29 diciembre, 2007

Some jokes

Hi there,
do you want to try any funny activities these days, here you have some jokes. Work and have fun. Happy new year.
http://www.lingolex.com/itp/findm.htm

19 diciembre, 2007

Key.Reading. Elementary

1 Reading ( e-mail)
1
1 A
2 C
3 B
4 A
5 C
6 A
7 B
8 B
2
1 29
2 secretary
3 London
4 no
5 football
6 basketball
7 Mexican
File 1 Extra reading (Winterbourne School)
1
1 F
2 ?
3 T
4 F
5 T
6 F
7 T
8 T
9 ?
10 T
2
1 8
2 80
3 9.00
4 €550
5 in a hotel
File 2 Extra reading (world of languages)
1
1 T
2 F
3 ?
4 T
5 T
6 F
7 ?
8 ?
9 F
10 T
2
1 more than 200
2 10%
3 6
4 358 million
5 328

The American Cultural Invasion. KEY

Reading 1
1T 2F 3T 4F 5F 6F 7F 8T
Reading 2
A3 B1 C4 D2
Vocabulary in context
Erode make less
set put in place
stifle stop from expressing
nurture help to grow and develop
stimulate encourage
neglect ignore
articulate put into words
Collocations
1 erode 2 stifle 3 articulate 4 set 5 nurture 6 stimulate 7 neglect

Christmas is coming - all the way from China. KEY

1 Key words
1 sleigh 2 cracker 3 wrapping paper 4 goods 5 capital 6 consignment
2 What do you know?
1 c) 2 a) 3 b) 4 a)
3 Comprehension check
1 T 2 F 3 F 4 T 5 F 6 T 7 F 8 T
4 Vocabulary: Extremes
Superlatives: the largest… ever built, the largest single consignment, the worst labour exploitation, Britain’s biggest export
Metaphors or similes: as wide as a motorway, a floating world, mountains of dogfood
Adjectives: intense row, implications are terrifying, absolute advantage, a phenomenal rate
Large numbers: 22,280kg of Vietnam tea, 12,800 MP3 players, 138,000 tins of catfood, 16bn, a 30-fold increase, 11,000 containers…
5 Vocabulary: Definitions
1 maiden 2 steaming 3 behemoth 4 by the score 5 row 6 microcosm 7 set off 8 detritus
6 Vocabulary: Collocations
1 festive cheer 2 building blocks 3 rechargeable batteries 4 intense row 5 global trade 6 developing countries 7 trading partner 8 phenomenal rate 9 soft toys

10 diciembre, 2007

INNOVATIONS

Using Grammar p.23 (Answers)
2. Grammar in Context.
The incorrect responses are:
1. So have I. 2. Me too. 3. Neither do I. 4. Neither have I. 5. So do I. 6. Me neither.
3. Auxiliary verb practice.
So do I. 2. Neither do I. 3. So am I. 4. So have I. 5. Neither do I. 6. So would I. 7. So was I. 8. Neither can I.
Using vocabulary
Not really keen
1. b. 2. f 3. a. 4. e 5.d 6.c
Collocations: 1. Winter sports. 2. Have fun. 3. Interested in politics. 4. It’s not my kind of thing. 5. Get hurt. 6. Classical music. 7. I don’t see the point of it. 8. It put me off for life.

Car Crisis


Answers

Part A (gap-fill)
1. environmental
2. depend
3. person
4. contribution
5. manufactured
6. relationship
7. quality
8. surrounded
9. healthier
10. pick
11. supermarket
12. weightlifter
(Words that should not be used: convenient, polluters, air, warming)
Part B (10 mistakes/corrections):
CARFORCE UK
MOTORISTS OF BRITAIN, UNITE!
All over the UK, environmentalists are trying to make motorists feel guilty just because they choose to drive to their local shops to buy a newspaper or a pint of milk. But why should you feel guilty? Why should they turn your comfortable one-minute journey by car into a physically exhausting twenty-minute hike, dodging puddles, rude pedestrians and aggressive dogs?
We at Carforce believe that everyone in the UK – and everyone in the world – has the right to use their cars to drive where they want, when they want. We are sick and tired of environmentalist scaremongering. They have always exaggerated the links/connections between carbon dioxide emissions and global warming. (And even if they haven’t, so what? Wouldn’t it be quite nice if Britain were/was a little warmer, particularly in the winter?)
Why should we let the environmentalists push us out of our cars and make us walk everywhere? Drivers have human rights too! The environmentalists might want us to live in the eighteenth century, but we don’t believe in living in the past: we believe in the future, and the future is full of cars – big, fast, shiny, beautiful cars!
Join us now!

written assignment

Hi there!
As most of you know, there's a written assignment for next week.
Advanced (4th A& B): There’s a model LETTER on page 28 of your Workbook. You have to write around 150 words.
Elementary (B&C): for those who have not learnt about the text structure in class you can look at page 25 (AN INFORMAL E-MAIL) in your book.
The DEADLINE is Thursday, December 20th (4th A&B). Wednesday, December 19th (Elementary B &C)

By the way, do you remember some of the idiomatic expressions we explained in class some days ago? These are some explanations of their origin.
To have a skeleton in the cupboard
Author: Tim Bowen
Type: reference material
If someone has a skeleton in the cupboard (or closet in US English), it means that they have a dark or embarrassing secret about their past that they would prefer to remain undisclosed. The expression has in origins in the medical profession. Doctors in Britain were not permitted to work on dead bodies until an Act of Parliament permitting them to do so was passed in 1832. Prior to this date the only bodies they could dissect for medical purposes were those of executed criminals. Although the execution of criminals was far from rare in 18th century Britain, it was very unlikely that a doctor would come across many corpses during his working life. It was therefore common practice for a doctor who had the good fortune to dissect the corpse of an executed criminal to keep the skeleton for research purposes. Public opinion would not permit doctors to keep skeletons on open view in their surgeries so they had to hide them. Even if they couldn’t actually see them, most people suspected that doctors kept skeletons somewhere and the most logical place was the cupboard. The expression has now moved on from its literal sense!
To get the sack
Author: Tim Bowen
Type: reference material
Before the Industrial Revolution in Europe and the age of mass employment, people who needed work done and had the means to pay someone else to do it would hire workers with the skills to do specific jobs. These workers would carry the tools they needed for the job in a sack or in a bag made out of sacking. When the job was complete or when the employer no longer had any need for the services of a particular worker, he would hand him his sack. The worker would gather his tools together and put them in his sack and leave to find work elsewhere. Getting one’s sack back came to be associated with one’s services no longer being needed or being surplus to requirements. It has now passed into modern usage as an informal way of saying ‘to be dismissed’.

06 diciembre, 2007

04 diciembre, 2007

reading activities

Car Crisis
A
Fill the twelve gaps in the texts on Worksheet A with the correct words below. There are four words that you will not be able to use.
quality
relationship
convenient
manufactured
depend
polluters
air
healthier
surrounded
supermarket
environmental
pick
warming
contribution
person
weightlifter
ROBERT: Cars have now become a serious _____________ problem. As a society, we in Britain _____________ far too much on our cars – and the same can be said about most other rich countries. We are setting a bad example to developing countries. Just imagine if other countries like China and India, which both have populations of over a billion, end up having the same number of cars per _____________ as we do! That would mean a very big increase in the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, and therefore the global warming crisis would become even more serious.
GEORGE: It’s wrong to say that cars make a significant _____________ to global warming. Of course I’m aware that cars produce carbon dioxide emissions, but the problem has been hugely exaggerated. What people don’t realize is that cars are actually getting cleaner, with the newest models producing fewer emissions than those that were _____________ five or ten years ago. And anyway, not all scientists think there is a _____________ between carbon dioxide emissions and global warming, so I don’t believe the stuff the environmentalists are always saying on the TV and the radio. It’s just scaremongering, I reckon.
JO: For me, the contribution cars make to global warming is not the only issue. I think there are loads of other ways that our _____________ of life would be better if there were fewer cars on our roads. For a start, our streets would be less noisy and the air would be cleaner. But it’s not just that – I also reckon people who live in cities would feel freer if they weren’t always _____________ by hundreds of cars. Imagine if more areas of our cities were pedestrianized: it would suddenly become much safer and more enjoyable to walk or cycle from A to B, so people would start leading _____________ lifestyles.
SARAH: I don’t know whether the amount of cars in the world makes a difference to global warming, but I do know that every day I need to use my car to take my children to their school, which is two miles from our house, and then _____________ them up again in the afternoon. What else am I supposed to do? Make them walk? And then there’s my weekly shop at the _____________, which is at least ten minutes’ walk away. Do you think I’m strong enough to carry all those bags on my own? I’m not a professional _____________, you know!


B
There are ten mistakes in the text below. Find them and correct them.
CARFORCE UK
MOTORISTS OF BRITAIN, UNITE!
All over the UK, environmentalists are trying to make motorists feel guilty just because they choose to drive to their local shops to buy a newspaper or a pint of milk. But why should you to feel guilty? Why should they turn your comfortable one-minute journey by car in a physically exhausted twenty-minute hike, dodging puddles, rude pedestrians and aggressive dogs?
We at Carforce believe that everyone in the UK – and everyone in the world – have the right to use their cars to drive where they want, when they want. We are sick and tired of environmentalist scaremongring. They have always exaggerated the connects between carbon dioxide emissions and global warming. (And even if they haven’t, so what? Wouldn’t it be quite nice if Britain is a little warmer, particularly in the winter?)
Why should we let the environmentalists push us of our cars and make us walk everywhere? Drivers have human writes too! The environmentalists might want us to live in the eighteenth century, but we don’t believe in live in the past: we believe in the future, and the future is full of cars – big, fast, shiny, beautiful cars!
Join us now!

Related Websites
http://www.mobilityweek-europe.org/
The homepage of the website of European Mobility Week 2006, containing articles on various initiatives aimed at limiting car use.
http://www.22september.org/info/en/camp.html
Article on ‘In town without my car!’ day, which takes place on September 22 as part of European Mobility Week.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/netnotes/article/0,6729,371822,00.html
From the year 2000, a short article in the Guardian about European Car Free Day.
http://www.abd.org.uk/index.htm
From the website of the Association of British Drivers, links to various articles arguing that increasing car use doesn’t constitute an environmental problem.

Innovations p.21. Ex 4 How-questions.

How long. 2. How far. 3. How long ago. 4. How much. 5. How long. 6. How well. 7. How hard/ easy/ difficult. 8. How often. 9. How many 10. How worried.

Noah Webster and American English spelling

Answers
Activity 1
1 a a change in something
b noun: a period of work time in a factory, hospital or other place where some people work during the day and some work at night; a shift key on a computer keyboard
Verb: to change from one gear to another when you are driving a car; to move slightly; to sell something; to get rid of something (British English); to move an object (British English)
2 to make someone determined to do something
3 a encouraged b you do it suddenly and do not take time to plan it or think carefully about it c a horse rider
4 a to combine things or form a connection between them b (1) up (2) knot (3) down c if traffic is tied up, it is not moving very quickly
5 a to establish
b set the rules/conditions/guidelines/limits/criteria/a record; set a(n) tone/pattern/fashion/trend/ precedent/example; set a goal/challenge/objective/task
Activity 2
a idiosyncratic b phonetic c unilaterally
Activity 3
a humor b behavior c liter d defense e skillful f check
Activity 4
a cellphone d sweets g trousers j gas(oline)
b rubbish e cookie h movie k sidewalk
c tap f (potato) chips i holiday l lift