Very short stories

Dear All,

Here's the stories I promised to post in case you want to read them during the holidays. They're very short, and different in nature - some funny, some sad...

Page 1

Page 2

They're from the collection True Tales of American Life, edited by the US writer Paul Auster, and written by radio listeners who contributed their own stories to an NPR program. Auster wanted "stories that defied our expectations about the world, anecdotes that revealed the mysterious and unknowable forces at work in our lives, in our family histories, in our minds and bodies, in our souls, true stories that sounded like fiction".

Hope you want to read more of them after these four!

Breath-taking photographs

Hi there!

A colleague of mine just recommended this book by the photographer Linde Waidhofer. The pictures are just breath-taking, but as a reading exercise, you can also download the book (it's free) and read the texts in English during the holidays.

Enjoy!

"You guys"

Hi there!

Francisco (17:30 group) sent me this video and commented he was surprised by the informality of the speech. The speaker refers to the members of the European Parliament as "you guys".

The speaker is definitely outspoken, even looking for direct confrontation, but the register of his speech can still be considered, in general, a formal one. The use of "you guys" is informal but not to the point I think Francisco or you guys might think it is: when the speaker (or your teacher) says "you guys" they're not calling you "tíos/tías" ;-) "You guys" is only a plural form of "you".

Thank you very much, Francisco, for drawing our attention to this video and to this aspect of English grammar!

Here's a more comprehensive explanation from Wikipedia:

New plural forms

Because you is both singular and plural, various English dialects have attempted to revive the distinction between a singular and plural you to avoid confusion between the two uses. This is typically done by adding a new plural form; examples of new plurals sometimes seen and heard are y'all, or you-all (primarily in the southern United States and African American Vernacular English), you guys (in the U.S., particularly in Midwest, Northeast, and West Coast, in Canada, and in Australia; regardless of the genders of those referred to), you lot (in the UK), youse (in Scotland, the north east of England and New Zealand), yous (in Liverpool and some parts of Ireland), youse guys (in the U.S., particularly in New York City region, Philadelphia, Michigan's Upper Peninsula and rural Canada; also spelt without the E), and you-uns/yinz (Western Pennsylvania, The Appalachians). English spoken in Ireland, known as Hiberno-English, sometimes uses the word ye as the plural form, or yous (also used in Australia, however not the form ye). Although these plurals are useful in daily speech, they are generally not found in Standard English. Among them, you guys is considered most neutral in the U.S. It is the most common plural form of you in the U.S. except in the dialects with y'all, and has been used even in the White House.

Gravel

Hiya! As announced in class yesterday, next week you'll have to read a story by the Canadian writer Alice Munro. You can find it here or ask your student representative for a hard copy.
Here's a glossary you can check so that you don't have to look up many words in the dictionary
A good idea is to number the pages and the lines (every 5 lines) so that the discussion is easier when we have it in class (on Tuesday 13 December).
Hope you enjoy the story!

Here are a couple of audio files containing two stories from Munro's last collection, Too Much Happiness, in case you want to listen to them during the holidays. We have a copy of the collection in our Multimedia Room ;-)

Free Radicals

Some Women

Learning Styles

Hi there!

My colleague Carlos suggested this link for students to learn about their learning styles. The questionnaire can help you to find out the best ways to learn, so give it a try!

Working towards fluency

Here’s the kind of exercise we did in class yesterday, which you have to do again on your own in order to improve your fluency:

Think about your earliest memory and distribute the information according to the following outline:

1 – When and where the event took place

2 – What happened

3 – How you felt then / feel now that you remember it

You may take notes and look up vocabulary to build up a beautiful account. You can even write the whole thing down, although you shouldn’t read it when you tell it.

Practise your mini-presentation with a timer in hand. It should be at least two minutes long.

Rehearse a second time, telling the same things as the first time. But now set a time limit of 1m 30s.

Produce your mini-presentation a third time, limiting it now to 1 minute only.

If you record the whole exercise you’ll see that the third time you do it, the words run together, there are fewer hesitations, and that you have even corrected yourself as regards grammar, pronunciation, and so on.

Be prepared to present your earliest memory to the rest of the class on Tuesday!

Why do we sometimes make simple things so complicated?

Listen

Interview with Keith Jarrett

Listen to this interview with pianist Keith Jarrett and relax... The speakers speak slow, the interview is accompanied by music, and the questions I'm posing below shouldn't be too difficult for you to answer, so this exercise is meant to make listening comprehension not a stressful but a relaxing experience ;-)

1. On April 9th 2011, Jarrett presented the album he had been working on for two years. True or false?

2. What factors does the pianist mention as guiding his compositions?

3. What does the pianist mean by having "an out-of-the-body experience"?

4. What's the disadvantage of playing solo, according to Jarrett?

5. The story Jarrett is telling in his last album is the story of his divorce. True or false?

6. Having played for so many years makes it easier for the pianist to perform in front of an audience. True or false?

7. According to Jarrett, it was the atmosphere in Rio that determined the success of his concert. True or false?

You can find the answers in the comments. If, after listening, you still need to check some words, here's the transcript

How I Got My Song

Hi there!

The last Prince of Asturias Prize for Letters, as you may know, is Canadian poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen. Here's his speech at the award ceremony, which can be easily understood:

Further entertainment for Cohen fans here

And my favourite version of one of Cohen's songs (I think even Cohen admitted Buckley's cover was better than the original ;-)