ENGLISH COURSE FOR TEACHERS - LESSON 7: OLD FRIENDS & NEW ACQUAINTANCES

Video 1. Mind Your Language - The First Lesson (clip)

ENGLISH COURSE FOR TEACHERS - LESSON 6: TO THE RESCUE + SPEAKING ACTIVITIES

WORKSHEET
Practise makes perfect!   Click HERE  Listening exercises   Choose A2 (Elementary),  B1 (Intermediate)  or B2 (Upper Intermediate) according to your level

DIDACTIC ACTIVITIES ON ROMEO & JULIET WEBSITE

I was asked to create didactic activities for the latest "Romeo and Juliet" movie website http://www.romeoandjulietilfilm.it/materiale-didattico/ They have just uploaded them. You'll find 10 different workheets containing reading comprehension and watching comprehension tasks, character analysis and discussion questions.

LORD RANDAL & THE MEDIEVAL BALLAD

LORD BYRON - CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE : ONCE AGAIN UPON THE WATERS

TEXT ANALYSIS : ONCE MORE UPON THE WATERS

Fragments from CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE , Canto III , lines 5-18; 109-117; 127 -144 

 The lines below from Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage provide an insight into the wild beauty of Nature and  the Romantic themes of solitude, melancholy and the transcience of life.

LINES 5 -  18

Awaking with a start,

The waters heave around me; and on high

The winds lift up their voices: I depart,

Whither I know not; but the hour’s gone by,

When Albion’s lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye.

Once more upon the waters! Yet once more!

And the waves bound beneath me as a steed

That knows his rider. Welcome to their roar!

Swift be their guidance, wheresoe’er it lead!

Though the strain’d mast should quiver as a reed,

And the rent canvas fluttering strew the gale,

Still must I on; for I am as a weed,

Flung from the rock, on Ocean’s foam, to sail

Where’er the surge may sweep, or tempest’s breath prevail (... )

JOHN KEATS ON POETRY

WORKSHEET

John Keats's love for Fanny Browne and the sonnet Bright Star

Analysis of Bright Star

Keats-Shelley House in Rome

ENGLISH COURSE FOR TEACHERS - LESSON 5

Here are the worksheets for the movie trailers we used in our lesson 4

Romeo and Juliet

ENGLISH COURSE FOR TEACHERS - LESSON 4 LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION!

Video 1.

ENGLISH COURSE FOR TEACHERS - LESSON 3 HOW TO SPEAK ENGLISH FLUENTLY

1. Time for a song: Blowin' in the Wind

Listen and complete the lyrics with the words given (click HERE)

GRAMMAR NOTES & EXERCISES

ENGLISH COURSE FOR TEACHERS - LESSON 2 MEETING NEW PEOPLE

VIDEO 1. A NEW NEIGHBOUR 

Worksheet A New Neighbour

SHALL I COMPARE THEE ...? SHAKESPEARE IN MUSIC

Watch the video and listen to the song. It's one of Shakespeare's sonnets sung by David Gilmour (Pink Floyd): Sonnet 18 - Shall I compare thee

Worsheet   (poem and text analysis questions) .

ENGLISH COURSE FOR TEACHERS - LESSON 1 INTRODUCE YOURSELF

Video 1 . Introducing yourself

Worksheet 1. Self  Introduction  (Click HERE )

EMMA WATSON ON GENDER INEQUALITY

Watch the video and answer the questions in the worksheet HERE

Full transcript of the speech

SUMMER ACTIVITIES 3 - THE A TEAM & THE BIG ISSUE

Ed Sheeran, the worldwide popular British singer and songwriter, wrote this beautiful ballad in 2011 after  following a last-minute performance at an event for the homeless. It tells of a crack-addicted girl (crack is known as a "class A drug"). It was written after Sheeran visited a homeless shelter and heard some of the stories of the lives people had been living. Making the song upbeat was Sheeran's way of masking the heavy subject matter. Also using the term "Class A Team" was another way of masking it a little more. Watch the video, listen to the song and complete the tasks 1 and 2 in the worksheet (HERE)

SUMMER ACTIVITIES 2: BELLE - A TRUE STORY ADAPTED FOR THE SCREEN

New Movie! Belle: The mixed race daughter of a Royal Navy Admiral is raised by her aristocratic great-uncle in 18th century England.

Listening Comprehension

Watch the trailer of this new  movie, BELLE,  just released in the UK and coming soon to Italy, maybe by the end of this summer. While watching, fill in the gaps in this worksheet.

SUMMER ACTIVITIES 1 - YOUTUBE CELEBRITIES: CHARLIE MCDONNELL

Hello and happy summer time! As promised, here are some activities to revise, consolidate, improve your English. Do you like YouTube? What are your favourite channels? And what are your best favourite videos? Have you got a favourite Youtuber? Charlie McDonnell is one of them and he is a real celebrity in the UK and USA. Discover more about him. I have prepared listening comprehension and reading comprehension activities in  a worksheet  (you find it HERE),  as well as some Grammar and Translation exercises. I can already imagine your complains: BUT ...  Charlie speaks very fast! Yes, maybe,  but he is  great fun to watch! 

Video for Task 1 . Listening Comprehension

After completing all your tasks you can send your work via e-mail to learnonline.mgs@gmail.com for correction. I hope to hear from you soon!

(Download the worksheet, add your answers directly on it below the questions or below the sentences you have to translate using a different colour or different font, then send it as a separate word / txt file attached to your e-mail)

Next Summer Activities post will be up on 7th July. Till then, enjoy your holidays!

HAPPY SUMMER READINGS!

WORKSHEET 

THE HUMAN COMEDY BY WILLIAM SAROYAN - THE HARD TASK OF GROWING UP

It’s a story built on very simple facts, very ordinary people, very simple words which aims at transforming history and reality into unheroic epic mythology. That of everyday battles and sufferings. It is a story set in California in the time of WWII but it is actually a story beyond space and time. Homer
the 16-year-old protagonist, Ulysses, his little brother,  and Marcus, his elder brother at war. They live in Ithaca, San Joaquin Valley, California. They’ve got a sister and a mother. But there are no heroes. The Macauleys’ struggles and dreams reflect those of America’s second generation immigrants but-  and especially- also  those of any human being at any time in any place. No , they are not heroic epic figures but real life protagonists of  THE HUMAN COMEDY (1943).

Homer  is the protagonist, in his teen, determined to become the fastest telegraph messenger in the West, happy to be the man of the family in a difficult moment. Happy to ride his bycicle in the wind. But it’s wartime. Time to grow – up for him. Childhood ends when we realize sufference and death exist and are there inescapably for all of us. Homer becomes aware of that little by little: he is a messenger of death. A mother opens the door, he gives her a telegram and …

“It wasn’t  Homer fault. His work was to deliver telegrams. Even so, he felt awkward and almost as if he alone were responsible for what had happened (… )He was on his bycicle suddenly, riding swiftly down the dark street, tears coming out of his eyes, his mouth whispering crazy young curses. When he got back to the telegraph office the tears had stopped, but everything else had started and he knew there would be no stopping them” (pp.26/28)

FROM THE SATIRICAL NOVEL TO SATIRICAL PAINTING - WILLIAM HOGARTH, MARRIAGE A LA MODE

Hogarth was the inventor of the narrative sequence of paintings. Each sequence followed a theme such as the failure of combined marriages or the corruption of political elections, for examples. Hogarth's oil paintings were then engraved and sold as sets of prints, which made them much cheaper and very popular. Hogarth is at once a realistic and comic artist, a satirist.

Let's give a close look at his Marriage à la Mode (fashionable marriage in French) sequence (1743 - 45) .

1. The Marriage Settlement

This is the first scene in this series of paintings on the misfortunes of a marriage between people of fashion. The marriage is being arranged in the Earl of Squander's house. The Earl suffers from gout and rests his bandaged foot on a stool. He is receiving the dowry for his son's marriage to a rich merchant's daughter: her money for his old ancestry - he points to the genealogical tree, on the right. The Earl is in debt because of the expenses for the still unfinished Palladian villa seen through the window. The groom, on the left, is dressed as a perfecto fop and has a black patch on his neck (the sign of a venereal disease) . The bride sits with her back to him and looks sad; she's listening to the lawyer Silvertongue, her secret lover.

DIVERGENT FROM THE BOOK TO THE MOVIE - READING & WATCHING

Let's improve our English with a book and a movie which are under the spotlight these days: Divergent by Veronica Roth and its adaptation for the big screen starring Shailene Woodley and Theo James.

Task 1. Reading comprehension: Read an excerpt from Chapter 1 and answer the questions

Excerpt + questions

Task 2. Listening comprehension: Watch the trailer and fill in the gaps

Transcript - Fill in the gaps exercise