The Sugar Glider

As I told you in class, these are the questions you  have to answer about this year’s compulsory book for 1st year Intermediate students.

Choose one question from each of the three groups (about 300 words total) and send them to me at my usual email address.

Remember the deadline  for sending your work is 19 April.

Talking about The Sugar Glider

Christmas homework, 2ºI – NI

As I told you in class, you can send me your answers to one or more of the questions about the short story you read  last week: The Nature of Truth (taken from The Way Home, by Sue Leather).

1. Who was Annie Sanderson and why was she at Rome’s Termini Station?
2. Although Annie Sanderson and Jane Thompson had been friends at university, now they were two very different women. Describe and compare both their appearance and personality.
3. Annie and Jane had also led very different lives. Explain.
4. Jane told Annie about her first marriage. Why had she left her husband James?
5. Why did Annie feel so relieved to see Jane leave?
6. What did Jane mean by: ‘I know where you live’?
7. Why do you think the author of this story chose that title?

Remember you’ll comment individually and/or in small groups your ideas on the first day after the Christmas holiday, that’s on January 8th.

Compulsory reading, 2ºI-NI

Below you can see the front cover of next term’s compulsory book: In the Shadow of the Mountain, by Helen Naylor, Cambridge English Readers, Level 5.

Award-winning original fiction for learners of English. A tragic love story is uncovered as journalist Clare Crowe goes to Switzerland to bring home a relative’s body. Clare’s grandfather has been found frozen in a glacier, 74 years after a climbing accident. Clare knows this could make an interesting story for her newspaper, but as she investigates her grandfather’s last climb, she learns that the accident wasn’t as simple as she had first thought.

Compulsory reading, 1ºE, 1ºI, 1ºL -NI

This the front cover of the book you’ll have to read during the rest of the year The Sugar Glider, by Rob Neilsen, Cambridge English Readers, level 5.

I mentioned in class that the title of the book was the name of the plane you can see in the picture, and that the aircraft was named like that after a quite peculiar animal. Andrés Moreno, 1ºL-NI, has sent us this interesting, clear and visually attractive document with information about the animal. Read it and you will understand why that plane is called The Sugar Glider.

View this document on Scribd

You have already read the Prologue and Chapter 1 in class, and you have done some written and oral exercises on this. After reading the beginning of this story, how do you think it will continue? what do you think it will happen? what will  the end be like? You can write a comment here or send your answer by email.

After you have read the book you can do the activities suggested in our “brand-new”  EOI Library blog About reading, a reading corner for English learners.

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.

The boy in the striped pyjamas or pajamas?

The boy in the striped pyjamas/pajamas is the title of a best-seller by the Irish writer John Boyne . The book, “set during World War II, tells a story seen through the innocent eyes of Bruno, the eight-year-old son of the commandant at a concentration camp, whose forbidden friendship with a Jewish boy on the other side of the camp fence has startling and unexpected consequences”.

What I most liked about reading this book was the fact that the drama was not really explicit, but that was even the most dramatic about it: the lack of awareness on the part of the children with respect to what was happening in and ouside the camp. It was so naive, and moving and sad at the same time!

A film based on this book will be released next weekend in Spain. I’ve just had a look at the trailer today, and although the movie might be good and interesting to see, I still recommend you the book better.

Both the book and the film based on it have the same title but the last word is written sometimes pyjamas and other times pajamas. Well, in fact both spellings are correct: pyjamas in British English (Br E) and pajamas in American English (Am E). One of the aspects of American and British English differences is spelling, about which you can test yourselves on this site: CLICK HERE

Have you had a few problems with the test? Perhaps you would like to read more in depth about spelling differences in the Wikipedia or just to read through this list, which also takes Canadian English differences into account.

But if you still feel disappointed with yourself because you find this topic a bit hard to digest, cheer up because spelling is not? so important to understand written English. You can have a bit of fun trying to read this from www.say-it-in-english.com:

IQ Test

Can you raed tihs? Olny srmat poelpe can. I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig, huh? Yaeh, and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!