Work with passion

Is it hard to find your passion? Your true vocation? For one young man, it was, so he decided to do something special, something different. And a documentary was made to capture his experience: One week job. 

Also, the director made a speech speaking about this man's experience and reflecting on the meaning of work. I would like you to complete the gap-filling activity while listening to the video, so we can keep working at class. As the quality is not the best (it was hard work to understand it at class, sorry about that), you've ot the transcript in case you find it impossible to make out the words.

By the way, this is a lesson adapted from the amazing website Film-English.

One week job from Míriam

Can technology solve our big problems?

For next week, you'll have to watch (again) the speech of Jason Pontin analyzing how technology could solve problems, but sadly it's not the case. On Monday, we'll correct your answers to these questions:

JASON PONTIN – Can technology solve our big problems? - TED TALKS (Feb '13)

1.     How many technological advances of the 20^th century are mentioned?

2.     According to JFK, why did the Apollo 11 go to the moon?

3.     What are technologists doing instead of trying to solve humanity's big problems?

4.     Why haven't we gone to Mars yet?

5.     According to Pontin, what's the actual cause of famines?

Try not to use the script after you've finished, read it after the exercise: "Can technology solve our big problems?" script.

Are we addicted to our phones?

Hello! Today we started talking about social media, and the use we make of them, together with our smartphones. We had an enjoyable discussion while watching the movie made from the fantastic poem by Gary Turk. Enjoy it again if you want! You can find the lyrics on his website.

To add a humouristic touch, we also watched and completed a song by Rhett & Link, two youtubers who satirize the use we make of phones nowadays.

Next you'll find the failed fixed vocabulary activities that we used for the poem. You already know my mistake, so sorry! I'll try to do some research in order to fix them. I need to find out how they work!

Look Up

The Emancipation of Prince

Are you dog lovers? Maybe not, but many are, right? And some breeds become instantly (and inexplicably) popular for some reason.

Chiuauas are one of those. Irritable as they may seem, possessive or skittish, this particular chiuaua protagonist of the story, is learned and highly intelligent. Unfortunately for him, his owner is not so, and that's why he'll try to get rid of her.

Feel free to watch the short film (again) and acquire some formal vocabulary completing the gapped trasncript.

For some extra work, there's a worksheet about pets by LinguaHouse that you can complete: Keeping pets. It includes a lexis task, an article and its correspondent comprehension exercise. Enjoy!

Scam baiting and other crime-related videos

You already know the TED talks. Actually, the last one we saw was the one in which James Veitch, the British comedian, narrated how he scammed back a swindler.

Watch it again, if you feel like it, on the TED website: This is what happens when you reply to spam email. You can read the transcript there, or alternatively watch it with subtitles (English and Spanish ones included). Here's the worksheet we used in class.

Keeping on the TED talks, you can also watch two other videos and answer some questions afterwards. You'll need to create an account in order to take the quiz, though, but I recommend it. Click on the following links to access them:

• How people rationalize fraud.
• What are human rights.

Have fun!

Law & Order

We've started the unit evolving around social issues, crimes and punishments. These days, we've been talking about all these, so for you to keep the material (if you haven't been in class), or rewatch it, you'll find it here.

The interview to the barrister can be done with the activities, plus it might be worth revising the vocabulary related to the topic.

The other document we worked with was related to the topic of amnesty, and we made use of expressions for giving reasons.

And I'll try to create a post as always for the idioms we worked with today!

Vovô

As today we were discussing about relationships, and the topic of grandparents is introduced in the first reading of the unit, we evolved our discussion around the short film Vovô, which is "grandpa" in Portuguese.

Here you can watch the movie again, and read the transcript.

Which past tenses do you recognize in the movie?