Summer. For c1.1s & c1.2s

1. For all…

Reading Club, with books, poems, stories, essays I suggest for our work. Rememer to 1. sign up and 2. subscribe to the R.Club!!! (the online course).

We will also include TV Series and movie senes for Dramatized Readings & performances.

talkingpeople.net/ecampus

2.

Grammar in context extra support for people making under-the-level grammar mistakes and for new students joining the c1.1 course next September.

+ for people who I recommemded to take the c1.1 course again, and use their summer work to consolidate the B2+ level in grammar and types of written texts…

About learning about textual structure I recommend my notes on Writing, on Talking People, and reading students work published on Your Stuff. I’ll be adding some c1 writing texts I have.

This self-study exercise book is also good for people who will start a c1.2 year in September but whose grammar needs urgent improvements and consolidation. It will help you understand which are mistakes you should work on avoiding by connecting this training to the input you get from reading and listening in your everyday bilingual life!!

3.

For people who wish to advance work they could be doing at home during the c1.2 2019-20 year…

Remember my courses are about projects and workshops with original materials, SO read the C1 RESOURCE PACK, downloadable for free on talkingpeople.net – enter – in class – c1

Ideas for your Summer Learning Plan

To use the materials we used this year, particularly if you didn’t finish them or exploit them properly for learning purposes. Here is my brainstorming on this:

• Listen to Pamela Lyndon Travers’s novella (Mary Poppins), practicing retelling of fav scenes, and/or L&R of my list of UL.
• Read or re-read or finish reading Wangari Maathai’s autobiography (Unbowed). This is important for everybody, really, because of the UL you can gather to speak and write about a great deal of issues relevant for C1 learners: democracy, corruption, human rights, repression, social movements, environmental issues, nature, cultures in Kenya, consequences of colonization in Kenya, urbanization, religion…
• If you have her documentary, Taking Root, it’ll be amazing support, and you’ll become familiar with Kenyan accents
• Watch Annie Leonard’s documentary (Story of Stuff) and practice retelling, and/or gather UL. This is also great for everybody’s English. The range of topics is great, too: consumerism, economy, environmental issues, human rights issues, labor/labour rights, democracy, sustainability, capitalism, resources in our planet…
• Listen to the Human Right Declaration, or read it again, to consolidate learning about formal administrative/legal language.
• Watch a few episodes of Friends, learning your fav lines, and/or practicing retelling the episode.
• Listen to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her TED Talks, to get used to non-British / non-US American accents.
• Listen to poems on the Talking People Podcast, and learn one by ear by heart!
• Listen to stories on the Talking People Podcast, particularly, again, to Coyote Killed a Giant, and practice retelling or L&R.
• Watch the videos posted this year on this blog, or look for your own, to expand your lists of UL in connection to your LoM, too — something you can or should do with whichever material you use, really!
• Have a look at my notes here on your Writing File, to check what you did, and what remains to be done.
• Read the C1 Resource Pack and connect it to your learning habits and routines or be aware of how you have done so.
• Practice telling your own actual or fictional stories, or write them down and read them aloud.
• If you have grammar trouble, get for instance the macmillan English Grammar in Context with key and a CD Rom for Intermediate students (if you get the Advanced guide and you haven’t consolidated your B2+ level it won’t be a good idea.)
  http://www.macmillanenglish.com/courses/macmillan-english-grammar-in-context/

UL from novels: Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet 1

• Edited in August 2019: UL_WritingWkshp_Carrington_HearingTrumpet

About the two-year C1 course, teachers & methodology

Can you lend me a hand with some brooding over the C1 course? I would like to ask you to answer these questions if you manage the time. You can do 1 (the polls), or 1 + 2 (reading why’s), or 1 + 2 + 3 (developing your own analysis).

1. The Polls – this will take you very little time and it’ll be of great help. It’s anonymous and you can tick as many answers AS APPLY TO YOUR CASE.

NB: In the polls, I’m not including Education for Equality because all teachers need to include in their teaching this crosscurricular subject — not only me, OK?

2. Background Information. Explaining the whys of this post

As you know, because when we started this 2018-19 academic year our syllabus was for a year, not two, we’ve had to adapt to the new situation throughout the course, so I asked my colleagues in our last meeting if it would be OK for me to stay with you C1.1’s next year too in C1.2, so we can succeed in our mission of covering all the points the C1 syllabus included! You see, in our Department we try to choose groups expressing preferences and then reaching a consensus, because we think teaching is a very complex matter and it’s important each teacher feels positive about her or his levels.

I’ve been thinking that considering the methodology we use in class, which was published by my school as the C1 Resource Pack, is so novel to so many students (in spite of the fact that it is not that new, really — textbooks share a lot of the aims and procedures I explain. Actually, I learned those in textbooks too!), and the fact that we use original materials which you share via your projects and which I share in non-stop diagnoses throughout the year, to adapt to individual and group needs, I think it would be a good idea…

• to allow students taking the c1.1 course with me one year to continue with me (the same teacher) the following year too, whether in the c1.2 course or because they need to take the c1.1 course again.

For the English Department this would mean I would have a two groups of C1 every year, a c1.1 non-certifying group and a c1.2 certifying group, which would need to be the same students I worked with the first year. In our last Department meeting we talked about this, due to the peculiar situation we faced this year, and my colleagues agreed I should teach the new c1.2 course next year, and stay in my old c1.1 (with new students and whoever decides to take the c1.1 course again). But now I’m thinking this should be so hereafter!

About next year, because B2 students will be able to move on to the c1.1 course, I imagine we will have new groups and more teachers giving the C1 level, which is wonderful because then students will have more teachers, days and hours to choose from. But so far in our School (since 2013 that I know) levels are understood as individual one-year courses and we have not had one teacher staying two years in a row with a same group — mostly for organizational reasons, not because we did not want to.

3. The Question or Writing Topic. I would like to know what you think about this proposal:

• spending two learning years with the same teacher at the advanced level.
  Do you think this would be a good decision? Why (not)?

Writing Tips. Approach: You can speak in general and then focus on or illustrate with your own case, or else, you can focus on your own case OR speak in general! 😀

Deadline and Language: You can answer whenever suits you best — preferably before the end of June 2019, in English or Spanish or both! The good thing about answering in Spanish is that I could share it more broadly; say, with the School’s Claustro (teachers’ governing body) and Consejo Escolar (the school’s most important governing body), and the authorities when they request info about the C1 courses at EEOOII.

EDITED! Diary for May 2 – BH & Phonemic Transcription!

A hard-working & engrossing lesson we really enjoyed, conducted by Juanfra, Super-Knees. We got to gap 20.

Lorena dropped by but had to leave because Andrea also wanted to stretch her baby legs.

Ana, you can also share poems! By heart or reading them out and sharing your thoughts.

Antonio said he’s doing the transcription of To Talk!!!!!! That’s amazing training and help for us to design listening activities.

People, you can also continue sharing stories you learn to tell!

What else? I posted a list of things you can be doing these days. Click on pic to enlarge!

We agreed you would train for a new Dramatized Reading, but you need to decide which episode from the transcripts I have on TP.

You also need to book a date as a group to invite Greg for a special speaking activity, and tell me how many people would be sure to attend. Watch the video and download my worksheets!

 

Publishing the Spring Test – Edited to add more!

Tuesday April 23

• • 2019SpringReadingtest
  • 2019SpringListeningtest (I can’t upload the audios for copyright reasons, but you can find the textbooks. They’re credited)

2019SpringSpeakingtest – title of the March retelling of one of my suggested stories

Thursday April 25

• 2019SpringLanguageAwarenessTest
• 2019SpringWritingtest
• 2019SpringSocioculturalTest_01

I have spares in class in paper, except for the Sociocultural Test, but I do have 30 copies of my first version of the Sociocultural Test, which included 4 more women! So you are welcome to take one next day! ❤

I designed the Sociocultural Test to test how much you learned about the women whose work or achievement we used as course materials, but also to show people who complain about we always doing feminism or things about women that WOMEN ARE PEOPLE, and therefore, do all kinds of things, as this Quiz shows. We’ve read and listened to women, a bit at least because it’s a universe, in fiction: poetry, novel, short story/talks, and non-fiction: essay/talks, social and natural sciences (philosophy, neuroscience), social movements (feminism, human rights, the environmental movement, fighting dictatorships…), and more to come. We could actually just use materials with the work and achievement of women (which we don’t do, we’re just INCLUDING WOMEN FOR A CHANGE) and still we would be able to talk about and learn about ALL KINDS of subjects.

I know we tend to feel bad about change, but when change involves us becoming more human and humane, I think it’s well worth making the effort. We need to build a less violent and unfair world, and this requires acknowledging people as people, whether they are men or women, according to the patriarchal sex-gender system, or men, women or people in their own terms. Human identities are a universe of diversity.

A Writing Task for April-May: Posting a message about the Spring Test

Dear all,

The Spring Test is over. IT’S HERE. I hope you enjoyed it. It took me quite some time to design. As you realized, it’s not an ordinary test, though it included some of the classics in textbooks (reading and listening comprehension exercises).

I’ll check it asap, but I’ll announce here when I’m ready to bring it to class. The earliest day would be next Thursday, but I’m not going to rush, because I’ll be evaluating and assessing things to decide who remains in Evaluación Continua, who joins Evaluación Continua (these people will need to be doing all the exercises or projects we understake in this last month together, particularly the Celebration of Learning Project) and who needs to go to June, for which parts and which reasons.

My assessment is not going to be “mathematical” but more informed than that, more comprehensive or in-depth than by counting correct answers. As I told you, it was not about getting a 50% of the marks, I’ll be paying attention to details but also to global performance. These exercises are more about us gathering information on your level, on your progress, on your having learned to learn, to pay attention to questions of procedures and methodology (a key issue in life, for exams and for becoming competetent lifelong learners), to understand that language learning is about communication and learning about ourselves and the world, not only about morphosyntax and vocabulary.

WRITING TASK DESCRIPTION. Write about the Spring Test. You can comment the exam, describe it, give your opinion or even create a story (creative writing). Deadline: one week? Word limit: 150 (like 3  minisagas!)-300 words. (Remember not to count each word till the end, and use the counting technique I explained for the During Writing.)

PROCEDURE

• Brainstorm on approach, format and content, and reflect. Think about this exam experience, what it helped you learn, how you did (qué tal lo hiciste), what was easy, harder, too hard, what was interesting, confusing, surprising… Think about the exercises not only as a way of testing your level, but also as a tool to learn and practice.
• Select and organize your ideas. Look for words or expressions you might need (but please, don’t copy other people’s texts. Speak your own mind, OK?)
• Write out your outline, and then
• Start writing in a piece of paper following the outline and timing yourself. You need to have at least three paragraphs: an intro, a body and an ending. The outline should reflect that in key words.
• Proofread what you wrote. Don’t make a clean copy. Cross out things, use asterisks/stars if you need to add something. Correct your mistakes! Make your language range richer.
• Then type it out on this blog.
• You should bring to class the handwritten copy where I can see your outline and the one-time writing out of your ideas.
• You can certainly ignore what I’m asking you to do and just type an improvised message here!! You might have different kinds of reasons for that. I can take it. You might even even cheat!* (I’m against that), but if you follow the procedure I’m indicating you will be learning and training for much more than just doing a writing task. So please, consider following my advice and guidelines. ❤

*On cheating. I was surprised to see a few people cheating. It’s embarassing for all and, well, this was no certificate test, as you know, so it was kind of pointless! You should know that in certificate tests I don’t disrupt the session by expelling anyone from the room because that breaks everybody’s concentration, but I do write it down and inform the English Department, which means the person fails the exam because cheating is not allowed by law. I’m totally into honesty, personally, on top of it all. And well, in this year the teacher’s opinion on people’s level is informed and relevant because we have Evaluación Continua. Plus, all the stuff I explained about agreeing on your situation in May.

I’ll make this post sticky, so you can find it on the top all the time. So remember there can be new posts below the sticky post.

Spring Test Week

Use &Omission of “the” (Key)

How to learn to tell a story

I am re-reading Leonora Carrington a bit these days and also Marina Warner’s forewords to Carrington’s works, and while surfing for more info on Warner I found a very valuable doc I’ll be using in our (adult foreign language state-run education) advanced courses. Here it is. It’s the 6- or 7-page pdf by the Society for Storytelling in Britain.

Grateful to all of those who led me here! 💜🤗😚

https://sfs.org.uk/content/telling-tales-beginners-guide-telling-stories

About the upcoming test (spring test) & more on Evaluation

So — after our hol we’ll have our 2 weekly lessons devoted to doing some exercises I call “the spring test“, which will allow students understand where they are in terms of level.

Although I already posted about it, here is the recap: we’ll have a wonderful sociocultural quiz, a spot the mistake exercise (language awareness), a listening and a reading comprehension exercise, and a writing exercise which will be about answering some selected questions to assess, apart from your ability to explain things in writing, if you have learned the kind of methodology this course requires, to help you all become independent and resourceful lifelong learners (see C1 Resource Pack). On Sunday I’ll decide how to group them. The speaking test corresponding to this spring test was a retelling based on one of the stories I offered students.

People who are not in Evaluación Continua, or who have a fail mark in Term 2 in one or several of the skills, and pass these exercises with a good mark (have a C1.1 or C1.2 level) will be able to be in Evaluación Continua and present a Celebration of Learning Project in May. However, if they don’t follow the course in Term 3 (and/or don’t present the Celebration of Learning Project) they will have to take the June/September tests. In the spring test, being below a C1.1 will mean going to the regular level test in June/September, too.

For people in Evaluación Continua (with the four skills passed) the spring test will be part of their Third Term work. If it turns out that any of these people do not have a C1.1 level we’ll have a counselling session in May to decided what is best for each of them.

After I check these exercises in the last week in April, I’ll present my thoughts on who needs to go to the June and September tests, and I’ll bring three important handouts:

1. The task description for the May Celebration of Learning Projects. (But I already explained a bit in class, so if you have started to plan what you wish to do, don’t fret, of course. I’m flexible as you know, and you actually know what I expect and how to improve and show your progress.)
2. The template to guide people whose English is not at the B2+ level, but who wish to pass to the C1.2 course. They will have a special Oral in June, called the E.C. Oral for C1.1’s, where they will present a credible Learning Plan for the Summer, based on this template or guideline. In September, after coming to their Oral resit, they would get their pass mark.

I hope you enjoy your everyday time using English! Big hug! ❤

Surrealist Stories & Games

Here are the books I have by Leonora Carrington. If you’re interested in borrowing any you need to swear you’ll give them back to me!

The House of Fear is a collection of stories which includes Down Below, the story I told you about. I bought this book in London, Dec 28, 1990, on a trip I made there to try to heal from my mother’s death in May. I discovered this book in a bookshop in Candem Town, so unexpected!! It’s got drasings by Max Ernst.

The absolutely beautiful book in the middle, in Spanish, was proofread by me!!! 1992. The translation by Francisco Torres Oliver is excellent. I’ve also got it in English. It’s stories.

The Hearing Trumpet is a Surrealist novel, quite funny though I skipped esoteric bits.

I read all of this in the 1990s. I don’t know what I’d think or feel today! But back then she kept me very good company. Reading her was like travelling in dreams!

Then here’s the book of Surrealist games we can play some day!

Collecting your checked work

Dear students, please, remember to get your checked work from the tray in class. And of course, to work on your List of Mistakes, make clean final copies when needed, and share in class what you learned/learnt or I marked “In class”. Remember you can always read out your written work, because it helps us review language questions.

I’d like to ask people who worked on the time and tenses workshops, like Ana and María Isabel, to conduct a session on that. Also, María Isabel has done very good work on conditional sentences and I think we should be preparing an activity (any volunteers?) on Mixed Conditionals, after María Isabel presents her review of type 0 to 4 based on Useful Language from Parker’s story “A Telephone Call”.

See you soon!

Narrative tenses 2 – further training!

I recommend you do the first four exercises here, but remember: the aim is you understand why those tenses are used there. I had some mistakes, when I did them, and some were because I hadn’t realized something, and others because the writer had something else in mind, but my options could do too. So open your minds and work on them and see. Take notes for your LoM and remember to use these exercises also for reading aloud, retelling… using all the ways you can to exploit one same material!

Oh, in one of the answers (possibly the last test), there is a spelling mistake, so even if you get it right the machine insists you’re wrong! 😀

 

• Narrative tenses 1 – exercises
• Narrative tenses 2
• Narrative tenses 3
• Narrative tenses 4

 

Narrative Tenses 1. Some further practice!

Here is a wonderful episode you can listen to and work on, to improve your command over narrative tenses.

29. Mystery Story / Narrative Tenses in English

If you work on this, remember to let us know in class, or let me know in your learning diary. Ask any questions you may have in class, whenever.

Diary for Thursday March 14

See Lesson Plan below. But as there were questions and comments on the Spring Test, we talked for about an hour about that all! Well, because I explained different kinds of things, including a broader view of what “evaluation” is. And I also gave some tips on writing and your Writing File. And spoke about the power of communication, dialogue, to make us more aware of negative conditionings we can overcome, the difference between aggression or violence and critical thinking, and between reasoned opinions and biased opinions.

So the plan for Small Groups moves to next Tuesday! Bring a copy of the Template for reporting on your work in the small group and your Maathai bio. By the way, we need to watch parts of the documentary and give the copies to people interested. If you didn’t jot down your name on the list, ask me in class next day! Have a lovely bilingual week! ❤

About language questions, the question of intensifiers and mitigators came up again. Here is the example that triggered it: The font size in this book is FAR too small for me!

People who spoke today were Lola (Coyote), María Luisa (March 8 at her primary school), Bea O. (on article on Ngozi Adichie). Next week all the rest! Go for it! ❤

Have a nice trip, Asun! ❤

Here is a picture of the I Feminist Cultural Week that I found today on Facebook! 😀 ❤

Una foto de nuestra Semana Cultural Feminista por Facebook

Writing File – Some tips & hopefully some questions for you to make

One of your assignments has made me think about something I should explain to help people prevent making mistakes that relate to something more complex and natural than having a perfect morphosyntax! 😀

When we sit to tackle an assignment we need to think of why we are going to communicate, who will read or listen to our words, what tone we choose (intention and way of conveying meaning), what register we need to use (formal, informal, semiformal, slangy!; how rich our language range is expected to be), what kind of text we need to use (not only if it’s oral or written, I mean, if it’s a letter of complaint, a shopping list, a story, a minisaga, a reasoned opinion, a description, a narrative, an explanation, instructions, recipes…), the format requirements for that kind of text… And if there is any requirement in the assignment, for instance, I ask everybody to write factual info like name and date and group on the top right corner and to include a Task Description before the actual piece, which includes the word limit (but I also ask you to include the actual word count, too). (Check out Writing File here, the video, in Course Info, or the C1 Resource Pack for more info, or ask in class.)

Ordinary citizens know a lot about texts and textual structure because it’s everywhere in our everyday life, but they don’t NOTICE (observe) it. And when they sit to write something for the teacher, they may make mistakes like this:

(Writing assignment description: write a reasoned opinion in 100-200 words)

I’m going to speak about Doping in Sports.

It is wrong, and I hate it because it harms everybody. …

Well, the first thing you need to write is some brainstorming on topics, or ideas to mention. Then you need to select and order those ideas. And when you start the piece, you need to understand its format and structure.

Doping in Sports – A Personal View

Dopping ….

First an opening sentence which introduces the topic, then you can start explaining what you think. You cannot start an opening line with a pronoun, just because you used the word in the title. You can repeat the word because we need the word identifying the topic in that paragraph and in that text. It’s an opening line, not only a topic sentence!

Well, you can ask in class. What I wanted to say, thinking of an exercise I checked, relates to our ideology or feelings when we decide to write about something close to our heart, or which makes us very angry. When the person feels this way, the text is usually faulty in terms of reaching the audience because it’s not well constructed. But there is more to this — we are probably expressing ourselves from a defensive position, which means we are putting the reader in the position of having ideas the reader might not have. It’s hard to explain! I’m just starting this thread so we remember we need to talk about this, about controversial topics in assignments and about respecting the kind of text, or the assignment requirements, OK?

 

What will the Spring Test be like?

• A listening exercise
• A reading exercise
• A writing exercise
• A sociocultural quiz
• A language awareness exercise

all of those based on what we have been working on during the course.

About the speaking exercise. For people in Evaluación Continua, it will include one of your March orals (a 3-4 minute monologue, not the ones that are about reading aloud, OK? because that doesn’t give info on how you communicate orally). [For people who are not in Evaluación Continua, or following this course in class, for obvious reasons they won’t be taking a speaking test, so that’ll be in June.]

[For people coming to the June exam, that one can’t include the sociocultural part because those people haven’t followed the course and probably would not pass a sociocultural test based on what our course includes, unfortunately. We still need a few more decades to be culturally aware of the things we have traditionally excluded from acknowledgement. But — I still have to make this decision — it might include a language awareness exercise]

March Productive Tasks (min. for Eval. Cont)

After the Feminist Cultural Week, to collect info on your progress in using TENSES and mastering NARRATIVES, apart from collecting the minisagas from all of those people who haven’t even handed in one (thanks to the rest of you!), here are the exercises I suggest (and now I’m not giving you the chance to freely choose, please, just pick one of my suggestions, OK?):

In March EVERYBODY needs to do the following two productive tasks in class (oral or handing in handwritten work). We’ll start on March 12 and who goes first? The people who have not been working on their learning tasks (individual personal projects but also shared projects, like the writing tasks), or have not handed in or shared any work, or who have done too little work (none or almost none in Term 2 and very little in Term 1), so that I can see how many people are going to drop out of Evaluación continua and design a spring test for them so they can see what the June test will be like. For people whose English is not at the B2 level yet, this exercise is recommended.

If I were you what would I do? How would I proceed? So that I can exploit this excuse of a task to improve and consolidate my English in all kinds of ways?

• First, I’d listen to each of the stories, a couple of times.
• Then, I’d listen while reading it.
• Then, I’d listen a last time.

After doing that with all of the stories, or a minimum of three, I’d pick one and start LISTENING AND LISTENING TO IT, taking notes on Useful Language, and finally drafting an outline to guide my oral. Remember that storytelling is not about learning by heart (de memoria) but about TELLING THE STORY. Your version won’t be exactly the same, of course. That’ll be OK, of course!

The tasks for the two lessons I’ve mentioned above are:

MARCH ORAL (MINIMUM). Retelling of one of these stories:

• Coyote Kills a Giant, by the Diné/Navajo people – recommended for everybody!
• Any of the stories in Mary Poppins (choose one, or one chapter)

Recommended for people who desperately need to improve their use of the present and the past because there is no way you can reach an advanced level if you have not consolidated your ability to understand when you are using a present or a past tense to narrate a present or past event!

• A Telephone Call, by Dorothy Parker – recommended for people with under-the-level mistakes because there are some notes on language items people should have mastered at the B2+ level. It’s two pages, not one, but you can make it shorter, of course.
• The Debutante, by Leonora Carrington (Surrealist literature, but easy and entertaining to tell!)
• Dishwashers, by me! 
• Cat in the Rain, by Ernest Hemingway
• The Fun they Had, by Isaac Asimov
• House of Light & Shadow, by Nicholas Gage

Yes, we will listen to different people telling the same story, and you will see how human oral traditions have worked throughout time! 😉 It’s good you listen to different people telling the same story. You consolidate language items and learn a lot about storytelling.

MARCH WRITING TASK (apart from a minisaga, a reasoned opinion, a description a month). Re-writing the story you told in class.

---

FAQ

So why have you posted the Rebecca Solnit Pack?

Because some people do work on their English almost every day and are moving into or consolidating the C1.1 fringe, so this gives them more reasons to keep the effort (and joy) up!, even when they’re very busy! And they are grateful for my suggestions. In any case, we’ll also use this material in class some day in March.

Feb/March tasks: The Rebecca Solnit Pack

Feb tasks: Reading + LW in class + Discussing + Follow-up Listening/Writing/Oral Work

Based on excerpts from Rebecca Solnit’s “Men Explain Things to Me”, a key book to learn to explain communication problems considering the gender problem in patriarchal cultures. + Some cultural tips on Georgia O’Keefe
I’ll include a link here to the audio of the excerpt on the Talking People Podcast so you can practice reading before volunteering in class or for further fluency and accuracy!
Enjoy!

• Link to Podcast episode, so you can learn to pronounce the reading out of the excerpt… and where you can download the PACK with the tasks

Lesson Plans

Plans for next week are:

• YOU SPEAK TIME. One hour you talk (orals, questions, comments, discussions, practicing things you wish to share later on…) + reminding us of pending exercises, or solving them on the spot!
• One hour LISTENING TASK (2) for Term 2. We’ll listen to a radio interview and you’ll answer some questions. Then you will have to write a summary in 150-250 words based on what you understood or your thoughts after listening.
• Remember you need to hand in a copy of our Listening Task (1) on Helen Mirren!
• If time allows, I’ll end the lesson any of the days explaining why I became ill.

Valentine’s Day… About Love & Sex

Everyday Feminism Newsletter

Valentine’s Day was this week. It can be a challenging — and sometimes sad — time of year for a lot of folks.

Maybe you’ve been shamed for your sexual desires. Maybe you feel disconnected from your body and erotic self. Maybe you want to participate in sex-positive movements, but don’t know where to start.

We all have a source of power, knowledge, and pleasure within us that comes from the erotic. The erotic informs us of the relationships, experiences, and things we desire in our life.

Unfortunately, because of oppressive structures, many of us have become disconnected from our erotic selves.

We’ve been taught to doubt, fear, or feel shameful about what we desire in life—our sexual desires, professional desires, or even our desire to travel the world.

Now is the moment to honor and reclaim our erotic selves, erotic voice, and erotic power. It’s time for us to reject the sex negativity that this world projects onto us so we can begin living lives full of pleasure.

We CAN have lives where we’re informed about what we want, empowered to ask for those things, and refuse to settle for non-consensual and unpleasurable experiences. This course is about starting or deepening your sexual liberation journey by getting in tune with your desires for your body and life.

In this webinar you’ll learn:

How negative messages about sexuality lead to shame and sexual dissatisfactionHow to be intentional in challenging unhelpful messages about sex and develop beliefs that are healthy and affirmingPractical ways to explore your sexual selfHow centering pleasure is a form of resistanceWhy your sexual liberation is tied to societal freedom

If you decide to join us for this course, let us be the first to congratulate you on taking a step towards prioritizing pleasure in your life!

With love,
Everyday Feminism

Ver “Why should you read “Fahrenheit 451”? – Iseult Gillespie” en YouTube

This is one of the books I’ve used in my advanced courses.

On the blog C1 Materials I collected options for sts to get info or inspiration for their end-of-course project, to prsent in May in the Celebration of Learning Orals.

Writing Task 4

Developing your creativity.

You need to hand in a minisaga, a 50-exact word STORY.

I suggest you work on three. You will learn more.

Minisagas help us learn many different things, starting with how extraordinary it is to learn what we need to cross out!

Bring your questions to class.

Free topic. Hand in in the first week of February.

Upcoming Lesson Plans: 2 weeks

Your booked – and unbooked if time allows – orals any day are welcome.

SCF. Those of you who have work on this need to write your name down for sharing 3-4 min. talks on something that allows us to learn about women’s work & achievement, so we can overcome our profound ignorance on half of humanities’ minds. We can’t have more time because workshops will be full of students sharing. You can also present your highlights of our work on the human rights declaration: sharing an article, what you learned about the importance of language in our conceptual system, whatever. Posters, collage, anything you image, talk to me. Let me know, so I can organize the c1.1 participation.

Tues Jan 22

• Listening Comprehension. Part 2 for people who did part 1. Part 1 for people who missed it.
• Time & Tense workshop part 3. Practicing narratives in small groups.

Thurs Jan 24

• Second lesson for sharing your work on Wangari Maathai.
• Use & omission of “the” in small groups.
• Contingency plan for any day: second session for playing the “If this person were…” game. Catching UP: Time and Tense narratives we did not do on Jan 22
  

On the following week we’ll go through your checked work (LoM for oral & written work) to learn about how to improve what, in terms of textual structure, communicative purposes, functional grammar, methodology…

And we’ll start with documentaries: 1h watching, one hour sharing thoughts.

January 15 Feedback for your LoMs

LoM. Methodology

• Complying with the task: if the task is to inform about future work plans, there is a mistake if you inform about present or past work. One of the reasons why people fail exams is because they do not read the instructions properly. If your English is wonderful but you fail to comply with the task, in exams you fail. So my advice is that if you can’t walk in the teacher’s shoes when she asks students to give her some info she needs, you use our tasks to train for exams! See how many of the things we do in class are exam training anyway? 😀

LoM. Under the level mistakes:

• Confusing the present and the past or these with the future is an under-the-level mistake.
• SPEAK, TALK, TELL & SAY: You cannot say “I told about” but “I spoke about” (you speak to the group) or “We talked about” (conversation).
  You can say “I told people about my trip to the USA”, “I was told you couldn’t make it to class”, “She told me…” “I said I was busy”
  TELL + Indirect Object (the person) = Tell me where I can find an ATM, please.
  SAY + Direct Object (what is said) = I said (that) I was busy.
  Tell about, tell us about = Offer a narrative
  Expressions (collocations): Don’t tell me lies. Please, tell the truth.
  Other meanings and uses: I really can’t tell (= I don’t know, I can’t work it out)

  Incidentally, here is an episode I recorded for Elementary students on some tricky verbs like tell/say/speak/talk: http://www.talkingpeople.net/tppodcast/2018/02/17/useful-language-tricky-verbs-for-ementary-see-look-watch-hear-listen/ Find more on-the-level videos and post them on our page above for your lists of mistakes.

Useful Language. Please practice repeating these sentences at home.

• I’ll share/contribute some useful language I selected / highlighted / wrote down on my list. (We use “will” for predictions and for announcements, so if what you wish to communicate is not a prediction or an announcement, but a plan or a true intention, you would be saying: I’m going to share some useful language.
• UL for Register:
  Let me know is informal.
  But it can’t be used when you REQUEST INFORMATION in a formal letter, because you need to use, apart from formal language, language for REQUESTS:
  Could I possibly receive some follow-up information on the case?
  People, can you gather UL on how to make requests (also at the advanced level)? Imagine different kinds of written and oral texts. Share in class if you do, please!
  Let me introduce myself is informal and OK.
  Allow me to introduce myself is formal and/or POLITE.
  Let me give you a hand – informal.
  Allow me to give you a hand – polite, and also formal, depending on context.

Textual structure. The world of texts and communication

• When we communicate caringly we go from the general to the specific. If we don’t introduce the specific the reader or listener will be totally lost, and the text will be faulty. Example of my re-wording of some notes I read:
  I’ll address / tackle some language questions (general topic).I would like to share some of the vocabulary and expressions I found harder / more difficult / more interesting (more specific info).
  Remember life is about repetition, and the kind like onion layers is common in well-preapred oral and written texts! 😀

Content in formal letters requesting respect for HR

• You cannot tell the authorities that you are INFORMING THEM about the situation in their country because they know, their problem is not that they don’t have the necessary information. Putting pressure means you need to EXPRESS YOUR CONCERN politely. You can be more assertive if you think that’s convenient, but you need to be the least emotional you can about it, sharing insight and information that describes facts, and shared values.

Reporting about your work in class: Template

Here is a template to make your life easier and help you make sure you share the information you need to share with your teacher.

You’ll fill it in tomorrow, once you share whatever it is you wish to share at Plenary, regarding the Maathai project. I’ll print copies for whoever needs one at the beginning of the lesson and leave some spares on the chair for late-comers. Late-comers, please, get your copy before sitting down.

Obviously, this activity requires sharing an oral in class, so only people doing so can fill it out/in (US/UK). If you miss tomorrow’s lesson, you can always share another day provided you book a date or inform me so I can rearrange lesson plans.

• c1templatereporting (1 word page)

Diary for Jan 8 – Welcome back!

Here’s the pic of the lesson plan.

ATTENDANCE. Today 20 people came to class — we welcomed 2 more people (now the total is 29 + 9 but there are people who never come), 2 others had missed Term 1 (Evaluación continua) but will be catching up and taking the spring practice test.

FEEDBACK. I’ll be checking the emails I got with catch up work this week, I hope!

READING AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. I gave out the Wangari Maathai handout, which people will read for next day, when each will comment if they read /red/ the book these past weeks, and which their fav passages or chapters are.

LANGUAGE AWARENESS WORKSHOPS. We started reading Time and Tense (people, remember to jot down in our paper diary the work you share in class, for E.C.) You need to print it because it’s 6 pages. You will be using it in the non-Maathai lessons to work in small groups telling stories like the little ones I use in these notes to help you understand and encourage you to practice.

WRITING TASK 3. We agreed on deadlines: next Tuesday is the very last day to hand in Writing Task 3, the Human Rights formal letter. Asun volunteered to scan the notes I gave out in December and post it on your whatsapp group. I’ll be publishing that on the page above.

VIDEO PROJECTS. About your bits for the two community videos, I’d appreciate it if you sent it this week, but next week would also be OK. Later than that would be problematic, so if you think you can’t do your part, please, offer it to a classmate!

We reviewed some key questions: the Writing File (how to hand in your work, how to work on your assignments), the Speaking File (recording final versions of audios/audiovisuals you worked on), the LoM (with my feedback and other), the world of oral and written Texts, language questions we’ll be tackling this month, and I presented the idea of alternating lessons on Language and the Maathai projects… (But we’ll be doing more than that.) We also spoke about Wangari Maathai’s book, the donation we’re getting of the documentary, and about Education for Equality and our courageous project of the I Feminist Cultural Week in public / state-run education.

About next Tuesday 15: As you will see in the Maathai handout, I scheduled it for a session on the book, but we could also do a bit of the Time and Tense handout. There’s something else: there will be demonstrations in support of the struggle against sexism in all of Andalucía starting at 19.00. If few people come to class and they’re all into attending, we could be doing that (just mentioning it for late-comers). Some teachers are suggesting  the whole school could join the protest, but I’m reluctant to leaving class at lesson time, as you know, so it’ll be up to the people coming to class, on my part.

Getting Organized. I also requested people to please FOLLOW THIS BLOG, particularly if not coming to class or being late. And to please consider organizational matters, such as picking copies from the chair if you are late so that I don’t get distracted so often with that (I’m growing old and have a lot on my mind these days!) (There’s an old post on this somewhere…)

NAVBAR. These days I’ll be updating the navbar above, so you can find links to posts on those topics.

Language Awareness & Tenses

Here are some notes for working on narratives. You need to be really good at narratives! We’ll use them in our workshops on tenses.

Reviewing/Consolidating the use of tenses (6 word pages)

The Maathai Projects

After your fast reading of Unbowed, here is the working plan for the next months.

For Evaluación Continua the February Maathai OP + the March Writing Assignment will be minimums to comply with.

• 2019_projectsaroundunbowed+fcw (2 Word pages) We will read them and agree on things to get organized for making the most of this great chance to learn about the world while including women’s analyses, experiences and achievements. ❤