martes, 18 de febrero de 2014
sábado, 1 de febrero de 2014
DALI, GANDHI, GAUDI
Just a month ago, I was teaching a group of Bachillerato students and they happened to know nothing about either DALI, GANDHI or GAUDI. However, they are very knowledgeable about Messi, Pizzi or Ancelotti.Students are not to blame for their ignorance. After all, by using their latest technologies they can be acquainted with the above personalities at the click of a button in no time at all.Under the latest pedagogical trend,CLIL or whatever it´s called, -(just the brain child of some fly-by-night politician turned teacher trying to re-discover the wheel as if we had not had content and communication as a priority in our teaching tasks)- the three personalities above would make an excellent didactic unit as they are cross-curricular and go beyond the ordinary curriculum into our daily lives. Bearing these reflections in mind I devised a simple T/F questionnaire to acquaint the students with these three extraordinary characters:
Arrange them in chronological order and find out which important world events they lived through: Historical context.
Who is speaking? Write DA, GAN or GAU after each sentence:
"I was shot dead"
"I lived in New York"
"I lived in South Africa"
"I was nicknamed God´s architect"
"I remained single all my life"
"I made sculptures and produced over 1500 paintings"
"I was killed in a tram accident"
"I had blond hair and blue eyes"
"I had four children"
"I was a modernist"
" I played football"
"I wore glasses"
"I was a writer"
"I wrote to russian writer Leo Tolstoi"
"I used fasting as a political device"
"I married at 13"
"My wife´s name was Gala"
" I studied in England"
"My mother died of breast cancer"
"My older brother died before I was born"
WRITE T/ F:
Ghandi opposed "purdah" or child marriage.
Gaudi was a barrister.
Ghandi was against Britain´s imperialism.
Dali was for non violent civil disobedience.
Ghandi worked as an ambulance driver.
Gaudi was shot dead.
Ghandi committed himself to temperance, chastity and vegetarianism.
Dali had four children.
Ghandi defended the civil rights movement in South Africa.
Gaudi drew plans.
Do as above regarding:
H.G. WELLS - GEORGE ORWELL - ORSON WELLS
GABRIEL MIRÓ - JOAN MIRÓ
MONET- MANET
HAITI - TAHITI
NEIL,LOUIS & LANCE ARMSTRONG
MARTIN LUTHER - MARTIN LUTHER KING Jr.
GEORGE ELIOT - T.S. ELIOT
LOPE DE RUEDA - SALVADOR RUEDA
THOMAS MORE - GEORGE MOORE - ROGER MOORE-
HENRY MOORE
F. SCHILLER - F. SCHLEGEL
G.W.F. HEGEL -F. ENGELS -M. HEIDEGGER- G.F. HANDEL
lunes, 6 de enero de 2014
Regrets, regrets, regrets...
Life is an inextinguishable crop of regrets, according to Joseph Conrad.
Unfortunately, as we grow older it becomes sadly true.
Unfortunately, as we grow older it becomes sadly true.
A rerun of the the most logged pre-death comments.
Regret having worked too hard.
Regret having believed the nonsense.
Regret not having said so. (Peter Trainin)
Regret not having studied hard enough
Regret not having seized all my opportunities
Regret having eaten or drunk so much
Regret not having spoken my mind
Regret not having given up smoking
Regret not having travelled the world
Rewrite the sentences above starting with either:
I should (not) have ......
or I wish I had (not).....
or If only I had (not)
Add three more from your own personal situation.
Ex: I should not have wasted my time playing computer games,etc...
sábado, 4 de enero de 2014
MEMORY and Memories
Memory plays an invaluable part in learning foreign languages as it is one of the most important human faculties. It can be defined as the process in which information is coded, stored and retrieved.
Memory, however, is more than just the ability to recall and we know very little about how the mind remembers things and how and why it forgets other things.
THE VARIETIES OF MEMORABLE EXPERIENCES
Memory can be divided into several different types:
Episodic memory: The memory for past episodes and events in one´s life.
Factual memory: The memory for facts, such as that Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492.
Semantic memory: The memory for meaning: the average person remembers several hundred thousand words and meanings.
Iconic memory: the memory for visual information as when you are watching a new film.
Echoic memory: the memory for sounds, the one which stores your auditory information
Topographic memory: the ability to orient yourself in space
Sensory memory: we can even remember the smell of some tasty dish, or thousands of different people´s faces.
Photographic memory:visual memory
Instinctive memory: the newborn baby "remembers" to suck at its mother´s breast.
Collective memory: According to Carl Jung we share collective race memories as archetypal symbols.
Procedural or skills memory: Our skills involve memory: from driving a car to walking..
Haptic memory: a database for touch stimuli
Past-life memory:Some people appear to be able to "remember" events from before their birth.
Declarative memory, etc..
There is hardly a moment in our lives when memory is not playing a crucial role, and the more we understand how it functions, the more we can help ourselves at work, at home, in play and in study.
From The Brain Book by Peter Russell
Our Cultural memory
Our law of historical memory
Selective memory
Curating memory
·
Globalised
memory
·
Marginalised memories
·
Memory
and affect
·
Memory
and anti-colonial struggle
·
Memory
and class
·
Memory
as gender/sexual politics
·
New
technologies and memory
·
Racialised
memory
·
Religion
and cultural memory
·
Space,
place and memory
·
Theoretical
approaches to cultural and collective memory
A MEMORY EXPERIMENT
Read through the following list of words just once. Do not study them, just read each to yourselves in 60 seconds:
water, life, dog, line, home, mouse
field, balls,rabbit, apple,sheep, head
bone, year, goat,Maharishi, hill, owl
oar, donkey, shape,crop, wind, pig
tool, cow, door, stone, flower, cat.
Now, find yourselves a pencil or a pen and write as many of the words as you can remember, in whatever order they come to you.
You are unlikely to have recalled the whole list of 30 words. You are more likely to have recalled: water, life, flower and cat than year and wind. The increased probability of recalling the first two or three items is called the primacy effect; and that of recalling the last few items is called the recency effect. The Von Restorff effect is the tendency to remember outstanding elements in a list: in our list above Maharishi. You might have also recalled the two words positioned on either side of Maharishi...
from Fast Forward 3 Classbook by Marion Geddes O.U.P.
Share your mnemonics ability. Guess what the following will refer to: CORMUNOAPONVI,HOMES; FANBOY,etc..
From the seven sins of memory by Daniel Schacter I´ve learned they are:The sin of transience,of absent-mindedness,of blocking,of misattribution, of suggestibility,of bias and of persistence...(They could be virtues after all to keep ourselves alive)
jueves, 2 de enero de 2014
Double negative: Yes to No No
The double negative is considered substandard as it does not do" nothing" good for the English language. It is just a repetition of the negative for emphasis or when there is no intention of having the two negatives cancel each other out. Shakespeare used it quite often as it was common in Old English and Medieval English. George Orwell criticized the"not un..."habit in writers and journalists.
TRANSFORM THE TWO NEGATIVES INTO JUST ONE:
Be straightforward; say the following phrases in a more direct manner Avoid the typically English understatement : Litotes:
The thought of death will be not unwelcome. B. Russell
She is not unappealing.
not unstable
not unimportant
It´s not an unjustifiable assumption that
I´m not indifferent
leave no stone unturned
not unsurprisingly
not unemotionally
not untrue
not unlike
Let´s quote George Orwell: " One can cure oneself of the "not un formation "by memorizing this:
A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field .Politics and the English language . Collected Essays
TRANSFORM THE TWO NEGATIVES INTO JUST ONE:
He cannot make friends with nobody
I haven´t never got the time to sit down any more
They didn´t have no apples
I never saw nobody
They didn´t know nothing
I hadn´t never been so tired
I could not travel nowhere
I am not going to buy no car
She didn´t have no motorbike
His clothing wouldn´t be no protection from the rain
Inspiration from Eats, Shites & Leaves by A. Parody
Be straightforward; say the following phrases in a more direct manner Avoid the typically English understatement : Litotes:
The thought of death will be not unwelcome. B. Russell
She is not unappealing.
not unstable
not unimportant
It´s not an unjustifiable assumption that
I´m not indifferent
leave no stone unturned
not unsurprisingly
not unemotionally
not untrue
not unlike
Let´s quote George Orwell: " One can cure oneself of the "not un formation "by memorizing this:
A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field .Politics and the English language . Collected Essays
viernes, 20 de diciembre de 2013
A love / hate letter to a place you love/ hate
This is just a variation of the traditional letter to the person you admire most. Instead of addressing the message to a famous person we write to the city, town or village of our dreams.
My dearest village
I´ve been thinking long and hard before writing this letter...
I find it difficult to write down everything you have given me..
There´s so much I would like to say to you: you are the air that I breathe.
In fact, I cannot imagine my life without you: I´d never leave you as when I´m
away for just a few days or weeks I suffer from my peculiar town sickness:
all my thoughts go back to you obsessively: This is the place of my dreams, heaven on earth, my oneiric promised land, where, once dead, I would like to periodically return to.
I have enjoyed the spring sunrises, the autumn sunsets, the sounds, the light, the smells of every single fiesta every month, the orange blossom, the almond blossom... Our scenery is constantly changing following the pattern of the seasons but there is one thing that remains constant:
my love for you.
I can still remember the very first time I came to this precious place, opened my eyes and was dazzled by the light at the Balcony, the bluest sea I had ever seen and the wild beauty of your twenty unspoilt beaches and coves... I believe I´m the luckiest person in the world for living in this most wonderful place called .... NERJA.
Know that no matter how far I am, you will be in my heart wherever I go.
You are my inspiration in life and my dream paradise.
In short, I love you with all that I am, all that I was and all that I ever will be.
Yours forever
XXX
JMCC
Try to identify the cliches in the sentences above.
Write one composition along the same lines: My dear Paris; Madrid, my beloved city; Dearest New York; My darling Frigiliana; Dear Málaga;etc..
Try to recall the 20 coves or beaches mentioned in the text from Cantarriján to Calaceite.
domingo, 1 de diciembre de 2013
Let us be EQUALITY and DIVERSITY CHAMPIONS!!!
Are you passionate about Justice and Fairness?
Are you excited about Equality?
Are you delirious about Diversity?
Are you interested in new challenges?
Are you more understanding and less judgemental towards other cultures?
Do you want to help change our world?
Do you have original ideas to bring about changes?
Are you for Fair Trade?
Are you politically correct?
Have you developed a sense of inclusion?
Do you avoid making stereotypical assumptions about others?
Are you against deeply ingrained stereotypes?
Do you try to understand cultural diversity, accepting that each culture has its assets and its flaws? (We should try to pick up the best in every culture)
Are you against all sorts of discrimination?
Are you against the gender pay gap?
Do you support minorities: ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disabled people, older people,etc..?
Are you for SUPERDIVERSITY: immigration from many different countries?
Are you for intercultural dialogue?
Have you broadened your mind by travelling? Any culture shock or clash?
If you answered "yes" to any of the above questions then we NEED you...
IT TAKES ALL SORTS TO MAKE A WORLD, so the saying goes, and no one should be excluded. Exclusion is typical of dictatorial regimes. Diversity should be enriching and not a liability.
I´ve often been asked what this place would be like without expatriates, immigrants or tourists. " A very drab, shabby, bleak place, indeed" It´s my answer. Could you imagine London or New York without cultural diversity?
BE OFF-BEAT. Uniformity is boring. Conformity is against the human grain. We need original creative people who can view that a better world is possible.
Governments all around the world have been changing their attitudes to immigration, from an open door policy of welcoming all the cultures to a frontiers closed policy due to the economic recession.
As the human rights poster stated: " If our God is Jewish, your car is Japanese, your pizza italian, your gas is algerian, your coffee is brasilian or colombian, your numbers are arabic, your alphabet latin, your shop is chinese, HOW DARE YOU CALL YOUR NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOUR A FOREIGNER?
A SHORT CULTURAL DIVERSITY TEST
-WHAT NUMBER IS UNLUCKY IN JAPAN, EUROPE?
-WHAT NUMBER IS LUCKY IN CHINA, USA, THAILAND, EUROPE?
-WHAT CAN WARD OFF EVIL IN GALICIA, MEXICO, INDIA?
-WHAT HAPPENS TO A CHILD´S TOOTH IN THE U.K., SPAIN, JAPAN,etc..?
WHO IS A HERO AND WHO IS A VILLAIN ACCORDING TO HISTORIANS? Classify the characters in the following list:
Christopher Columbus, Torquemada, Attila, Sulla, Nero, Hitler, Franco, The Duke of Alba, Ivan IV, Julius Caesar, Selim I the Grim, The Marquis of Sade, Ali Pasha, Ferdinand VII, Mariano Melgarejo, José Mª Aznar, Robin Hood, Juan M. Sánchez Gordillo, Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro, Osama Bin laden, King Phillip II, Emperor Charles V, Fedinand III, etc...
NOMINATIONS FOR World INFAMY...And the oscar to the nastiest or most obnoxious person goes to....
-WHAT IS TRENDY AND WHAT IS TRADITIONAL NOWADAYS IN YOUR OWN CULTURE?
-HOW DO YOU EXPRESS WELCOME IN SRI LANKA, EUROPE, MUSLIM COUNTRIES,etc..?
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