History Goes to the Movies...

Week 3^rd -5^th 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.

You can listen to them again in here: I will survive

I don't want to miss a thing

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 27^th -29^th 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 13^th-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, 

History goes to the movies