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Friday 28 February 2014

IT'S CARNIVAL TIME HERE... BUT NOT IN NOTTING HILL (LONDON)

These days we're about to celebrate Carnival, like in Cádiz, Tenerife, Venice, Rio de Janeiro and many other places... In Britain Carnival is also celebrated, but not now. Bad weather could be the reason, Britain celebrates Carnival in summer, more exactly during August, and Britain's most famous Carnival celebrations are held in Notting Hill (London).

Before we go to Notting Hill, let's check up with some basic Carnival vocabulary in this first video:


The Notting Hill Carnival taking place in West London each year is Europe's biggest street festival. For two days at the end of the month of August, the members of the West Indian community flock the streets of Notting Hill in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea for one of the biggest celebration on the planet. The carnival has lived in the area since the 60s and is today attracting over a million people a year. If you are looking for a vibrant celebration, with plenty of sound systems for street dancing and numerous Caribbean food stalls serving up jerk chicken, then the Notting Hill Carnival is the place to be.

Video:

Tuesday 25 February 2014

VOTE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE PUNCTUATION MARK


The magazine More Intelligent Life from "The Economist" has asked its readers to vote for their favourite punctuation mark. The candidates have been proposed and valued by famous people from the world of books.
So what's your favourite one. if you want to vote link with the page above. 

Galician version of this post @ ArquivosDoTrasno.

Monday 24 February 2014

QUESTION TAGS

A question tag is a grammatical structure in which a statement or an imperative is turned into a question, by adding an interrogative fragment (the "tag") at its end.

Most of the times you're not really asking because you really know the answer already. You're just making sure that it is the answer you expect. 

As in the example on the photo:

This is a tag question, isn't it?

(It is a tag question, you only want to make sure that it is).

This is how they work:


The statement can be affirmative or negative, the question tag is in the opposite: if affirmative statement, negative tag and viceversa: if negative statement, affirmative tag. Always use the corresponding personal pronoun in a question tag.
Possible answers:

To make the correct question tag, you must always use the corresponding auxiliary verb according to the statement, this depends on the statement's verb tense form or if a modal verb is used. Look at the examples below:

Statement examples:
- Simple tenses will use DO.
- Continuous tenses will use BE.
- Perfect tenses will use HAVE.
- with modal verbs, the same modal verb is used.

To summarise:


Link to

Sunday 23 February 2014

...AFTER COMES AGREEING OR DISAGREEING

Once an opinion is given, you can agree or disagree with it. These are different ways of expressing that you either agree or diasgree with what another person says. Most are typical conversational ways of agreeing or not.
To agree with an affirmative statement:
To agree with a negative statement:
To disagree: you can simply use the opposite form of the corresponding auxiliary verb:
- "I am happy" - "I'm not"
- "I am not hungry" - "I am"
- "We went to the concert last night" - "I didn't"
- Mike can't reach the top shelf" - "I can"
etc...
Other basic expressions to agree or disagree:

Some more:
Grading the level of agreement/disagreement:

FIRST, EXPRESSING AN OPINION...


Here are different ways of introducing your own opinion.



Thursday 20 February 2014

SHAPES



Check on these charts for the different vocabulary of SHAPES & FORMS.








Friday 14 February 2014

VALENTINE'S 2014


This year we're presenting a link that shows you HOW TO BE ROMANTIC IN ENGLISH

You can also click here below to previous Valentine celebrations on this blog:
- 2012
- 2011

...and some music for the day:
- Video "TAKE MY BREATH AWAY", Berlin:

Wednesday 12 February 2014

THAMES VALLEY FLOODINGS (BBC)



This winter has been very tough here, and in Britian, with lots of storms, one after the other, and loads of rain, which have ended up flooding over. Here's an aereal video from the BBC, which follows up the river Thames along its valley and shows how serious the floodings have been there.

Video Thames valley flooding (BBC):

Many more pictures in this link from DailyMail

Saturday 8 February 2014

TYPES OF INSTRUMENTS: PERCUSSION (&3)


The last group of instruments is:
3- PERCUSSION
They are musical instruments that sound either by 
- being hit with sticks, mallets, brushes or rods 

or struck, shaken or rubbed by hand


or clashing against another similar instrument

Friday 7 February 2014

TYPES OF INSTRUMENTS: WIND (2)


2- WIND INSTRUMENTS
The sound in these instruments is produced by air passing through a tube.
There are two kind of wind instruments which depends on what they are made of:
a) WOODWIND 
This group of wind instruments are almost always made of wood and are played using a wooden reed
like: the flute, the clarinet, the oboe,the bassoon, the saxophone, as seen below.
2- Brass
In this group is the horn, the tuba, the trumpet, the trombone, as seen above.This group of wind instruments are made of metal or brass and don't need a wooden reed, but a metalic mouthpiece.

Thursday 6 February 2014

TYPES OF INSTRUMENTS: STRINGS (1)


Remember the slide on a previous post: THE ORCHESTRA, where we can see the different types of instruments.

1- STRING INSTRUMENTS: 
The sound in these instruments is produced by the vibrating of their strings.
These instruments are subdivided into:
a) BOWED STRINGED INSTRUMENTS, 
which are played rubbing the strings with a BOW

and in this group we find:
(The difference between bowed stringed and plucked stringed instruments below ↓)

b) PLUCKED STRINGED INSTRUMENTS, (see some above ↑)
which are played plucking the strings with fingers:
or with a plectrum:
in this group we find, among others:
c) STRUCK STRINGED INSTRUMENTS
played by small hammers striking the strings:
 in the piano:



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Blog labels / Tabs

'-ED' '-ING' 'S 1ºBac 1ºESO 2ºBac 2ºESO 3ºESO 4ºESO 8M A(N) ABAU Abbreviations Ability Accents Adjectives Ads Adverbs Advicing Agreeing Agreement Alphabet Altkönigschule Animals Animation Anniversaries Antonyms Apologizing AprilFool Art Articles Aux.Verbs Basics BE Behaviour Biography BlackFriday Blog Body BonfireNight BrE/AmE Bullying Business BY Carnival Causative Cause Celebration Christmas CINEMA Cities CitySongs ClassActivity ClassrooManagement ClassroomLanguage Clothes Collocations Colours Commitment Communicating Comparatives Competition Compounds Conditionals Confusing Connectors ContinuousTenses Contractions Contrast ConversationAssist Cooking Coruña Cosmos Countability COVID Crime Culture Curiosities CV CW Date Day Demonstratives Descriptions Design Determiners Directions DO Emails EngDepActivities EngEvolution EnglishWeek Environment EW19 Exams Exclamations F&AEssay FalseFriends Family Feelings Films Food Formal FrequencyAdvs Fun Functions Furniture Future Galicia Game Gastronomy Gender Genitive Geography GET GO Graduation Grammar Greetings Greta HAD BETTER Halloween HandwritingHistory Harassment HAVE Health Help tips Heritage History Home Homecoming Homographs Homophones Horoscopes HumanRights Hygiene ICT Idioms Imperative Infinitive Info Informal Instruments Interjections Internet Introducing Inviting Ireland IrregularVerbs Jobs Karaoke Kron19 Kron23 LanguageLearning Leisure Letterwriting LIKE Listening Literature Lockdown London LoveActually MAKE Maps Maths Measures Media MindMap Mistakes ModalVerbs Money Music MusicProject Narrative NaturalDisasters Nature Negative News Numbers Nürn10/11 Nürn12 Nürn14 Nürn18 Obit Obligation Offering Onomatopoeias Opinions Passive PASSWORD Past Peace Penpals PerfectTenses Permission Personality Philosophy Phoning Photography PhrasalVerbs Pioneers Plurals Poetry Politeness Politics Poll Possessive Possibility Practice Preference Prefix Prepositions Present PresentPerfect Press Prohibition Projects Promising Pronouns Pronunciation Punctuation Purpose QTags Qualifications Quantifiers QuestionMaking Questionnaire Quiz Qwords RD25Years Reading Reason Recipes Relatives ReportedSpeech Requesting Routines Royals Scholarships SchoolActivities Science Scotland SeaSongs Secuencing Senses Shipwrecks Shopping Slang Slide Smileys SocialMedia Speaking Spelling Sport SportProject St.Patrick Storytelling Strategies StudentExchange StudentPics StudentRecipes Suffix Suffragette Suggestions Symbols Synonyms Teaching Technology Terrorism Thanksgiving THE THE SEA Theatre Time Tools Traditions Translation Travel Tribute TrinityExams TV UK USA UsedTo Valentine Vehicles Verbs VerbTenses Videos Vocabulary vs Wales Wearing Weather Wellbeing Willstätter Wishing Women Wordbuilding WordOrder Writing

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