Happy new year

These are the revision exercises:
Revision exercise If walls could talk
Revision exercise Would I lie to you
Revision exercise Directions for using a digital bottle warmer
Revision exercise Holiday hijack Jamaica

And here you can find the song and exercise about New Year's Resolutions.

Happy New Year!

Hugh's fish fight

Watch Hugh's fish fight by clicking on the links below!
Hugh's fish fight witnesses discard in the North Sea
Hugh's fish fight talks stock
Hugh's fish fight highlights discard in Hastings
Hugh's fish fight lands discards in Hastings
Hugh takes the fish fight to Brussels
Hugh's fish fight sails up the Thames
Hugh's fish fight Parliament Square protest

And here's a speech by Hugh after winning a BAFTA Television Award.
You can also visit Hugh's fish fight website
and sign the petition if you want to!

Would I lie to you

Click here to watch the episode of 'Would I lie to you' in which Barry Cryer tells the story about the three novels he did or did not write under the penname of Mary Windsor. 

               

Enjoy!

Megacities

Click here to watch Andrew Marr's Megacities (about Dhaka, London, Shanghai and Mexico City).

Below, you can find some more documentaries on some megacities:

Dhaka (the fastes growing megacity in the world)

Mexico City

Sao Paulo

Here's the fill in exercise about Mexico City.

And, last but not least, here are a whole bunch of listening, reading and grammar exercises on megacities which will certainly contain something that is useful to you. 

Enjoy!

Cherry's dilemmas

TV presenter and blogger Cherry Healey encounters a mass of conflicting information when it comes to advice for parenting her young daughter, Coco.

In her quest to determine what type of mother she should be, she meets a range of parents with different approaches to raising their children. There's the strict, the laidback, the no-rules, the fearful, the bossy and many variations thereof. Cherry ponders which course she will steer and how she will stick to it:

Cherry's Parenting Dilemmas (trailer)

There are some other dilemmas that bother Cherry, too:

Cherry's Cash Dilemmas (fragment)

And here's the link to Cherry's colourful blog.

Doomsday Clock

Click here for the documentary about Doomsday Clock. 

And find two songs about the Doomsday clock below:
The end of the world (as we know it) by REM
Two minutes to midnight by Iron Maiden

And here's a song that will cheer you up after this lesson:
Always look on the bright side of life by Monty Python

Inventions that changed the world

Here's part 1 of a documentary on the invention of the computer, part of a series on inventions that changed the world.  When part 1 has ended, just click on part 2 in the bar on the right-hand side.

Find some more documentaries on inventions below this picture of presenter Jeremy Clarkson.

Some more inventions are discussed in the other episodes:

The invention of the television

The invention of the gun
The invention of the telephone

The invention of the Jet

Dragons' den

Watch a funny fragment of Dragons' Den here.
Would you invest in this product?
Dragons' Den - The Magic Wand Remote
Dragons' Den - The Magic Wand Remote (2)

Steve Jobs' speech at Stanford

This is the famous speech (subtitled) Steve Jobs gave at Stanford University in 2005.
 And here's his biography.

If walls could talk

If walls could talk, what would they tell us about the past?  That's the idea behind the tv programme "If Walls Could Talk".   The programme is a racy exploration of how we’ve used the rooms in our houses over the centuries. 

For an introduction to the programme, click here

For a fragment about the history of toilet paper, click here
For a fragment about Edwardian bathrooms, click here
For a fragment about the history of the kitchen, click here (homework fragment)

The series tells the story of British domestic life from the middle ages to the present day through four rooms (the kitchen, the bed room, the bathroom and the sitting room) and will explore the way that our attitudes and habits have changed in relation to family, privacy, cleanliness, class and technology.

The presenter is historian Lucy Worsley.  Have a look at her website here.

Enjoy!

Holiday hijack

These are the two fragments you need for your homework:
Holiday Hijack (Maasai)
Holiday hijack (Gambia)

This is a blog by a woman who was in the Holiday Hijack Gambia program:

Alexandra Hind talks about her Holiday Hijack experience

These are two more Holiday Hijack fragments:

Holiday Hijack (Mexico)

Holiday Hijack (Jamaica)

And this is part of the video we watched in class:
Holiday hijack (Maldives)

A most unusual marriage proposal

This is a most unusual but spectacular marriage proposal:
The greatest marriage proposal ever?

9/11 anniversary

Some video reports of the 9/11 Anniversary
Paul Simon sings 'Sounds of silence'
President Obama's and GW Bush's speeches at the 9/11 Anniversary

And here's the video conference by Kevin Stone on a new way to escape tall buildings:

Kevin Stone's new method for escaping tall buildings

Stacey Dooley in Thailand

You can watch the tv programme in which Tracey Dooley works in a hotel in Thailand here (part 1), here (part 2), here (part 3) and here (part 4). 

Don't miss part 4, in which is revealed how 219 Brits a year die in Thailand...

April fools' day

Have you ever seen spaghetti growing on trees?  The BBC broadcast this hoax on 1st April 1957, when spaghetti was still quite exotic to most British people.  And they got lots of phone calls after, asking for more instructions on how to cultivate the spaghetti plant. 

Do you want some extra inspiration for April Fools' day?

Watch some Food Pranks here.

Watch the Aluminum Foil Prank here.
Watch the Copy machine Prank here.
Watch the Office Bathroom Prank here.

Watch the Waterpark Prank here (which is quite gross!)

Snug...
and have fun!

To the garden

Click here to watch an episode of the cartoon series 'To the garden'. 
Click here to watch the woman giving us a tour of her garden.
And click here to watch an interview with the editor of the magazine 'Organic gardening'.

And if you want to enjoy Elvis' soothing voice once more... here you can listen to his gospel song 'In the garden'.

Enjoy!

Saint Patrick's day

Every year on 17th March, Irish people all over the world celebrate Saint Patrick's Day.
In this video that we watched in class, you can learn how to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day like a real Irishman!

               

More videos about Saint Patrick's day:
How to make green beer
A Saint Patrick's day 2011 flashmob
Saint Patrick's day language

Put something green on,
have a green beer,
make a wish on a four-leaf clover and...

Enjoy!

Preschool education in Sweden

You can watch the first part of the documentary about preschool education in Sweden by clicking here.

If this tickled your curiosity...
watch part 2 and part 3, too!

A-levels criticized

This article (The Guardian, Wednesday 16 February 2011) is critical of the system of A-levels in the UK.  It says that the current system of A-levels (which means that at the age of 16, students have to pick 3 or 4 subjects in which to specialize for two years) may be a good system to form specialists, but is not a good system to form good citizens. 

Changing the paradigm

'Changing education paradigms' (click to watch) is an illustrated speech by Ken Robinson.  Sir Ken Robinson (born in Liverpool on 4th March 1950) is a renowned author, speaker and international advisor on education.  In this speech, he criticizes the current education system. 

If you want to hear more of his speeches, you can visit Sir Ken Robinson's website or type his name in the Youtube search bar and choose a video. 

Education in the UK and in the US

Here's a teenager explaining the British education system to us.

And this is the disquisition on the American education system by the Youtube comedian Daniel.  Warning: explicit language!  He's hyper-active, bad-mouthed, offensive. 

Well, of course, he's American...