Much more about sport

Below there are some links to audio material and also to sites with lots of activities on this topic. You even have specific links to the Olympic Games.

Listening:

Games

Identify the sport

Favorite sports

National sport

The ultimate sport

Speaking: Playing and watching sports

This site provides you with lots of different activities: vocabulary, listening, speaking, games, songs, video… and specific links about the Olympic Games.

Finally, I recommend you to have a look at an Euronews interview with Rafa Nadal, who received this year’s Prince of Asturias Award for Sports. I’ve found the video of the interview quite interesting and peculiar. But I’m not going to tell you why just now. Judge for yourselves!

Norah Jones

I keep “preying on” my colleagues’ blogs. This time it’s Carmen Gómez’s. I’ve just come across this post about Norah Jones. We read an interview with her in lesson 1A in your books (second year, Int. level)

Food: fuel or pleasure?

To revise and consolidate this topic we’ve been dealing with, I recommend you to have a look at these blogs by Cristina Cabal and  María Argente , EOI teachers too. They’ve got interesting and useful materials  to show you on food.

María recommends you a few links to do some revision and exercises on food vocabulary.

Cristina has written these posts about vegetarians: What’s a “Veggie”? and …a pescatarian!!!

Speed dating

This dating phenomenom, which has become popular in recent years, involves meeting, one to one, a rapid succession of possible partners, with a few minutes to make a connection before a bell signals it’s time to move on. When the bell is rung , you move to another person and start chatting again. By the end of the evening you will have spoken with up to twenty men or women!

If, by the end of a conversation, you fancy the person or would like to see them again, you write it down on a card. Then, if the other person also fancies you, the organisers will contact you with their details.

Speed dating is specially designed for people in search of love who are single and too busy for the “traditional” courtship. But this personal and individual search can become more public when a company or agency promote special events.

Match.com, the leading online dating service, and the airline SkyEurope  have already arranged speed dating events on board a plane -maybe convinced that “Love is in the air…”

Another sophisticated variety of speed dating called ski dating has been put into practice on the pistes of Guzet, a ski resort in the Pyrinees.

But the Japanese government have proved to be the most fervent believers in the dating method when trying to deal with the increasing problem of the falling population in their country. They paid for massive speed dating parties in the hope of encouraging people to date, marry and start a family.

We don’t know if the method has been effective in Japan, but speed dating events seem to have become extremely popular not only among Japanese people, but in many other countries.

Spain is not an exception to the rule, and there already quite a number of online sites which can help people to find their perfect match, site like Speed Dates Club or Date Club Spain

However, if you are more the “couch potato” type, you can still meet people from the comfort of your computer, instead of having to switch seats. WooMe, the world’s largest speed-dating website, and rival websites are applying the latest internet technology to speed dating. During the speed dating session you use a web cam and live voice to talk to a possible partner for  5 minutes.

But is three or five minutes long enough to find out if you want to see someone again?  And what about romance?

If you want to do a bit of listening practice on this topic, I recommend you to go to ELLLO website. You’ve got audio and video material with activities.