Description of a place:l'Estartit

Dear Lourdes,

How are you? I hope you are doing well. I’ve been very busy lately, and it’s for this reason why I didn’t write to you before.
As you asked me in your last letter about a place to visit next summer, I thought that you should visit l’Estartit. I spent my last summer holidays there and I really enjoyed it so much.

L’Estartit is a very beautiful town and there are lots of places to visit. People there are extroverted, friendly, charming, open minded, sportive…There you can visit Medas islands, and moreover there is a sandy beach where you can go every day… You cannot miss to visit Santa Anna’s street where there are lots of shops, and you can buy lots of presents. As you may know Mediterranean food is the most typical food in l’Estartit. If you feel like going out at night there are some cafés in front of the beach. Don’t forget to take some T-shirts with you because l’Estartit in summer is very hot, the days are usually sunny and the temperatures are very high.

Anyway, l’Estartit is a fantastic place to visit, so I think you will enjoy it. Don’t forget to buy a souvenir either, and please send me a postcard from l’Estartit if you finally go there.

Take care!!!

Sònia Ibañez Soussi

What do you know about Bill Bird?¿

Bill Bird is a shoemaker who is 45 years old. He has a shoe shop in the city center where he lives. However he usually works in his work shop in the country side.

He makes shoes for people who have unusual sizes. People travel from all around the world to visit his work shop and buy his shoes. These shoes usually cost around 500 the first pair. Then, people pay between 320 and 450 depending on the shoes. Bill's shoes are expensive but they also are comfortable and fashionable, and people really love them.


Bill's problem is that he cannot find skilled workers. He wants to teach young people how to make good shoes but they prefer to work with computers these days.

An employee needs two weeks to make a pair of shoes that's why his shoes are so expensive.

In my opinion it's true that young people prefer to work with computers instead of learning traditional jobs nowadays, and for this reason I think that old traditions and jobs are disappearing.

2nd oral presentation

The oral presentation of this second term has been very interesting. The two orals presentations I really like the
most are the presentation of Yeray and Arthur because they have talk about Sealand, which I didn't know anything about, and the presentation of Helena Fernandez, especially when she talked about the typical pyjamas in Japan.

Which is the most difficult subject?

It depends of the person. For example for me the most difficult subjects
are Literature, Maths and Latin. I really like Maths, but I don’t know why this
year Maths seems very complicated. Latin is difficult, maybe because is
a different language and because it’s the first year I do it. Literature is not
very difficult, but there are some poems which are very difficult to understand
like Góngora.
Well, I hope I can improve on this subjects and can pass to 2nd of batxillerat!!!

Catalan tradition

April 23rd, Catalonia celebrates Sant Jordi’s day.

The legend of Sant Jordi says that many years ago in the town called Montblanc there was a dragon which had terrorized the population. This dragon ate the beasts of the population, but one day the animals were finished and then the people began to do raffles to know who was going to be the ate, and one day it touched the princess, the king cried a lot, but nobody listened to him because he was not the only disconsolate father. When the dragon was going to eat the princess appeared a white knight on a white horse who killed the dragon. Of that large pool of
blood grew a rose and its branches borned red roses. Then the white knight( Sant
Jordi) gava to the princess one of these roses.

Is for that reason why in Spain the boy should give a rose to the girl, and the girl should give a books to the boy.

Today I'm going to talk about a member of my family; Adam.
Adam is my cousin, and he was born on the 3rd of June 2010, so nowadays he is 1 year and a half old.
The year when he was born he and his mother spent the summer with us.
First he only slept and cried, and the last summer I saw how he began to walk and to say some words, and it was so beautiful, although he continued crying a lot on all at nights...

Finding a job in Spain

I think that in Spain there is a very good education, but there are also a lot of people who can not work because nowadays there are any job. Although they have finished their studies because nowadays it's very difficult to find a job.

A few years ago people didn't finish their studies but they soon could find a job because there were plenty of jobs. Nowadays people know that they have to study to be able to work, although, lot of people heve finished their studies and don't find a job.

It seems to me that most of the students who are studying at university don't know exactly which studies want to do.

People who have find a job or are working don't earn enought money for the work which they do. Moreover, people are upset because they don't earn much money. They think their work is not well paid. Salaries are very low and people can not have a pleasant life.

In conclusion, nowadays our country is in trouble but I hope in few years the crisi will be finished and people will be able to find a job and have a pleasant life.

A GOOD FRIEND

Jaume's a great friend of mine. He' 23 years old and he lives in Torroella de Montgrí. He's tall, blond-haired and he has got light brown eyes. He's a good-looking boy who likes to practise sport a lot, specially he likes running marathons.

The thing he likes the most is running and riding his bike. When he was 20 years old he began to train to do his first marathon. Nowadays, he has done six marathones and lots of races. He says that for him there's nothing which makes him feel so right, only running.

In my opinion the first time you see him, he seems really shy and unfriendly, but when you begin to speak with him you realize that he's extroverted, friendly, sympathetic, funny, fair, secure, sensible and competitive.

Personally, I think that he's the kind of person who I feel comfortable with: specially because when you are sad or you don't feel so good he understands and helps you because he's so sensitive. And for me this is a good quality of a good friend.

[url=http://www.divshare.com/download/16948824-fb0]DivShare File - a good friend.wav[/url]


http://www.divshare.com/download/16948824-fb0

Oral presentation: Egypt

NAME: Sònia Ibañez Soussi

TOPIC: Egypt

PRESENTATION 10 %

• Do you use any resources: powerpoint, video, images, sound, realmaterial…?Are the resources relevant and attractive and focused on the topic?Do they support your presentation?Is the timing 5-7 minutes?

-Yes, in my oral presentation I used a powerpoint and I think it was relevant, attractive and it focused on the topic, and the timing of my oral presentation was 5 minutes.

BODY LANGUAGE AND EYE CONTACT 10%

• Are you looking at your audience most of the time?Are you reading occasionally from your notes?Are you doing any gestures / movement to hold the attention of theaudience?

-Yes, I was looking at my audience but I also look at my teacher. When I was doing my oral presentation I didn’t look from my notes all the time, I only look on it when I was saying the typical dishes because they are strange for me. The movements I did were to show to the audience where is Egypt situated and the evolution of its flag.

STRUCTURE 10%

• Do you organize your ideas in order of importance?Do you use discourse markers tomake your ideas more clear? (First,then, secondly, on the one hand, on the other, finally…)

-More or less. At the beginning of mi presentation I did a little introduction of what I was going to do.

CONTENT 30%

• Do you introduce interesting, NEW information to your audience?Is your information detailed and clear? Do you give / show examples?Is your information copied from a source or is it original?Did you look up information/facts/ideas in the Internet/books…?

-When I was preparing my oral presentation, first of all I looked for information about Egypt, then I did a summary of the most important things, and finally I organized the information which were detailed and clear.

lANGUAGE 20%

• Is your grammar correct, complex? (verbs, word order, tenses learnt inclass)?Is your vocabulary rich and varied (synonyms, idioms, phrasal verbs,expressions, topic-related vocabulary…)?Do you use sentence linkers? (and, but, moreover, also, furthermore,although, however…)Do you use pause fillers? (well, you know, for example, one second,repeating a word…).

-My grammar was correct, but some of the words (especially adjectives) I said wasn’t correct, for example in my notes I wrote the adjective hot which is correct, but when I was talking I said hots which is not correct because the adjectives have not plural.

PRONUNCIATION & INTONATION 10&%

• Do you know how to pronounce all your words?Did you check the pronunciation with a dictionary, a classmate or theteacher?Do you change your tone of voice or use a monotone tone all the time?Did you speed in a fluid continuum or with breaks and interruptions?

-I checked the pronunciation of some words but not all of them,that’s for these reason why I didn’t pronounce Although well.

SELF-EVALUATION 10%

• Now it’s time to improve for next presentation.Write down a LITERAL TRANSCRIPTION of your presentation.Check your language and structure.
  Can you correct your mistakes? You are your teacher! What mark did you get?

• EGYPT
• INTRODUCTION
  Good afternoon everybody, as all you know my name is Sònia and today I’m
  going to talk about Egypt. First of all, I’m going to talk about Egypt’s
  geography, secondly I’m going to talk about its flag, then about the food and
  drink, and finally about places you can visit if you ever travel to Egypt.
• GEOGRAPHY
  Egypt is located in northeastern of Africa and its capital is El Cairo.
  The official
  language in Egypt is Arabic; although in Egyptian schools also teach English and French.
  Egypt is in the subtropical zone. Summers are hot and dry and winters are mild andstable.
• FLAG: These are the flags from Egypt from the oldest to the newest and more recent nowadays.
• FOOD AND DRINK...

*Some of the typical dishes of Egypt are:
-BABAGANNUJ SALAD
-CHICKEN KESHK
-KAMMUNEYA
-KIBBEH
-BASTERMA
-SAMBOUSEK
-HUMMUS BI TAHINA

*And some of the typical desserts of Egypt are:
- om ali
-baklava
Things
to visit...

• PLACES TO VISIT...
  *If you ever visit Egypt these are some of the most important places you should not forget to visit:
  -PYRAMIDS OF GIZA
  -THE RIVER NILE, which is the 2nd largest river in the world.
  TEMPLE OF KARNAK
  THE CITY OF ALEXANDRIA
  
• And that's all. I hope you have enjoyed it.
• Do you have any questions?
  

"Should the experiments on human life have limits?"

Frankenstein is a book which talks about a man called Frankenstein who decided to be a scientist. First he began to study the electricity and what can it do, then he studied about the human body dead (corpse), and finally he began to think about to give life to people.

I think that's good that the scientists do a lot of experiments to know more about our planet and to improve all the things around us. I think it's good because on the me hand can improve our lifestyle because it helps us, but not always.

I also think that scientist who want to do experiments with the corpse don't think a lot
with the consequences which it has, because they don't think that if we give life to the corpse at the end we won't have enought space. I know that death causes pain to the people who love them, but I think the world is better as it is because as I said before if everybody gives life to the persons who have died because they love them the world will be smaller for us.

Fourteen years attached to a tree's trunk

04/03/2012

• The last few days FARC announced that they’ll stop kidnapping, but they cannot delete so much pain they made to many families. The cruel destiny of many of those who managed to leave alive is the depression, separation and the suicide.
  The families of all these people feel that, once liberated the most famous hostages, Colombia forgot the poor kidnapped.
• Some of the hostages who are free nowadays say that they were impressed when they saw her faces in a mirror after many years. But all of them agree with one thing: with the kidnapping they have learned the importance of life. One of them, Eladio Perez, who spent seven years in the hands of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), said: "Before the kidnapping I never was with my family. I kept playing politics. The thing what I regretted being attached to a tree, was to have lost the best years with my children.
• Carlos José Duarte was kidnapped in 1999 when he was 29, nowadays he is 42, and his daughter, whom he left to watch when she was a child, nowadays is a woman and, is mom. His other son, Carlos Andrés, is a teenager who is learning to painting. His wife says, "We all miss him. Everyday. I really miss dancing with him. That's how we fell in love: dancing salsa”.
  

Catherine Hart

Catherine Hart: A former teacher, she rang her own school for eight years before setting up the website: streets-of-barcelona.com.

Barcelona
Catherine Hart choose St. Pau to live because she saw that's a great area, and because there are a very friendly people. She says that the shops and the restaurant are very different from the Eixample, and she think that's because it has a special charm and is very old-fashioned with local shops in the same hand since the civil war.
Nowadays she has a shop of flowers.
She came to Barcelona at the end of 1978 and then she didn't speak Spanish or Catalan and she felt very foreign.
The only thing she would change is the constant noise of there.
She thinks that the hospital, which started building in 1902 thanks to a generous
donation from Pau Gil i Serra, is a fine example of Catalan Modernism.

Cataloniatoday, april 2011