Sunday, 28 February 2010

Emotions 1.



To work on vocabulary related to anger, confusion, confidence and shame, click here

And, I'm in the mood now, so one more here for pain, sadness, fear and happiness. I'm afraid I have not been very imaginative with the activities this time, oops!

Wednesday, 24 February 2010

History: Life on the American Frontier.



Click Here for the video "Life on the American Frontier" we worked on in class and here for the corresponding listening tasks.

Physical appearance flashcards.



Click here for a link to the flashcards we have been using in class to revise physical appearance vocabulary.

Thursday, 4 February 2010

Ageing, an illness to be combated? Debate




While browsing through the videos in ted.com, I stumbled upon one that I considered would make for a very interesting debate, as its focus is ageing (aging AmE), a process that shapes our lives from the moment we are born and thus relevant to us all. The speaker, Aubrey de Grey is a Cambridge "biogerontologist" who is adamant that funds should be allocated to research on how to revert the deterioration our bodies suffer with the passage of time in such a way that we would remain youthful and escape death for even centuries. He claims that -if philanthropists decide to invest in this quest- breakthroughs are imminent in the near future and that when they come along people will gradually abandon the -now prevailing- wrong notion that ageing is an inevitable (and even desireable) natural phenomenon.

So my suggestions are 1) watch the video by clicking on this link. It is 20 min long and he was pressed for time and speaks really fast, so enable the subtitles in English, a function you will find down left on the video. You can pause it as often as you like. You do not have to try to remember the complex concepts he mentions, just the gist. 2) If you have the time, you can also read about Aubrey de Grey in Wikipedia.

Finally, please, publish a comment with your opinion.