Week 3rd -5th June
Hello Chus!
Well, it seems there’s only the two of us in
class!
As usual, I wish the best of lucks to Eduardo. He must be studying for his exams and
finishing projects for his degree.
We did a reading from a sample test. The
headings were:
‘Travel Africa: Brochures under review’, ‘The Thatchers’,
‘Music at School’ and ‘Service Excellence Award’.
Then, we went through a letter of
application.
We analysed a model text.
When you write a
covering letter/ email to apply for a job, a grant, etc., remember:
·
Use appropriate
sentences to open the letter.
·
Organize the main body of the letter into
clear paragraphs.
·
Make sure you use a suitable style:
·
Don’t use
contractions or very informal expressions,
·
Use formal
vocabulary,
e.g. require
instead of need,
as
instead of because.
·
Use the
conditional to make a request more polite, eg. I would be grateful if …, I would welcome
the chance to …
·
When you say you’re suitable for the job, don’t ‘oversell’ yourself. Be factual and positive but not arrogant.
·
Use the appropriate
phrases to close the letter.
We listened to two songs. ‘I will Survive’ by
Gloria Gaynor and ‘I don’t want to miss a thing’ by Aerosmith.
And we finished the week with more listening.
As we had been talking and reading about history in the
movies, we listened to an interview with Adrian Hodges, a
screenplays writer.
We was asked questions related to the importance of accuracy in historical movies,
if they were more expensive to shoot than non- historical ones and his views on
why Ancient Roman movies are so popular.
Then we listened to a survey made in the street.
People were asked:
‘If you
could have lived in another historical period, which period would you choose?’ And
‘which historical figure do you particularly admire?’
What about you? How would you answer these
questions?
This was all! See you on Tuesday!
Week 27th -29th May
Hello!
This week we were talking about history in
the movies.
Some films are memorable for a scene or a sentence, but in the
case of historical movies, to which extent are these facts faithful to the
historical period portrait in the film?
Take ‘Braveheart’
as an example. The film is set in 13th-century
Scotland. Mel Gibson plays the
Scottish rebel William Wallace, who tries to overthrow the English who ruled
Scotland at that time. One of the most memorable scenes was the battle of
Stirling, when Wallace’s army, hopelessly outnumbered,
wait
in an open field for the English to attack.
As a matter of fact,
the battle took place on a narrow bridge; being that the reason for the English
troops defeat. That bridge was an impediment for the shooting, so the director decided to eliminate
it! But that was not the only inaccuracy
…
As for ‘Titanic’ , the most stricken inaccuracy
is that the romance between Jack (third class passenger) and Rose ( first
class) would probably had not taken place due
to the segregation existing between classes aboard of ships. And what would
have been the success of this film without this story?
We took advantage of this context, and put
into practice the use of discourse markers: adverbs and adverbial expressions.
And we did a word building exercise.
|
noun
|
person
|
adjective
|
verb
|
|
capture
|
captor
|
Captor /captive
|
capture
|
|
civilization
|
civilian / civil
|
civilized
|
civilize
|
|
execution
|
executioner
|
|
execute
|
|
history
|
historian
|
historic / historical
|
|
|
looting
|
looter
|
|
loot
|
|
rebellion
|
rebel
|
rebellious
|
rebel
|
|
siege
|
|
|
besiege
|
|
survival
|
survivor
|
surviving
|
survive
|
|
withdrawal
|
|
|
withdraw
|
|
victory
|
victor
|
victorious
|
|
And that was it! See you next week!
If you want to know more about films and history,
