version here:
Buenas, van a echar en cines algunas películas antiguas los martes y jueves de aquí hasta Agosto. Michelle estaría totalmente en contra porque están subtituladas 😛 pero bueno… es lo que hay…es una oportunidad de poder ver en pantalla grande algunas películas muy buenas o de las que tengáis nostalgia por ver en cine.
It’s true I don’t recommend watching movies with subtitles, even when these are in English, in this context:when you need to develop your listening skill, because when you read, you are reading, and your ear is not exposed in the same way to the language. It doesn’t develop half of the intelligence it could! 🙂
I use subtitles in English when I want to learn new words and expressions, for instance. (Same case as that of Avanzado students.) I also use subtitles in English when the sound is not that good (To Kill a Mokingbird) or when different ways of speaking (e.g., characters that speak inarticulately) or the language they use (e.g., police slang), or cultural information (historic period, crazy political plots that I never understand!! – oh how I hate spy movies for this!) won’t allow me to enjoy the movie AND I know I won’t be able to watch it again.
RÍOS MONTT CONDENADO POR CRÍMENES CONTRA LA HUMANIDAD
¡Podemos! ¡Podemos! ¡A seguir luchando! ¡Hay que forzar a los “líderes” a respetar pero no como nos enseñaron, siempre con más destrucción, sufrimiento y violencia! ¡Con razón empática, pura inteligencia! ¡Hay que cambiar el mundo! ¡A seguir aprendiendo a comprender y convivir!
FELICIDADES A TODAS ESAS PERSONAS VITALES PARA LA ESPECIE QUE JUGÁNDOSE LA VIDA LITERALMENTE Y LA VIDA COTIDIANA HAN LUCHADO Y LUCHADO HASTA CONSEGUIR ESTA JUSTICIA, QUE TANTO NECESITAMOS EN EL MUNDO PORQUE TENEMOS QUE CAMBIARLO A MEJOR.
NINGUNA CREENCIA RELIGIOSA NINGUNA IDEOLOGÍA NINGÚN BIEN MATERIAL ES MÁS IMPORTANTE QUE LA GENTE – OPTEMOS DE UNA VEZ POR TODAS POR LA GENTE! APOYEMOS A LA GENTE! DEFENDAMOS A LA GENTE!
If you have an hour to spare, here you can learn about our recent history in terms of the lack of scruples world leaders and business people have been showing: Freeman * the USA, Pinochet in Chile, Thatcher in the UK (notice how rich she made the rich in relation to ordinary people through her economic policies, and see if there are any connections with what is happening here), the fall of the Berlin Wall, Yeltsin… Iraq… learn about the why’s of violence and their connection to money and power.
The ending of the documentary and Naomi Klein’s talk is inspiring, because the truth is, we CAN do something about it and we are doing it, all over the world! Populations have information at hand, and are using it. Moreover, people are discussing what our “leaders” are doing and realizing there ARE easy answers to the problems. The people who created the crisis want us in shock, so they can squeeze it all from us, privatize it all, have us so anxious and depressed that we can only be slaves, like in the Middle Ages.
The fact that we might choose to ignore what people in power do to our societies doesn’t make them stop doing it. We need to reclaim democracy.
The ethically unauthorized “authorities” lie in terms of how many people have followed the strike. But there’s a turn of the screw: because of what they’re doing thousands of teachers have been left out of work because of all the changes they’ve introduced in public schools from primary to university, so of course, the “authorities” won’t be counting them — they were at the demos too!
“Los sindicatos han calificado de éxito el paro y la Plataforma Estatal por la Escuela Pública ha cifrado el seguimiento medio entre docentes y personal administrativo en un 72%. El Sindicato de Estudiantes asegura que el seguimiento ha sido de un 90%. Por el contrario, el Ministerio de Educación ha informado de que menos de un 20% ha secundado la huelga.”
This blog's part of talkingpeople dot net, a non-profit educational site designed for creative people, critical thinkers & social activists who wish to become independent & resourceful lifelong learners of English. (In course 2012-13 it also hosted michelle's support work at an EOI school, a state-run adult language school where she earned a living) Salud!
I’ve been looking for the sheet I wrote answering this question by women artists, thinkers and activists. At that time, the 90s, it was not that funny because people did not know these women… Still today, most people don’t know those women writers.. Sigh! Anyway… I haven’t found it in my computer, so I suppose I should start looking through my papers! But they’re all scattered in various houses where I lived, so I suppose that’ll be something I won’t manage to do!
I think my mum died on a May 30. It was 1990, in another life of mine. I’ve had so many lives, but all of them over here. And because of that, because the only place where I know she is is in my mind (my heart-mind, for being a feminist allows you to understand that the mind is where you can reason and where all feelings are produced), I try to think of her every now and then. I’ve often thought I didn’t really get to know who she was, the person she was. I’ve often wondered why this happens to me. I never develop the feeling that I know the people I love. And when I hear someone saying, “I know you” or similar sentences I get sad, because I never say that.
With the Lexical Creativity workshop I help students learn about word-formation (morphology) and how we create words in a language. Morphology helps you decipher the meaning of some of the words you might not know, too… And learning about linguistic creativity also helps you get some jokes because, it’s a fact, in all languages we make up words and expressions, but in English it’s mighty easy!
Michelle Ford's Projects for English Learners (EEOOII Madrid, state-run language education, 2010-2013) 