Archive for November, 2007
Lesson plan for 20th november
exercises on page 122 Task: decide what to say in a difficult situation Real life: getting people to do things
Lesson plan for 19th November
Body Talk (class handout) Improving your communication skills Patterns with abstract nouns and relative clauses
Globalisation
Globalisation can be defined as the global increase of exchanges of any kind between countries: goods, people, and even customs that make countries tend to an economic, political and cultural convergence.
Although is a well known term, many people usually think of its economic aspects, forgetting the religious, political and cultural aspects of the word.
Loads of people leaving their homes every year in order to look for a better life in Western Europe or the U.S.A, unequal distribution of wealth, loss of our own customs… elimination of borders and customs duties between countries, medical attention outside your own country, people speaking the same language: all of these are the two sides of the same coin: globalisation.
That’s why globalisation is so controversial. As everything in life it has its pros and cons. Many people think is the best option for the future and support it, while others fight in order to abolish it. They are called antiglobalisation groups
Globalisation is now part of our society, whether we like it or not, and soon we will get used to it, soon we will be part of the “information society” too.
Soccer violence
Sport is good; this is something that everybody knows. And football, in Spain, is something spectacular. If you want to have a drink in a bar when Real Madrid, Barcelona or another important team are playing it is impossible, because everybody is watching the match. Football, in Spain is sacred…so what is the problem?
Violence. Nowadays, there are many groups of radicals who often make football very dangerous. But this is not only in Spain, obviously, it happens in other countries. For example, a few months ago, in Argentina, a father had gone to a match with his little son, and one of them was murdered. They were only watching a football match, but it was the last one. Lately, in Italy, another incident took a policeman’s life. Unfortunately, stories like this happen very often, but why?
I think that rivalry is one of the reasons which can origin this facts. When people are watching a match, they change completely, and they only think: “we have to win, we have to score a goal”. In this situations, if someone says something you do not like….the problems start.
It is very sad, that you can not go to watch a football match calmly. I watch a lot of football matches, but I enjoy them even if my team loses. I am sure, next time we will win.
Finally, the police should be careful in football matches, because they could be wrong and hurt an innocent.
Rolling Stones concert
Hello, I´m going to talk about the best concert I have seen in my life and probably the best I will ever see. It was the Rolling Stones’ concert in San Sebastian in June 2007. My story with this concert began a year before, in August when I was travelling to Valladolid in order to see a Rolling Stones’ concert and my aunt phoned us and told she had heard on the radio that the concert had been cancelled because Jagger had a hoarse voice, it was really disappointing and I was really, really sad, because I had been waiting for that moment for a long time and I had the tickets since March.
But this year, when I heard that they were coming to Spain I didn´t think it twice and I bought the tickets for the concert in San Sebastian. While I was waiting for the day of the concert I was worried, thinking about the possibility that this concert could be cancelled too, because everybody knows that they are in their 60´s and remembered what had happened with the four Spanish concerts of 2006.
Fortunately, nothing happened and the Rolling Stones appeared on stage playing Start me up after the spectacular presentation in the really big screen. The stage was enormous and all the lights, the effects, the fires were great. After the first song they played some less famous songs, and after that they went to the middle of the stadium and they played four songs there, it was fantastic because they were really near the people. They played one of their most famous songs Satisfaction, and after this all their great songs, Sympathy for the devil, Paint it Black, Brown Sugar, Honky Tonk Women and the last one was my favourite one, Jumping Jack Flash.
The show was marvellous, and although they are old and a lot of people criticize them, Rolling Stones are, together with The Beatles, the best band in the music history.
World Wrestling Entertainment(WWE) or The World’s Biggest Lie?
Nowadays is very common to see lots of children fighting like they were professional fighters, despite of being playing “normal” games like football or basketball. Well, you could think that it is a fashion and that in a pair of weeks they will forget about it. Honestly, I don’t think so.
It is true that almost nobody had heard about it until channel four bought its rights in order to broadcast it. This program started like a show for the real WWE supporters, at first they broadcasted it at night so children weren’t able to watch it, but as soon as they really noticed that its share was really low, they started to repeat the episodes ( I ‘am going to call it episode because I can ensure that they have the best actors and actresses over the surface of the earth) in the mornings in order to fill a vacant place in their morning schedule. But despite its previous bad results, it turned out a real hit.
The key to success was that repetitions were on Sundays so the children could watch them without any problems, furthermore they scheduled the “ episodes” just before one of the most successful cartoons at the time , Dragon Ball, so lots of kids were watching TV, they were waiting for another Dragon Ball episode but they couldn’t watch it because there was a new program with lots of men that were all muscle ( and from my point of view, very little brain, but what can we expect from an American program?). Well, the kids started to ask their friends if they had seen those “amazing and surprising” fights between authentic “warriors”.
Well, this wouldn’t be a serious problem, because nowadays there are some programs on TV which should be banned because of the way of life they are showing to the kids. But this program is different, you can only see a show with “warriors” fighting as if they were Romans gladiators fighting for their survival on a wild world. They can do the more difficult movements, they can give the hardest punch you have ever seen in your whole life, but you need not worry because nothing bad is going to happen to the other “warrior”. They only bleed when they want to go on holidays, then 6 months without preoccupations, they only have to be fit when they come back and having a thirst for vengeance against his “sworn enemy”. This is the thing that really worries me, that kids can’t notice it, so they “play” it with his friends thinking that nothing can happen, and here is the problem, then they break an arm or a tooth. But nothing would happen because they will keep on watching it on TV, so they will continue “playing” it.
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