Mobile phone: friend or enemy?

Students' Corner,

Sent by Mario Peláez Fdez

Everybody knows that mobile phones have changed our society, making our communication faster, but, has it become better?

It’s true that we’ve modified our communication habits, because now we can talk with anyone, no matter where he/se is, but: Do we know the importance of communication? Or do we just do it becauseit’s a habit, a routine? I don’t mean mobile phones are completely bad for us: They help us to keep in touch with our friends and to ask for help in case of danger, and they help other people to find us if there’s an emergency.
But, on the other hand, some people are starting to substitute the face-to-face communication with the mobile phone communication. I mean, they’re trying to “mobilize” our communication. For example: teenager couples send each other, on average, more than fifteen text messages per day! Are we going crazy? It’s the same kind of communication that we should eliminate between friends. A boy or a girl comes from high school. He/She’s going to meet his/her friends half an hour later, but she’s texting all his/her friends to ask them if they have any interesting thing to tell him/her!

As I see it, we aren’t caring enough about how we relate to each other . We’re addicted to our mobile phones, because we think we can’t live without them
If you don’t believe me, ask a teenager about what he/she prefers: a week without his/her mobile phone or a weekend without going out. I think most of the teenagers would say that they prefer the second option (I wouldn’t, but I think most of the teenagers would)

However, there’s something that I consider a very important advantage about mobile phones: nowadays, most of the mobile phones have got a camera and a MP3 player on them. I think that it’s an advantage because it’s a way to keep your music with you at all times and to take photos wherever and whenever you want.
So, if you ask me, I think that mobile phones are a great product, but we should be careful, because we mustn’t be mobile phone addicts

Word of the Day: To Have a Blast

The English language, Word of the Day

What is an idiom? An idiom is two or more words with a special meaning.
Idioms are difficult, because often you can’t find them in a dictionary. For example, “to have a blast” is an idiom. What does it mean? You probably know “have”, and you may know “blast” (which means “an explosion or a bomb”)… but what does the the phrase “to have a blast” mean?
Actually it means “to have a lot of fun; to enjoy a lot”
Example: I finally tried bungee jumping, and I had a blast.

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 .