Movies, TV and English

There are many reasons I can think of why people in Spain don´t speak English well after years and years of having English Language as a school subject but I am going to focus on one. It´s not easy to learn a language when you don´t hear it around, when the English classroom is the only place for you to hear, listen and speak.

In Galicia, students have three periods of class a week (that´s usually 150 minutes all together, what with going into the classroom, taking out the stuff for the classes, getting everything and everybody ready... can easily come down to 120 minutes) and that´s all... If they like music in English, they may get some audio practice there, but whatever TV programmes they watch, they will be dubbed most of the times. Sometimes we do get some films in original version but the subtitles will be in Spanish (read this post about this and let me know what you think about it : Watch films in English with subtitles in English), mainly in TV channels you pay for.

To make up for this, here´s a list of webpages where you can watch movies, TV series, news, sports... in English... enjoy yourself this long and rainy weekend... and go on surfing these webs at Christmas. I do hope you´ll find something you like:

http://www.fancast.com/: You can watch TV shows, episodes of The Simpsons, Friends, Flashforward, House...Saturday Night Live; trailers, full movies, documentaries.
http://es.justin.tv/: episodes of your favourite shows (Lost, Grey´s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives...); you can subscribe to them.
http://www.seriesyonkis.com : the information about the series specifies the language and whether it has subtitles or not.

http://www.wildaboutmovies.com/ information about recently released movies, about release dates, movie screenings...

Does anyone know any webpages where you can watch the series or films in original version and dubbed in their language as well? I´d be grateful for this piece of information.

The networks have their own websites where they put up recent episodes of most of their shows:
http://abc.go.com/ : ABC: morning, daytime and evening shows, movies, specials...

http://www.cbs.com/ : CBS: shows, videos and a long list of sites to browse

http://www.nbc.com/: NBC: watch the clip of the day, episodes of Saturday Night Live, entertainment, news

http://edition.cnn.com/?eref=rss_topstories CNN: videos classified according to the following categories: world (U.S., Africa, Europe, Asia, Latin America, Middle East), business, world sport, technology, entertainment, travel, environment...

You may as well watch short films in You Tube, for example, but, in this case, the subtitles -whatever the language- may not be accurate or correct; there are often grammar, vocabulary or spelling mistakes. Anyway, they are of great help, especially when you don´t understand the audio very well; for example, in the next video the original language is French, the subtitles are in English and they do help to follow the story but some of the mistakes are really big ones... Let´s see if you find them. And enjoy the story!

Word of the Year 2009: UNFRIEND

Every year the New Oxford American Dictionary chooses the "Word of the Year", which, like everything else in life, is not usually unanimously accepted: some people applaud the choice, but others don´t.

Word of the Year (WOTY) 2009: unfriend (verb=To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook). The prefix "un-" can be used with verbs (eg, unpack), but it usually goes with adjectives (eg, unhappy); in the case of "unfriend", it goes in front of a noun as we know the word "friend" today but there´s an archaic use of "friend" as a verb.

Choosing the word of the year can´t be easy: languages are alive and that is so true when we consider the number of words we incorporate into our vocabulary each year! Think of other words they considered for the nomination this year: netbook (= a small, portable laptop), ecotown (= a town built and run on eco-friendly principles), sexting (=sending sexually explicit texts or pictures by mobile phone; imitating the word texting=exchanging brief messages between mobile phones)...

Regarding "unfriend", it´s okay to have a word to use when you want to get rid of your friends but let´s not forget how nice it is to be and to make friends and how helpful they can be; Carole King´s song You´ve Got a Friend is about this. This song won a Grammy Award way back in 1971; I like the way she sings it but I´m sure you´ll enjoy McFly´s subtitled version, in English, which I´m not allowed to embed. James Taylor´s version (with subttitles in Spanish here) is also nice. Take your pick!

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

Now you have all read The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (you have, haven´t you?... You´d better!!) maybe you´d like to know a little bit more about the Holocaust and Auschwitz itself.
Steven Spielberg carried out a thorough research when he was preparing his film Schindler´s List (based on Oskar Schindler´s life; a film I recommend...why don´t you borrow it from the library in front of our school and watch it at Christmas?... ); he worked together with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In the webpage of this museum there are a couple of videos, less than ten minutes each, where different people talk about Auschwitz while you watch photographs of the camp as part of the Nazi camp system and of the place as it looks like nowadays. Have a go and see how much you understand: one is called Encountering Auschwitz and the other is Auschwitz Through the Lens of the SS

And now you can watch the trailer of the film based on John Boyne´s book. Remember: don´t watch the whole film before you take the exam... but I know sometimes it´s easier to think about a book if you can have the picture of the characters in your head, so I hope this will be useful for you.



By the way, have you noticed the different spellings of the word, pyjamas-pajamas, on the title of the books above? Both spellings are correct. The word "pyjama" was incorporated into the English language from Hindustani language. The word originally derives from the Persian word پايجامه Payjama meaning "leg garment."

International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women(November 25th)

I usually "celebrate" (isn´t this an ironic word to use when talking about violence?) this day in my classes with a song to make my students reflect on this subject from different points of view.

In 1º Bachillerato we analiysed and listened to The Police´s Every Breath You Take. This song was written as a love song but love can get too far sometimes and the lyrics of this song are a good example. Listening to the message of this song makes my hair stand on end: can you imagine a kind of love as oppressive as the one depicted here?. If you click here , you´ll see a list of things that define what love is and what it isn´t and the feelings described in this song, surely go into the second list. Funnily enough, the song is so catchy I often find myself singing it along, just like my students in class as soon as they recognised the song.



In 2º Bachillerato we listened to Suzanne Vega´s Luka. I have always thought that the celebration this day should include children and this song is an example of violence against them.

Some time ago I read an interview with Suzanne Vega where she explained the origin of this song: Luka was a boy who used to play with his friends in front of her building; he was not an abused child, he just looked different from the other boys. Anyway, this song tells the story of an abused person in a subtle but very realistic way; it makes you shiver just to think about it, be it a boy or a woman. Click here if you want to watch the video with subtitles in English-I´m not allowed to embed it- or watch the video with no subtitles or the one with the lyrics. Suit yourself !

If you want to go deeper into this subject of violence agains women, click here and you´ll get links to a wide range of webpages that deal with the topic from very different angles.

Or have a look at the blog of our school library, I.E.S. "Nosa Señora dos Ollos Grandes", there are some very interesting posts there about this day.

English and Cakes

One of the groups I teach -1st. Bachillerato- were so happy with the marks they got in their last exam that they suggested a celebration with cakes (I´ve told them a couple of times I have a sweet tooth and enjoy both baking and eating cakes).
Sure they were thinking of the teacher as the cook but I have a better idea (teachers always do!), here are some recipes for them and let´s see if they surprise me next week.
This video shows how to make an American Cheesecake (yum, yum!); the language they use is easy to understand and the subtitles are a great help but keep a dictionary handy, just in case. This recipe is for Iago:




And for the rest of the group:

What about a Cake with three types of milk? You can find this and many other recipes in a blog I follow called The Pioneer Woman.

Let´s not forget chocolate, what about a brownie? Brownies are easy to make but you must pay attention to the time they need to bake in the oven, don´t overcook them or they will be too hard. If you don´t fancy this recipe, you will find plenty of them with chocolate or cocoa as the main ingredient in this webpage: cacaoweb

Well, Miguel, how are you going to celebrate your high mark?

And I know what you´re going to ask next (students are so predictable!): I´m sorry but... no extra points if you bring the cake to school!!!

Reading and Globalization

I am trying to convince my older students of the importance of reading a weekly magazine from one of the Spanish newspapers so as to know what´s going on in the world. I would like to make them understand how important it is to keep up to date on current issues in order to be able to interact with anyone anywhere and, at the same time, be better prepared for their university entrance exam, where they will have to discuss and analyse some texts on different topics.
I took to class some issues of Time and of El Semanal, the Sunday magazine that comes with a popular newspaper in our region, La Voz de Galicia .
I wanted to make them see how globalization affects what we read: when there is a piece of news about a general topic, we very often find the same articles in both magazines; the Spanish version is usually a translation of the English one (the articles are published in the USA first) and the differences sometimes lie in the size of the photographs. Judge by yourselves (click on the photos to get a larger image):

Sometimes even the cover is the same:



We do read articles in English from a number of magazines and newspapers for our English classes but I´m afraid they consider this kind of reading "class work" and what I mean to encourage is reading to improve their general knowledge and, eventually, for pleasure.

Fraternities and Sororities

There is this listening activitity in the course book about Fraternities and Sororities and that´s a whole new world for most of my students; of course, they´ve seen them, heard about them in lots of films but they didn´t really pay attention to what they were watching so I gave a brief explanation in class but I thought we should go into this topic in depth (sort of...) During the lesson I explained the Latin origins of the words: frater (= brother) and soror (=sister)(We could shed some tears here about the good old days when Latin was a compulsory subject at school.........)
In fact, I have found quite a lot of written material on this topic; the list of good films about it is quite short though, but bearing in mind my taste for music (have a look at this post in this blog) and my admiration for the way these guys move, here´s my suggestion: Stomp the Yard; if you click onto the title and watch the video called "A Sweet Deal" you may understand how important fraternities are for some people.
By the way, there are a few things you should know something about in order to understand the story better: the basics about how a society like this works (i.e.: the houses, the "rush" or visiting the houses to meet the members), what stepping is (mainly for African-Americans), the Greek alphabet and the origins of its use for this purpose, pledging a fraternity (that is, the ritual of asking to become a member)... what else?

If you feel too lazy to click on the link above, you may just as well watch this trailer: