Blog de Cristina

 I don’t like this idiom , the only reason being the rodent in it… yes, I am that girlie!! 

Now and then, and as part of the continuous asssessment, I ask my students to write something at home to be marked later  and very often and mainly when it is writing about a celebrity, a book or a film they nick from the Internet. Setting this task when I know pretty well they won’t be able to resist the temptation of copy-pasting from the Internet is a bit of a wicked of me ,to put it midly ,but life is hard , isn’t it?

To smell  a rat= you know instinctively that something is wrong or that someone is lying to you.

So when I start reading essays and some words trigger all my sirens  , then this is the tool I use to catch you red-handed.

It’s called Plagium

I sometimes wonder how I can get so involved in something I’ve never liked. And I’m talking about football. I’ve gone a long way from not knowing how many players you needed to play a match to watching , if nothing else appeals to me on TV, the match between South Africa and USA national teams ,to name just one.

It must be love! This is what I’ve done to celebrate the promotion of  Villa de Pravia football team ,where my son plays, to the second division . I hope you like it !!

Related Links

• Playing with images: Bookr
• Warhol
• Wordle: creating “word clouds”
• Food and cooking

My son Lucas, who is 9, was watching TV (I’m afraid he’s sort of becoming a couch potato if I do nothing about it) when the video of Thriller filled the screen . He called me all excited about what he was seeing. I tried to explain who Michael Jackson was ( difficult when I got to the part of him turning white) and what the video was about ( the part about the graveyard and him turning into a zombie and scaring the girl was his favourite) and then, in my determination to show him how funny dancing could be I started searching the Net and bumped into this funny page where you can learn how to dance the Thriller Dance.

And well, I am just beginning to think it might be  very interesting to teach vocabulary related to verbs of movement in a funny way. So… dear students … get ready, next year when we get to the point of learning verbs related to movement we’ll be dancing Thriller… if you don’t believe me … have a look at how organised they’ve got it all for me , ready to be used!! We might even be asked to perform at the Christmas Party!! How about that!!! I can’t wait!!!

Let’s get started

Step 1. The Dance . There are 8 lessons and each consists of 4 clips

http://thrilltheworld.com/learn/videos

Step 2. The Dance Script

http://thrilltheworld.com/images/uploads/TTW_Official_Dance_Script.pdf

Spet 3. The Lyrics and the Script together

http://thrilltheworld.com/images/uploads/TTW_Lyrics_and_Script.pdf

Related Links:

• Karaoke online

It is called Visuwords and it’s worth a visit.

Never before have I seen such a display of colours, diagrams and words in a dictionary. It is great for everybody to use ‘cause it’s fun and it shows not only the definitions of words but also the connections between words. What’s more, if you place your cursor over any of the words ,the definition appears. You can even click and drag individual nodes to move them around to help clarify connections.If you ver get lost in this crazy tree of words ,use the colour-coded key on the left to understand the connections between the words.

“be who you are and say what you feel,

because those who mind don’t matter and

 those who matter don’t mind.”

Dr Seuss

Fancy a riddle??  

How many bricks does it take to complete a building made of brick?

Related Links:

A puzzle to rack your brains

What on earth is a palindrome?

Beauty is a product of Photoshop

About books

Some interesting or , at least, unusual facts about the English Language

Only one.

the last one.

What’s a palindrome?
Although you might not have realized yet what a palindrome is what you cannot deny is that the word is beautiful. It comes from the Greek “palin”= return and “dromes”= path; but this won’t probably enlighten you as regards its real meaning.

All right, I know you are all on tenterhooks waiting for me to tell you but first of all ,I’m going to give you an example … or several to make you rack your brains. I know, I know  you’ve nearly finished exams and they have been hard enough  but we don’t want you to put your mind at rest just yet, do we? Enough of beating about the bush …here’s the example: “no lemon no melon”.

Can’t see it? Not a clue? Really? Ok, I’m going to give you another example. It is said that the first sentence uttered by a human being was a palindrome. First and second human being? Adam and Eve. So when they met for the first time the gentleman in Adam said to Eve: “Madam, I’m Adam”. Although some people think that Adam was more talkative than this and that what he actually said was “Madam in Eden, I’m Adam”.
Now the penny’s dropped and you know! A palindrome is a word or a phrase which is the same when read from the start or the end, Mystery solved!!

Can you think of any palindromes? Please do and then send me a post … you can even write a song. You think this is far-fetched? Have a look at this video

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I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to recommend you this wonderful site , but …better late than never!
This site has been created and is maintained by three colleagues from three different EEOOIII . On their own they have been awarded different prizes and together they have created this wonderful site. My admiration and thanks to you three: María (from EOI Oviedo), Carmen (from EOI Mieres) and Javier (from EOI Luarca).

Now , for you my dearest students and because I can guess that right now you must be frantic (exam is on Monday) looking for new listening comprehensions to do, I am going to link you straightaway to the listening section of ELLA. The link will lead you to a page with all the listenings , find the ones for you level…. ADVANCED.

http://web.educastur.princast.es/proyectos/ella/?cat=17
If you like the site , don’t forget to send them a post. It is always nice to hear that all you effort has been worthwhile !

Related Links:

Learn English by watching videos

Podcards

BBC Learning English

Yappr: What on earth is this?

What I’m about to show you is a good example of why English, after all, should not be considered such a difficult language to understand, especially if you compare it to understanding some Spanish native speakers.
Have fun!!!

No kidding now!!If you need to improve your listening skills, why don’t you visit this site? You won’t find any comprehension questions after the audio but you might consider it interesting and useful. The site  belongs to the New York Times and it’s a collection of stories of people from New York. Click on the image and it will lead you straight to their homepage.

Related links:

Some help with the speaking test.. or not?

The Italian Man who went to Malta

Bush Bloopers

Crisis Subprime- The last laugh

Playing? Working? Teaching?Let’s not beat about the bush and call a spade a spade …yes , I am playing , playing with images . It is my firm conviction that when you see something you remember it better. That’s why , once again,  I have used the same tool I used when teaching Food and Cooking : PimPamPum . This is a version  called Bookr , and as its name suggests it creates photobooks  using Flikr images. The photobooks are very simple to create, you just need to type in a key word to find the images you want and then drag them onto the pages and add what you need to be taught and illustrated.

I think this a nice way to teach parts of the animals and I’ve also added  some idioms containing animals that need to be studied. The pity with Wordpress is that it doesn’t allow  “embedding”, so the only way for you to see it would be by clicking on “animals by Cristina” or on the picture.

Animals by Cristina

Related entries:

Wordle: Creating “word clouds”

And yet another way to improve your vocabulary

Food and cooking