Season

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Slang - Money matters

Complete the gaps in the sentences below using the following words or expressions connected with money matters.
shout - chipped in - to go halves - loan sharks - an arm and a leg
cheapskate - the tab - mingy - skint - tout - fiver

A- This suit cost me ____________
B- My brother is a real ___________
c- Do you want __________ with me on a bottle of wine?
D- _________ charge very high interest for lending money.
E- He only gave his son five dollars for the trip. He’s so_______
F- Anyone want another drink? It’s my________
G- I’m _________. Can you lend me a __________?
H- Bill picked up ____________ for dinner.
I- The___________charged me twice the normal price for the tickets.
J- We all__________to buy a new television.


Answers: A- an arm and a leg B- cheapskate C- to go halves D- loan sharks E- mingy F- shout G- skint / fiver H- the tab I- tout J- chipped in

Helpful websites

Classrom and Professional Tips

http://esl.about.com/ All kinds of quizzes and grammar tips for every kind of activity – reading, writing, listening, speaking – great!)

http://www.ac-nancy-metz.fr/enseign/anglais/Henry/ (Site from France with EVERY possible activity you could want for holidays, grammar, vocabulary, listening, speaking, etc. – excellent!)

http://www.eslflow.com/ (Everything from ice breakers to collocations, all levels)

http://www.eslgold.com/ (Classroom ideas for ALL topics and learning points)

http://www.eslcafe.com/idea/index.cgi (Dave´s ESL cafe)

http://www.mrshurleysesl.com/teacherresources.html#ESLTEacherResources (Teacher resources on just about everything)

http://www.worksheets4teachers.com/ (Teacher Planet – everything you could want, especially for themed or holiday units)

http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/index.htm (English club - lots of grammar help and activities)

http://www.esl-galaxy.com/board.htm (ESL Galaxy - grammar help and review, teacher reference)

http://a4esl.org/ (All kinds of different English activities at all levels, as well as bi-lingual quizzes: Portuguese – English)

http://www2.uel.br/cch/nap/ (NAP online from the Universidade Estadual de Londrina – information and classroom ideas for EFL teachers)



Great websites for young learners - ELL

http://www.teachchildrenesl.com/ (Free activities for children)

http://www.esl-kids.com/ (A bit of everything)

http://www.english-4kids.com/worksheet.html (Worksheets and activities for the classroom)

Wonderful website with all kinds of activities using poems for all occasions
http://www.ac-nancy-metz.fr/enseign/anglais/Henry/poems.htm


Spring poetry for children
http://www.dltk-holidays.com/spring/poem/index.htm

Poems for Children by Shel Silverstein: http://faculty.weber.edu/chansen/humanweb/projects/MeghanUng/poems.htm

Poems for teachers to use in an ESL-ELF classroom
http://www.tooter4kids.com/classroom/poetry_in_the_esl_classroom.htm

Great websites for adult EFL leaners

http://bogglesworldesl.com/adultesl1.htm (EFL activities for adults – one of the best sites for communicative role play activities all ready to go)

http://www.rong-chang.com/business.htm (Business ESL/EFL activities)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/ (BBC learning English has videos and podcasts, as well as readings on the news and business world in English. They also have grammar and vocabulary practice and quizzes for your students).

http://www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglish (British Council site with excellent activities for adults and professionals learning English, in addition to young learners, and teacher resource pages)

Listening Activities


• Songs! Cindi Marinho in NE Brazil proposed a great link to help celebrate Teacher’s Day, Oct. 15. But of course, it can be used all year round to improve listening & pronunciation, as well as adding enjoyment to the classroom. The site is called Karaoke Party at http://www.karaokep arty.com/ en There are lots of new and classic songs to sing along. If you’d like to save your scores, registration is quick and free. Singing time, Everyone!

• Videos with practical vocabulary and practice: http://video.about.com/esl/English-Restaurant-Vocabulary.htm (restaurant vocab & video)


• BBC Learning English has some great listening activities: news, radio & video dialogues all with the scripts for students to follow along. There are also teacher lesson plans to help you organize. Check out the site at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/

• Halloween! If you do decide to celebrate Halloween in your classroom, one of the best sites for listening activities, history, quizzes, etc. is: http://www.ac-nancy-metz.fr/enseign/anglais/Henry/hallo.htm
• http://www.history.com/content/halloween (History Channel Videos)


• Animals/Zoo - If any of you are studying animal units with your students or discussing the controversies of having animals in zoos, one of the best youtube clips is called: Creature Comforts by Ardman Animations. There are all different kinds of animals with various English accents as well as a panther with a Brazilian accent. It is very humorous with lots of details to be explored with your students. You can access the website here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3AAdkfiamU

• Videos for all purposes http://www.englishmedialab.com/survival%20English/travel%20plans/travel%20plans.html


Pronunciation practice for you and your students

Teaching Pronunciation for Multiple Intelligences:

http://www.soundsofenglish.org/Presentations/WATESOL2001/multipleintelligencesactivities.htm

Realia ideas:
• Bring mirrors to have students watch their mouths pronounce the words
• Use rubber bands to show short or looonnnngg stress


Great website for classroom pronunciation ideas
(tongue twisters, intonation drills, minimal pairs, and many more): http://www.eslflow.com/pronunciationlessonplans.html

Flash animation project. This is a project through the University of Iowa in the U.S. that has vocabulary and diagram information on English vowel and consonant sounds, as well as videos of people speaking so you can hear and watch the sounds being spoken. It is available in Spanish and German too, and is an excellent site for individual continued pronunciation practice: http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/#

English Club. This site has a variety of different links to sentence stress, word stress, and linking, for example. Some of the examples are not very advanced, but
http://www.englishclub.com/pronunciation/index.htm

Audacity (example available) to record segments or oral summaries and listen to yourself
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Two more great websites!:

http://iteslj.org/links/ESL/Pronunciation/ (Combines explanations, demonstrations and listening-speaking practice – excellent!)

http://www.shiporsheep.com/ (Excellent comparisons between minimal pair sounds – pictures and listening)

Interesting links & sites
http://www.english-trailers.com/index.php (Free English movie trailers for your classroom!)

http://www.eslcafe.com/idea/index.cgi?Writing (some great writing ideas & activities for your English classroom)

http://www.whydemocracy.net/ (Excellent resource for more advanced students or for teachers on the importance of global democracy. Watch short film clips & documentaries from a variety of countries)

http://www.npr.org/templates/topics/topic.php?topicId=1102 (NPR – National Public Radio in the U.S.)

http://www.amnesty.org/ (Amnesty International – a terrific organization for the protection of Human Rights. The site has many readings and videos to be explored with your students).

Aprendendo ingles

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Article

Death: The Beginning or The End

From the very early we learned and we have as certain that to be alive, besides human being has a natural cycle of life to travel, that (s)he has a certain time to inhabit this planet or be the human born, to live and to die, considering that some people are going earlier and others are going more lately. And it is in this last cycle – the death – that appear some questions: Where will we go? Is death the beginning of a new life, a transformation or is the end of everything? For the most of the people, it symbolizes a moment, a terrifying and mysterious phenomenon, provoking pain and fear that are basic feelings in this relationship with death.
There are cases that the pain of loss becomes so big and unbearable that is difficult to retake the life in a natural way. But the duration of that pain, its intensity and resolution will depend on as the human being tried or tries the life in all its physical, emotional, economical and social aspects. As says a popular dictation: “ fears more the death who more feared the life”.
We live in a materialistic, capitalist and individualist society that lives an incessant “race” in search of the eternal youth, once the idea of being young is seen as a metaphor of a long and healthy life.
In William Wordsworth’s poem “We Are Seven” it is interesting the vision of death. It is a poem whose main conviction is that God is present in the world and He permeates everything that exists and the objective of the human is to reach the union with the divine. The theme of the poem is the natural cycle of life: to be born, to live and to die, as well as the conscience and understanding of continuity of the existence through death.
It is a poem that appears two voices: a voice acted by a person that is not identified and another voice that belongs to a child. She is an 8-year-old child and she has a big family. She lives with the mother and the brothers in seven. From these seven, two are already dead (line21) and she considers them, in a certain way, alive, because they are part of her day-by-day, and she knows that in some way they continue existing. When serving of seasoning, food for plants and microorganisms, its mortal remains will be part of other living creatures, in different form and expression that they will give continuities to the cycle of the life, because in accordance to the Pantheism, all the beings and all the God existence, are conceived as a whole.
Little Maid, when questioned, remains firm in the certainly of that her brothers are living creatures, because, exactly deceased, they continue present in her life: in the accomplishment of daily activities, a simple supper, the tricks, that is exactly, under other aspects, the brothers continue closer to her; the death was not the reason to modify her daily routine of a child.
“We Are Seven” is a poem that speaks about death, of a form that celebrates the life, because until the death it is used as resource for the continuation of the existence, of the life in its varied forms and expressions. In Wordsworth’s poem, it has life in the fiction and action of a child, in the living colors of the tombs, in the trees, the forests etc:

A simple child
That lightly draws its breath
And feels its life in every limb.
(Verse 1 to 3)


[…]
Two of us in the church - yard lie
Beneath the church – yard tree.
(Verse 31 and 32)

[…]
“Their graves are green, they may be seen.”
(Verse 37)

The innocent little Maid maintains a friendly relationship and companionship with her dead brothers:

[…]
And there upon the ground I sit,
And sing a song to them.
(Verse 43 and 44)

With this, of course, all those actions and attitudes of little Maid of playing, of visiting and of eating with her dead brothers, demonstrate that they are part of her day, of her life and of the life of her family.
She doesn’t care if the time is good (sunny) or bad (snowy), what matter is to maintain the contact, to cultivate the friendship and to maintain a daily conviviality in a natural. Death, in this case, separated the physical body of the spiritual body, but it didn’t affect the love, the relationship and the friendship among her and her brothers: (Mainly because their body became elements of the nature)

“My stockings there I often knit,
My kerchief there I hem;
And there upon the ground I sit,
And sing a song to them.”
(Verse 41 to 44)

“Two of us in the church-yard lie,
My sister and my brother;
And in the church-yard cottage, I
Dwell near them with my mother.”
(Verse 21 to 24)

The Little Maid has freedom and space to play, as well as they try to be always in contact with nature. For the unknown voice, the brothers of little Maid are dead and they must be forgotten; therefore, already, they are not part of this world. It is not so reasonable that they are remembered and cited as if, still, were living creatures:

“But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!”
“Twas throwing words away; for still.”
(Verse 65 to 67)

The stranger’s voice, in elapsing of the poem, tries to question her, to bring her the reason, his reason, that death is the end, that they left and they are in heaven (verse 62).

“You run about, my little Maid
Your limbs they are alive
If two are in the church- yard laid
Then ye are only five.”
(Verse 34 to 36)

At the beginning of the poem, the voice of the poem questions, what could know, this simple child, of rustic and woodland air, with eyes very fair, about death? And she demonstrated knowledge of death and she speaks calmly and calmly regarding that, without the smallest embarrassment, once she believes in death as continuation and transformation of life. She believes that her brothers are alive: “ Their graves are green, they maybe seen” (verse 37). Their mortal remains are there, buried, serving as fertilizer for trees, grams etc. In a certain way, under other aspects, besides her memory, they are alive. And when she says that they can be seen, we can have two interpretations: can be seen the graves that represent their death, the proof of the fact in itself, and it can be seen her dead brothers, representing life and its mutation cycle and transformation. And this concept of death, as continuity, is in accordance with Pantheism that defends that the unit is divine, a time that this until (God and all the beings) is conceived as a whole. The brothers of little Maid are part of this all, and as such continues belonging to her family. She looks for to emphasize this well, when answering several the same questions carried through for the unknown voice:

[…]
How many may you be?
How many? Seven in all”…
(Verse 14 e 15)


[…]
She answered, seven are we…
(Verse 18)

[…]
O Master! We are seven.
(Verse 64)

The presence of nature, in this poem, is very strong, once the Little Maid and her family live in harmony with the cycles of the nature, in an integrated way. In this case, their mortal remains serve as fertilizer, food for plants and trees contributing to the survival of the ecosystem, they end up being part of the nature; as Lavoisier said: In nature, nothing is lot, but is transformed. When doing some outdoors thing, the Little Maid is seeking integration and communion with the perfection – the nature:

“And often after sun-set, Sir,
When it is light and fair,
I take my little porringer,
And eat my supper there.”
(Verse 45 to 48)

[...]
“And when the ground was white with snow,
And I could run and slide,
(Verse 57 and 58)

It is a poem that detaches for the poet’s simplicity, the use of simple images associated to wisdom. In the case of this poem, the author used a child’s image to represent the condition of the human knowledge in what refers to death. The girl is described in an innocent way, pure as an angelical being:

Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.
(Verse 7 and 8)

Her eyes were fair, and very fair
(Verse 11)

Even with the whole innocence, characteristic of a child, the Little Maid knows about God and she has the perception of the nature and of the universe as divinity. She clearly sees well the continuation of the existence of her sister and her brother.

“The first that died was sister Jane,
In bed she moaning lay
Till God released her of her pain;
And then she went way.”

(Verse 49 to 52)

“We Are Seven” is an interesting poem. In it, we can find visions and opposite opinions about death, a theme that frequently sends us to the pain and loss, but we do have recanted at the poem , in figure by one eerie , embodying the reason , the fancy as of death as the end.

Trabalho de Pós Graduação - Literatura Inglesa e Norte Americana.
UFT - Universidade Federal do Tocantins.




REFERENCES:

WORDSWORTH, William. “We are Seven”. In: The Norton Anthology of English Literature.