Monthly Archives: September 2009

Justo’s DIY Cathedral

Students' Corner,

Sent by Manuel Torga Rubio

I remember when we were studying unit 2, we talked about Rock Gardens of Candigarh in India and the name of Justo Gallego , a man from Mejorada del Campo,sprang to mind. He is believed to be a madman.He was born in 1925 and wanted to be a priest but when he was at the monastery, he came down with a serious illness and he was made redundant. Afterwards, he promised his mother to build a cathedral, to the greater glory of his God. He sold family’s lands and began to build the cathedral without an architect’s university degree.Everybody in the village laughed at him but he had a” can do” attitude, an eye for detail and he was passionate about his new job, he was keen on doing his labour of love.
Anyway, he used bits of rubbish from the buildings sites, waste material, bricks, lumps of concrete, girders; he recycled anything he could find, he had his daily job satisfaction as a workaholic. When he finished his money, he started to receive money from his neighbours. For more than 40 years he has dedicated all his physical efforts to fulfilling that vow, canvassing local support, donations and eventually some people helped him doing voluntary work When his buildings started to become real then some people changed their mind about him. Actually, he was building a cathedral, similar to other cathedrals.
In the end, he represents the perseverance, the idea that all you wish for can happen, you must onlt work hard. I was there and I know that´s true….
Cheer up, Don Justo!!!

Katy Perry can help you Practise Linking Words

In the Computer Room, Lesson Plan: Advanced, Lesson Plan: Pre-Intermediate, Listening, Music, Phonetics, The English language, , ,

Learning  a new language can be difficult. We often wonder why  it seems easier for some people, for some nationalities, to  understand English better  than for other speakers. The level of difficulty depends on various aspects but, most definitely, one of them is whether your first language is syllable-timed (giving syllables equal prominence)  or stress-timed ( temporal duration between two stressed syllables is the same ). English, as well as Danish, Swedish or German, are stress-timed languages  whereas Spanish, French or Cantonese Chinese are syllable-timed.

♥Content and Function Words. This is important because we, as Spaniards, try to give equal importance to each syllable but in English, only some words in a sentence are considered important and therefore pronounced with more emphasis (Content words) while others are quickly spoken (Function words) some would say, swallowed.

Look at these two sentences. Although the first has 7 words and the second 12, it should take you the same amount of time to read both sentences. Why? Because as English is a time stressed language there is always the same distance between two stressed words.

Peter said horrible things about your mother.

He left after dinner taking most of his books in his suitcase.

♥ Another thing to take into consideration is Linking. Words , when they are pronounced in isolation do not sound the same as when pronounced in a sentence. Why? Because of this linking.

  Linking occurs in English in these situations:

–Consonant+ vowel : when a word ends with a consonant sound and the next one starts with a vowel sound, we, very often, link them

Liked it   | ˈlaɪktɪt |

And I    /ən´aɪ |

–Vowel+ Vowel : when one word ends with a vowel sound and the next word begins with a vowel sound, we link the words with a sort of W or Y sound.

To simplify :

♥ If our lips are round at the end of the first word, we insert a W sound: Ex: do it /du:wɪt/

♥ If our lips are wide at the end of the first word, we insert a Y sound: Ex: Ray is /reɪyɪz/

– And then we have the Linking “r” for example, the “r” in “here” would not be pronounced in “Here they are ” (because it is followed by a consonant), but it would be pronounced in “Here I am”. Likewise, the “r” at the end of “far” would only be pronounced if the next word begins with a vowel, as in “far away” /fa:r∂wei/ or” far off”. /fa:rof/

Listen to these sentences and repeat after them paying attention to the  linkings. linking.mp3

Not at all

Isn’t it a pity

Ian’s wearing odd socks?

Was ever a bride so pretty?

♥To be honest, I am not a big fan of Katy Perry  but her song   I kissed a Girl is great to practise  Content and Function Words  and the  chorus is just the perfect example to make students understand the issue of Linking Words  and Function Words; by singing along Katy Perry” I kissed a girl and I liked it “, they’ll be practising  linking words and weak forms  without effort .

A Pirate Cake

Cooking

I sometimes wonder when my passion for cooking started and I cannot truly say but it cannot be a very long time ago as I remember when I left home to go to university I didn’t even know how to fry an egg (well, maybe I knew how to fry an egg but certainly not how to cook rice) and then when I got married and didn’t have children I cooked rice on Monday and then I spent the whole week eating it (my husband wasn’t eating at home, lucky him !I should say and he might think). My husband was so encouraging that if you ask my friends about the early stages of my cooking they will surely tell you about a cheese cake I took to a dinner party. When they tried to eat the cake it was so uneatable they didn’t know what to do . I had just realized they were all chewing very slowly when my husband said. “Well, this is very nice , indeed !” And all of them burst out laughing. This is something they keep reminding me every now and then.Anyway, this is the birthday cake I did for my son’s birthday. I hope it gives you an idea if you have a kid’s birthday coming soon. You only need a bit of imagination and a lot of love.
This is how I did it. I bought a round three-layer cake at the supermarket and cut it down at the center. I glued the layers together with some sort of chocolate mousse and cut the bottom of these layers to make it sit level (you don’t want it rocking while you are decorating it). Finally , I covered with chocolate icing and the rest is up to your vivid imagination.

Some interesting or , at least, unusual facts about the English language

Funny Stuff,

•Facetious and abstemious are the only words that contain all the vowels in the correct order.
•”Adcomsubordcomphibspac” is the longest acronym. It is a Navy term standing for Administrative Command, Amphibious Forces, Pacific Fleet Subordinate Command.
•”Almost” is the longest commonly used word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.
•”Canada” is an Indian word meaning “Big Village”. •”Dreamt” is the only English word that ends in the letters “mt”.
•”Asthma” and “isthmi” are the only six-letter words that begin and end with a vowel and have no other vowels between.
•”Fortnight” is a contraction of “fourteen nights.” In the US “two weeks” is more commonly used.
•”Ma is as selfless as I am” can be read the same way backwards. If you take away all the spaces you can see that all the letters can be spelled out both ways.
•”Ough” can be pronounced in eight different ways. The following sentence contains them all: “A rough-coated, dough-faced ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough, coughing and hiccoughing thoughtfully.

Adapted from www.bored.com