Pixie Lott … fit as a fiddle and other music related idioms

Music, Word of the Day, , ,

Although I can’t say I’m a music junkie I spend a lot of my time listening to music. The kind of music I listen to largely depends on my mood.N ormally, on my way to work I’m full of energy and anticipation so the songs I like listening to are of that kind … but when I am coming back home I need something a bit more relaxing, so I go for classical music, ballads, chill out … and all that jazz. And sometimes if my day’s been crap and I have to think about the best way to face the music, then I appreciate the silence.

Anyway, what I want to say is that I like this chick. I think she’s got a very nice voice, powerful but sweet at the same time .. When I first listened to her, her voice kind of struck a chord; she is somewhere between Amy Winehouse and Kate Perry with a touch of Dufy. Her first album has just been released and I anticipate it’s going to sell like hot cakes.
Her debut single ‘Mama Do (Uh Oh Uh Oh)‘ was a success but, in my humble opinion, there are other very good tracks. By the way, her album is called Turn it Up.


Want to see what these idioms mean ?
http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/cat/23.html

Word of the Day: to smell a rat .. and the tool to use when I smell..

freeware, Resources, ,

I don’t like this idiom, the only reason being the rodent in it… yes, I am that girlie!!

Now and then, and as part of the continuous asssessment, I ask my students to write something at home to be marked later and very often and mainly when it is writing about a celebrity, a book or a film they nick from the Internet. Setting this task when I know pretty well they won’t be able to resist the temptation of copy-pasting from the Internet is a bit of a wicked of me ,to put it midly, but life is hard, isn’t it?
To smell a rat= you know instinctively that something is wrong or that someone is lying to you.
So when I start reading essays and some words trigger all my sirens, then this is the tool I use to catch you red-handed.
It’s called Plagium

Football and football!

General

I sometimes wonder how I can get so involved in something I’ve never liked. And I’m talking about football. I’ve gone a long way from not knowing how many players you needed to play a match to watching , if nothing else appeals to me on TV, the match between South Africa and USA national teams ,to name just one.
It must be love! This is what I’ve done to celebrate the promotion of Villa de Pravia football team ,where my son plays, to the second division . I hope you like it !!

The Thriller Dance

Funny Stuff, Music

My son Lucas, who is 9, was watching TV (I’m afraid he’s sort of becoming a couch potato if I do nothing about it) when the video of Thriller filled the screen. He called me all excited about what he was seeing. I tried to explain who Michael Jackson was (difficult when I got to the part of him turning white) and what the video was about (the part about the graveyard and him turning into a zombie and scaring the girl was his favourite) and then, in my determination to show him how fun dancing could be I started searching the Net and bumped into this funny page where you can learn how to dance the Thriller Dance.

And well, I am just beginning to think it might be very interesting to teach vocabulary related to verbs of movement in a funny way. So… dear students … get ready, next year when we get to the point of learning verbs related to movement we’ll be dancing Thriller… if you don’t believe me … have a look at how organised they’ve got it all for me, ready to be used!! We might even be asked to perform at the Christmas Party!! How about that!!! I can’t wait!!!

Let’s get started
Step 1.The Dance. There are 8 lessons and each consists of 4 clips
http://thrilltheworld.com/learn/videos

Step 2. The Dance Script
http://thrilltheworld.com/images/uploads/TTW_Official_Dance_Script.pdf

Related Links:
Karaoke online

An amazing dictionary online

Dictionaries, Resources, ,

It is called Visuwords and it’s worth a visit.Never before have I seen such a display of colours, diagrams and words in a dictionary. It is great for everybody to use ‘cause it’s fun and it shows not only the definitions of words but also the connections between words. What’s more, if you place your cursor over any of the words ,the definition appears. You can even click and drag individual nodes to move them around to help clarify connections.If you ver get lost in this crazy tree of words ,use the colour-coded key on the left to understand the connections between the words.