Wednesday, November 26, 2014

This time I thought I could share with you all this little video I edited a couple of months ago for my C1 class. It shows C1 students reminiscing about experiences they treasure. I believe they did a good job. Check out their vocabulary. That's what C1 is all about. Enjoy.


Monday, November 24, 2014

Hey, Intermediate crowd! I was pleased to see that some of you decided to attend my talk last Thursday. It was fun, wasn't it? I hope you learnt a thing or two about natural languages too. Today I just wanted to share a little something with all of you. It's this cover of a movie that I recently bought for my kids. As you can see, it's a well-known well-produced film with bucketloads of money behind it... Yet a grammar mistake went unnoticed. Can you spot it? Here is the cover:


Nobody is perfect, right?

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Hey! I have neglected you a little, haven't I? Well... I've been busy. That doesn't mean that I haven't thought of you. To prove it I took this picture:
My pronunciation freaks will immediately understand the reason for the text in the postcard (if not its actual meaning). Anyway, how is it going? Can you pronounce you and Jew differently? Keep working on it. We have already covered a lot of ground: the day, everybody, you're a Jew, America and all those words with the repeated vowel (image, vintage, ticket, etc.).

What else? Oh yes! I got news! I got news! Next week I will be busy doing some lecturing. On Wednesday I'm going to give a talk in Castro Urdiales (19:00 Salón de actos del IES Ataúlfo Argenta) about constructed languages in Hollywood. I will make the same presentation in Laredo the day after, that is, on Thursday 20 at 19:00, most probably in our classroom.

Those of you who find the topic interesting enough might want to check out this five-minute presentation created by linguist John McWhorter. Think of it as an appetizer. My talk will consist of a brief history of conlanging (the creation of constructed languages) followed by a discussion of the most relevant projects that have become so popular over the past 30 years. I will show clips of Klingon, Sindarin, Dothraki, Na'vi and up to 20 fictional languages that have been used in TV series and motion pictures.

I promise to address specific Intermediate issues as well as some areas that my C1 students should find appealing.

On teaching

So I'm about to wrap the whole thing up. The school year is almost over and I have the distinct feeling that I may not be returning to t...