Just a note to let you know that it has been a pleasure for me to be your teacher. The last year is supposed to be the most demanding and you have been great students. If I have taught you some English, even just a bit, I have done my job. But, I just want you to know that I have learnt a lot from you. Some of you are, perhaps, a bit disappointed because you were expecting something different in your English lessons.I apologise if that is the case.
Just a last piece of advice: NEVER GIVE UP. Don’t think of English as something impossible for you. If you have reached this point, you can go further and further. Take advantage of all the opportunities that are available to go on improving your English. Read and listen to as much English as you can and, if you feel like writing send your ideas to our blog. I won’t be adding things to it for a time, but when the next year starts you can take part in it as well, even if you are no longer “my students”.
Thank you again because the enthusiasm you showed in the lessons encouraged me to go on with my job as a teacher. You have been so patient!
It’s said that music and sound efects have always been an essential part in movies… But I think we still don’t know how much. To show this, I’ve looked for this video in youtube. It’s a modified trailer to Disney’s Mary Poppins. Same images, different music… Different film
I had already heard about John Steinbeck, since I watched two impressive movies based on his novels: John Ford’s “The Grapes of Wrath” (1940) and Elia Kazan’s “East of Eden” (1955). Yet, I had never read any of his books. He has always been known as a great storyteller who had been able to build so strong and unforgettable characters like Tom Joad and Cal Trask (played in the cinema by Henry Fonda and James Dean, respectively).
Thus, being in the EOI’s library, searching for a book to read in my last Christmas holiday, I had no doubt when I saw his “Of Mice and Men” laying unnoticed on a shelf: “This one”, I thought.
Apart from being a biography lover, I have always been interested in knowing the writer’s historical context, in search of the motives that made him or her devote himself/herself to the art of writing.
John Steinbeck (1902-1968) was born in California, in a region famous by its immigration tradition, which made him grow up influenced by social problems of poor people from working class, many of them migrant workers.
“Of Mice and Men” is a gripping novel about two friends who, having neither family, nor a place of their own, search for employment in some ranch, after having lost their former job in a farm.
George promised Aunt Clara, Lennie’s only relative, to look after the mentally handicapped guy. Since her death, they both become inseparable. Yet sometimes George loses his patience with his dumb friend.
Some of the most pleasant passages of the story are related to the times when Lennie asks George, for the umpteenth time, to talk about their dream of having their own ranch. After refusing it firmly, George ends up agreeing to his friend childish claim, providing him with a wonderful description of a paradisiacal place in which they both would be finally happy.
The author manages to impress the reader by showing not only a beautiful pure friendship between two grown-up men, but also the imaginative resources to which they appeal to escape from the long-suffering lives they have here and there.
Yet, the story has an unexpected sorrowful ending which in no way diminishes the sympathy the reader feels towards these two modest men.
Although the book is written in a simple style, I sometines found it a little bit difficult to get accustomed to the colloquial language, plenty of slang, Steinbeck employed to give realism to his characters’ dialogues. Nevertheless, the reading rapidly turns into a delightful experience, boosted by this odd language itself.
Steinbeck won both Pulitzer (for “The Grapes and Wrath”) and Nobel Prizes for Literature in 1940 and 1962, in the order given.
Yesterday’s lesson was based on two activities made by two friends and colleagues: Carmen López (EOI Mieres) and María Valdés (EOI Oviedo).Thanks to them, we learnt things about San Francisco and the reasons why men and women are so different (fortunalety, if I may say so!)
If you want to do Partners in Crime again, click here and if you want to try with the test again and get the answersheet, click here.
There are also some videos in Maria´s Blog you may find interesting.
Thank you for your help and support, dear colleagues.
As I told you in the lesson, we are not doing more exercises on infinitive and gerund, but I also told you that Reyes had prepared a compilation of exercises taken from the internet so you can get more practice.
So, that’s it. Work hard and have fun
Thank you, Reyes. I’m sure lots of students will find your selection very useful.
One person and one dog. Only two friends walking through America. Willy is a beggar that hasn’t forgot his old life as a poet. The animal is the one that has shared the whole life with his owner, living together an infinite amount of adventures and twists since those magical revolutions in the sixties. Since then, it is to understand perfectly what humans say what this dog has learnt‐ yeah, Mr. Bones is a dog, but a very clever one. And that is something that you will see as long as Mr. Bones tries to understand human’s life and feelings.
This is a story cleverly told to humans from the point of view of someone that knows “what” is happening among all those things that surround him but that he doesn’t know “why”. Mr. Bones is a vagrant dog that has lived, seen and experimented a lot, so it is not naivety what is his thoughts main characteristic. But the moment he finds himself walking alone in a world not made for him, absurdity of humans and people indoor misfortunes turns up in the middle of the plot with an original style you have never seen before. It has been described many times as something that pours cold water on us.
Although the characters won’t come alive to you, all their dimensions are treated in such an ironical way that it gives the plot the piece it needed to be one of Auster’s masterpieces, in which the author shows us American typical examples that seem so odd to what is supposed to be a rational mind with no passions.
As it is written in not a very elaborated language, reading this book will be easy to follow, and it is a perfect one to start reading this author. Believe me, when you see this way the outrageous lives that we carry on everywhere, I am sure you will say it is a page-turner.
Jaime
