Seasons and Celebrations

When I first started teaching English, I was told I had to include international celebrations in my school syllabus. I understood I had to prepare special activities to make students aware about the world around them. Examples of these dates were “The International Peace Day”, “The International day for Human Rights”, etc.

At the beginning of every school year, editors and editorials send us free copies of their new publications so that we can recommend new titles to our students as for further or complementary reading. Of course, those graded readers are designed to improve our student´s skills, but I have to confess I read them myself from time to time. One of these booklets was “Seasons and Celebrations”. Once I had read the second page, I was absolutely delighted at the dates, details, names and historical events mentioned on it.

Immediately after, I asked my students to write an essay about the next important celebration in the Anglo-saxon world. It was Saint David´s celebration. I was very satisfied with the results: language, culture and world knowledge could be improved with the same task.

I am also a fan of computers myself and one of my hobbies is reading computers magazines. I read an article about “google calendars” and I learned that you could clip a calendar on your blog.

The conclusion for both reading experiences was that I could remember special dates myself and share a calendar with my students. Thus, language and culture would be taught hand by hand and together.

Happy ner year if you happen to read my first post this year.

Phrasal Verbs

When a Spanish speaker tries to speak in English, his accent is particularly recognizable. This is particularly true when we talk about vocabulary items. Latin cognate words come up more easily in our conversations.When native speakers listen to us, the first thing they think is how weird our use of their own language is.

It is indeed surprising for me that a non-native speaker, as Joseph Conrad was, could write such nice pieces of literature. Of course very few of us would be able to reach this mastery of the language. We can improve our English though. One of the ways in which we can improve is by learning/acquiring an acceptable amount of phrasal verbs.

I would not write in more detail about them as I have enclosed a grammar summary below, but please take into account that the use and knowledge of phrasal verbs is an advantage when trying to learn "good English".

Our World in English

It was after attending a lecture by Mr Robert Quinn that I thought of it and I realized I could also provide my own opinion about this topic.

There´s a whole world around us in English: labels, leaflets, posters, recordings, brand names, traffic signs, newspapers and magazines.English is a "lingua franca". Most foreigns speak in English. Their public education systems have included English for many years now.

Very few taxi or bus drivers can speak English fluently. Shop assistants and waiters cannot boast of having a mastery of any foreign language. Slowly but firmly, more and more companies request their new candidates to understand and speak English.
Some people living in the Spanish coast refuse and resist to study, learn or acquire English as a foreign language. They just give excuses by saying that the only thing they have to do is work. They complain and say that foreigners coming to Spain should speak Spanish.They don´t realize our schools are crowded with foreign students (mostly British). Local train stops are announced by a recorded machine..., in English!

Our Spanish mobile phones have a nasty recorded message saying: "your credit is about to expire". Computers are not an exception: We are using machines whose main operation system´s name is Windows. We are getting used to abbreviations like HTML, POP or words like: mail, post, receive, download , picture, and so on.There is always an English books section in the coast department stores. Congratulation and greeting cards are now part of our lives. We say CD and press the key enter in our keyboards and we also write for sale when we want to sell our old flat. No one is surprised to read Real Estate in any of our streets and almost all our young students carry a funny gadget that they call iPod .Halloween has become a popular celebration in Spain and children dress now in freak costumes while asking neighbours for candies..., and their mums have now a copy of pumpkin pie recipe somewhere in their coputers or written by their shopping lists.

Many teenagers now are the owners of a Wii play station and when they have to wee, they know very well the difference between ladies and men. We take our children to throw a birthday party in MacDonalds or Burger King. Once there, they have a Whoper of a Big Mac or fries and cola.

Are you sure you don´t speak English? next time you visit Malaga airport, don´t forget to listen to this nice gentleman who says in a warning voice: "please, do not leave your luggage unattended" or something awful might happen afterwards. Do you want to lose your job? Do you want to be out of society, out of internet, out of business or old fashioned? If you don´t, you have two options: get prepared for the future and start learning Chinese or take up English lessons now!

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