My favourite shortstory: THE LOTTERY by Shirley Jackson

Ever since I did North American Contemporary Shortstory in my 4th year at university I have kept The Lottery as my favourite one. There are quite a few more I like but somehow this one got itself "the place" in my own top reading-list and even if others have come along and have also marked the path of my reading, what makes The Lottery so special to me is the disturbing unease I was left with when I finished its reading. Since I am trying not to give away the story itself, I will stop using adjectives to describe my opinion and suggest that you should read and listen to the story yourself -provided that you haven't read it yet!


If you google The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, you get 644,000 hits. After some browsing, I have chosen the links below to lead you into the story itself, both in text and audio, and also a film version uploaded on YouTube which, I must say, would never have been my choice. In my opinion some written stories should never be transferred into pictures for it is the reader's own vision that makes them so unique. This is what I also felt when I read Frankestein; the horror Mary Shelley wanted to convey when wording the creature's appearance would never match any visual image created on the screen.


This first link will direct you to the text courtesy of Classic Short Stories

Reading The Lottery

This second link features one of The New Yorker fiction podcasts, in which A. M. Homes reads the story and discusses it with The New Yorker's fiction editor Deborah Treisman:

Listening to The Lottery: Luck of the Draw 

Lastly, here are two YouTube links on which you can watch a film version of the story:

ELEVATOR PITCH: pitch, one of those ¨tricky¨ words to learn.

A few weeks ago, when doing an activity with my advanced students pitch, the word that has triggered this post, came up in the form of a crossword clue:

Money in brief followed by an irritation of the skin has very black results.

The answer was given straight away in the dialogue where such definition was inserted -pitch-,  but it took me a while to come up with the explanation which would associate both parties. Actually, it came right away when discussing the activity with the students. 

• Money in brief........p(ence)
• An irritation of the skin......itch
• Has very black results........pitch black 

A follow-up question was what does pitch mean exactly? It's certainly one of these words that may trap a teacher in a winding explanation and still leave the student at a loss as there's nothing they like best but a straight equivalent to copy down in their notebooks. 

You're probably aware of what I mean by now if you have clicked on the word pitch and read the different answers provided by wordreference.com, both in the English definition entry and the English-Spanish one.

Pitch is one of these chamaleonlike words that has sneaked in different theme-areas of life so it gets complicated for a student of English who is constantly seeking for a straight-forward answer to their vocabulary queries.

To mention but a few, the word pitch appears in sports, a football pitch, in linguistics Pitch accent and in sales the elevator pitch. 

As my students hadn't heard of the elevator pitch term before and the class was about to end I encouraged them to do some research themselves. I also promised I'd come back to it in the near future. Not so sure myself how I'd introduce this in another class I thought I might as well write a post that would feature not only the latter, but also the word pitch itself. Furthermore, I find it really self-encouraging to link both my blog and my teaching.

I've selected an article from Bloomberg Business Week: 

The Perfect (Elevator) Pitch by Aileen Pincus 

And this YouTube video which rides you up in the hope of your grasping its basic idea:

IMPROVE YOUR LISTENING AND WRITING SKILLS: LISTEN & WRITE

LISTEN & WRITE - DICTATION

Listen&write is a great website to practise both your listening and writing skills. What's more: it's free of charge!!! 

You have a wide choice of levels so I'm sure you will find a suitable one to start with and from there start building up your confidence in understanding English. The fact that you can see the spoken words in written form will certainly help you consolidate their spelling via an old technique as it is dictation. 

There are three modes you can choose from:

1. Full Mode: you need to type in the full word itself and if you spell it correctly it is shown on the screen directly.
2. Quick Mode: only by typing in the first letter you get the full word on the screen.
3. Blank Mode: the text is shown with blank spaces, you need to type in the correct word in the blank.

If you find the listening too difficult I suggest you should use the Blank Mode. You will be able to read the text and work out those missing words in the gap. Then, once you've done this, you can select the Full Mode and give it another try. I find the Quick Mode a bit confusing as it's far too quick! You type in the first letter and it immediately gets it shown on the screen but because you are so engrossed in understanding the next word or words you hardly have time to set in what's being done.



Anyway, you're free to find your own mood! Just give it a try & have fun with English! :O)

STORYTELLING IN PRESENTATIONS. Ms Huffingtton delivers a short but effective one.

Following the topic I began with in my previous post on Presentations, I would like to invite you to watch this second Ted Talk by Arianna Huffington. Her talk is called HOW TO SUCCEED? GET MORE SLEEP

You may have heard about her a couple of months ago when her widely-read online paper THE HUFFINGTON POST was bought by AOL Inc, and she became President and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group.

Well, my post is not to talk about AOL and/or Ms Huffington herself, but to show you the effectiveness of a sound content-message, in which words have been carefully chosen.

How to succeed? Get more sleep. Certainly the title itself is catchy. When reading it, one wonders how it is possible to be successful in life by having enough sleep. We are usually told that successful people have devoted themselves to working hard and giving up leisure or family time. If you want to be on the top, you must work up the ladder and it won't be easy. A visible instance of this is top-politicians; when they get into power their faces eventually start looking haggard with rings under their eyes, a certain sign of lack of sleep.

Ms Huffington delivers a brief talk (a bit over 4 minutes) that goes right into our inner feelings. She deliberately addresses the female audience with an interesting feminist message that goes away from the hackneyed discourse ¨we, women, are the same as men, therefore we have the same rights¨. Actually, she says the opposite: because we are different, we are better.

What's more, she does not use visuals, no ppt to enhance the content of her talk. The content of her talk uses the power of words and intonation to make it effective. She does this with the best technique: storytelling.

Her story has a personal drama, some research so you will become better, other characters humourously presented, not to forget the villains, there's also a time line with a past, a present and a future, and there's some learning to do in the hope that we will improve as human beings.

Her storytelling is imbued with simplicity and, yet, it is not simplistic.

Let's look at the use of adjectives, starting by the first sentence:

My big idea is a very, very small idea that can unlock billions of big ideas that are at the moment dormant inside us. And my little idea that will do that is sleep.

big / small / dormant / little / sleep

(simple opposing adjectives & the issue of sleep)

A pause, to let the audience take in what she has just said with the hope that it will raise their expectations to what she is about to say yet.

This is a room of type-A women... good address to the audience by praising them. Next she tells them a personal story to show her empathy with these great sleep-deprived women. Her personal story depicts pain, I broke my cheek bone bone, I got five stitches on my right eye,ouch! we only seem to learn the tough way. Then she backs up the story with some follow-up research. So, this happened to me, but it made me go beyond, illustrating myself with sound research so I now feel authorized to tell you why a good sleep is sound advice. A good bunch of positive adjectives the audience will surely like to feel as the definition of their lives, sort of the background music used in films to show the good moments:

And I'm here to tell you that the way to a more productive, more inspired, more joyful life is getting enough sleep.

Pause.

She certainly delivers her message: a new feminist revolution so that we women will lead the way.

We are literally going to sleep our way to the top, literally.

We are set in a time line, with a past story, that of the Titanic, which is used as a metaphor to illustrate the recent present and its catastrophic consequences. Some of the characters have been named, Lehman Brothers. Men who brag their lack-of-sleep virility. Men who have led us to colliding into a crisis of unprecendented magnitude. Those men are the villains in our story. And we must learn out of this so that it will never happen again.

So I urge you to shut your eyes and discover the great ideas that lie inside us,

to shut your engine and discover the power of sleep.

TED Talk: DON'T INSIST ON ENGLISH & a good example on how to begin & end an interesting talk.

I've been teaching a course on Presentations for the past two weeks and TED Ideas worth spreading together with Presentation Zen are two useful and enriching sources on the web to learn and illustrate any key issue regarding this skill.

There is a previous entry on my blog called Delivering a presentation where I explain the main parts of a standard presentation, so I invite you to click your way there if you would like to read more about it.

The aim of this entry is actually to draw your attention to the beginning and end of a presentation. How we should start and end our presentation cannot be neglected during the preparation stage. However interesting our talk may be, we cannot expect our audience to walk out of the room remembering all we have said. Therefore, our message needs to be clear and simple (and by ¨simple¨ I don't mean ¨simplistic¨); we must make sure that they walk out of the room with the right message and not, say, with the lovely slides we have chosen to enlighten our talk, or an anecdote we have given them and whose purpose is simply to entertain.

There are different techniques we can use to make our start. A personal anecdote, an outstanding fact, a quotation, a catchy question, a joke; these are some of the ways experienced presenters use to start off, with the hope that the audience will immediately feel they are about to listen to something well worth their time.

Likewise, we need to think of a good ending so that our audience will walk out of the room with a fulfilled feeling; the sound bite.

Patricia Ryan, an experienced English teacher in Arabic countries, delivers a remarkable talk with interesting food for thought. Her talk is called DON'T INSIST ON ENGLISH and you can watch it with subtitles in different languages apart from English. This is another good feature of Ted Talks, the talks that have been uploaded to their site can be watched with subtitles in different languages eventually.

I would like to draw your attention to the humourous way in which Ms Ryan begins her talk. She actually turns what could seem a disadvantage at first hand into an advantage. She makes fun of her age and her looks to distract the audience from a potential preconception regarding her own appearance, and she certainly succeeds. Just watch her do it!

I will not discuss the content of her talk in this entry but there is certainly a lot to say about it. Nor will I discuss her choice of slides or body language. There is no other reason that my desire to stick myself to the aim of this post.

Finally, and with regard to the way she ends her talk I will end my post by eliciting her sound bite: MIND YOUR OWN LANGUAGE, USE IT TO SPREAD GREAT IDEAS!

TO DUB OR NOT TO DUB

Today's newspaper, El País, featured an article Aprenda inglés con Brad Pitt y Angelina Jolie that I am sure has arisen many readers' remarks and opinions. This same topic crops up in my classes now and then when discussing Spanish learners' doubtful success in speaking English fluently. There seem to be many arguments to back up the poor fluency of most of my countryfolk when facing a situation in which they need to communicate in English; and among them one that is much agreed on is the fact that we watch TV and films in our mother tongue, i.e. they are dubbed, and consequently, this seems to prevent us from developing better listening and speaking skills.

Even our Minister of Education, Ángel Gabilondo, has remarked that dubbing films affects negatively in our mastering of languages. To complement the information gathered by Francesco Manetto -the author of the article-, there are two other interesting articles. One in favour of not dubbing by Fernando Galván, who writes Oído menos acostumbrado , and another one in favour of letting the viewer choose by Luis Moser-Rothschild, who writes La realidad y la libertad del espectador .

And what's my view in all this?

Well, I am more in favour of letting the viewer choose, although I do realise that being exposed to the language, English in this case, will always benefit the learning process. But, let's be realistic in all this, watching all the films and TV series in English will not guarantee that we will speak English fluently and more easily. In essence, the teaching-learning process needs to be approached in a communicative way so that the learner becomes the centre of the learning process and the teacher becomes an interlocutor, a guide, a facilator, an instructor, a trainer. Fortunately, this is happening more and more in our schools nowadays, and the aid of native-speaker assisstants provide a great support to our non-native-speaker teachers during the teaching-learning process.

Fernando Galván says that, according to a Eurostat report, half of the Spanish population between 25 and 64 cannot speak a second language, but I think we would be very simplistic if we are to blame this inability to the fact that they have not been able to watch films and TV series in the original version. There's more than that for certain. Right now, and as Luis Moser-Rothschild explains, anybody can decide whether to watch a film or their favourite TV series in the original version or dubbed, and if it isn't available, the blame should be put somewhere else.

More and more students of English are taking to this, but a setback appears eventually: they can't move a step forward which is to switch to no-subtitles, so they end up stuck in this situation. I mean, it's ok for them to watch a movie in the original version with subtitles, in Spanish first and, then, when their command of the language improves they move to English subtitles. However, they get so used to relying on this ¨scaffolding¨ that when faced with watching a movie without subtitles they simply miss a great part of it, so they back out and their frustration is initiated again. I am not saying this to support the view that not dubbing isn't effective......IT IS! but I want to make clear that dubbing is not the culprit of our poor listening skill in English. There's more to this, which I will not discuss in this post. I just wanted to offer my personal opinion on this.

On the other hand, I do think that exposing children to their favourite cartoons and other programmes in English will benefit them considerably. There is a ¨minor¨ drawback: they will not be very willing to do so because watching TV is an enterntainment for them, not a ¨class of English¨; having to read takes away most of the fun, let's face it! Thus, one almost needs to ¨force¨ them to do so. I have to do this with my 8-year-old daughter, and I must admit I'm not always successful. Mind you! Our children and youngsters listen to a lot of English in their music, so this should also count in their favour. When I hear my daughter singing an English song she likes, she gets most of the lyrics right, and she doesn't understand all of it, so something must be improving then!

Scandinavian countries are well-known for their impressive skills in speaking English as a second language. Still, let's not forget that their mother-tongues belong to the Germanic languages . Our mother-tongue belongs to the Romance languages and this should be taken into account as well, since English sounds so alien to us at the beginning. I have been told that Germany and France dub most of their films -please, correct me if I'm wrong-, and they seem to outdo us when it comes to understanding English. One nationality that I am very impressed with is the Portuguese. It is true that they do watch their programmes in the original version, so I gather this facilitates their better auditory and oral skills, but I must also say something in their favour, their vowel system is richer than ours. I will talk about this in another entry in the future.

Least but not last, Spanish dubbing has always shown great professionalism and we cannot wipe them out just because we are made to believe that they are harmful when it comes to learning English.

In conclusion, ¨to dub or not to dub¨ should not be the target on which to blame this obstacle we, Spaniards, have when using English communicatively. There is more to it than that! Having said that, we should encourage our students to watch their favourite programmes in the original version because it will certainly benefit their skills.

Listening activities for all levels

I've added a new website in the USEFUL LINKS list for all those who are interested in doing activities to improve their listening skills:

http://www.esl-lab.com/index.htm

The activities cater for all levels ranked as EASY / MEDIUM / DIFFICULT / VERY DIFFICULT so it makes it easy for the student to know where to start or which listening to pick. Besides, they are sorted out in different headings:

• General Listening Quizzes (the longest list)
• Basic Listening Quizzes
• Listening Quizzes For Academic Purposes
• 20-minute ESL Vocabulary Lessons
• Language Learning and Life Tips
• Long Conversations with RealVideo

The multiple-choice exercises designed for listening comprehension are user-friendly and dynamic with immediate feedback to check your performance. You can also read the script of the listening activity for further study.

The well-worn "brotes verdes" phrase in Spanish politics

I don't know about you but I'm getting sick and tired of the latest linguistic coinage in the Spanish discourse of politicians, political analysts and journalists in general these days. The well-worn phrase: brotes verdes can be heard or read almost anywhere, to the extent that it's becoming a cliché or a source of mockery depending on who words the phrase.

I've just googled the Spanish phrase now and I've been given 1,560,000 results, so the figure just speaks by itself.

I was chatting via twitter with Juanma Roca (please click on http://www.elreinodelahumildad.com/ if you want to know more about him and his latest book) and asked him if he knew the original English phrase, as I had already tried the literal translation from Spanish and it didn't match. I did my own research on the Internet and, bingo!!!

The English phrase is green shoots and it was Ben Bernake who used this term some time at the beginning of April. I got this info via Paul Krugman as he has a post in his blog dated, April, 16th commenting on B. Bernake's words at the time. Click on: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/opinion/17krugman.html?_r=1 if you are interested in reading more about it. You can also further your interest by clicking on:
http://www.slate.com/id/2215911/

Furthermore, you will be able to listen to the direct source here:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/03/bernanke_sees_green_shoots.html

Since I wondered if it was really B Bernake who firstly coined the phrase "green shoots", I went on with my net research and AskOxford.com supplies the precise information on http://www.askoxford.com/quotations/393?view=uk

business
The green shoots of economic spring are appearing once again. Norman Lamont 1942- : speech at Conservative Party Conference, 9 October 1991; often quoted 'the green shoots of recovery'

So it was politician Norman Lamont who coined the phrase in 1942:

Asked at his first appearance as chancellor at the Treasury Select Committee whether he agreed with his predecessor's view on the depth and duration of the recession and not wishing to contradict Major, Lamont replied that "there are reasons why one could believe that it will be relatively short-lived and relatively shallow."[11] In October 1991, based on CBI and Institute of Directors business surveys, said "what we are seeing is the return of that vital ingredient - confidence. The green shoots of economic spring are appearing once again."[12] Early in 1992 one of the Sunday newspapers ran a "Green Shoots Index" of signs of recovery, only to have to drop it when few such signs could be found. However Gavyn Davies, then chief economist at Goldman Sachs, wrote in a newspaper article at the time of Lamont's removal from the Treasury that the "green shoots" speech had turned out to be "remarkably prescient. From that moment onwards, output stopped declining, and within a few months, it started to rise.[13] Estimates of Gross Domestic Product show the trough of the recession occurring in the fourth quarter of 1991, with sustained growth resuming in the third quarter of 1992, when GDP grew 0.4% compared to the second quarter.[14]

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Lamont

Susan Boyle's Final Performance

Remember Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent?! (see past entry of 17th April)
http://talent.itv.com/videos/video/item_200287.htm

(Unfortunately, she didn't win; I got to see who the winner was "thanks" to a guy who was actually recording it from his TV set live and broadcasting it via his blog: http://www.blogtv.com/People/gerarduk Guess, he's totally oblivious of the fact that he was breaking the law)

Latest news: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/05/30/arts/AP-EU-Britain-Boyle.html?_r=1&src=twt&twt=nytimes

Judge Sonia Sotomayor's Speech

President Obama has nominated the first Hispanic woman for the Supreme Court: Sonia Sotomayor. You can read and listen* to her speech by clicking on the link below:

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1900940,00.html

For those native Spanish speakers who find the text difficult to understand because of the vocabulary, I suggest that you read about it in this article in Spanish: http://www.adn.es/sociedad/20090526/NWS-2752-Sotomayor-Supremo-Obama-Sonia-designa.html and then get back to the full text in English.

A very moving speech full of gratitude to all those that have supported her along these years so as to be who she is. I would like to quote these special words to her mother: "I stand on the shoulders of countless people, yet there is one extraordinary person who is my life aspiration. That person is my mother, Celina Sotomayor. [...] I have often said that I am all I am because of her, and I am only half the woman she is. "

In her speech Sonia Sotomayor portrays herself as a humble and hard-working person who is full aware that any decision she takes has a "real world consequence", be it in the private or the public sector, be it related to either a whole community or the individual, and this makes her a full woman in the extensive sense (if I may say this).

Last but not least, let me extract her last words as her own definition of an individual: "...I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences."

*The listening starts from paragraph 9 (I chose to be a lawyer...)

Learning is fun with RAW Skills for everyday life :O)

RAW Skills for everyday life http://www.bbc.co.uk/raw/ is a brilliant website that teaches you how to move around in everyday issues like Money, Bills, Family, Computers, work, etc., the list is long: http://www.bbc.co.uk/raw/help/topics_list.shtml

The explanations are clear, humorous and illustrative plus the added feature of subtitles for those of you who would like to do some extra listening focusing on vocabulary.

I've been watching Computer basics http://www.bbc.co.uk/raw/computers/yourcomputer/computerbasics.shtml

and Baby's arrival http://www.bbc.co.uk/raw/money/family/index.shtml

They are fun and instructive.

Have a go!!!

Appearances can be deceptive or just the opposite!!!!

Watch this youtube clip and you'll see for yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

She's awesome!!!!

"That was stunning, ...an incredible performance, ....amazing!"

"I'm so thrilled...........and I think that's the biggest wake-up call ever!"

"You can go back to the village with the head held high."

Listening&reading to a news review thanx to English Club.com

http://www.englishclub.com/listening/news.htm

I like this proposal of reviewing past news at the same time as you practise your listening & reading skills and, consequently, learn more vocabulary. The pieces of news are not very long and the pre-listening vocabulary is certainly a help. There are some comprehension questions to follow for each story, which you can tackle and contrast with the Answer Check given at the end.

The explanatory steps on how to proceed are undoubtedly useful. You can decide to do them all in one go, or one at a time along the week or the month.

I do encourage you to do them, anyhow.

An adding feature is the Guide for teachers; so if you're a teacher don't miss it.

Listen & read Obama's interview by Financial Times

Click on the following link and you can listen to Obama being interviewed by Financial Times:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5ee69cb2-1c8d-11de-977c-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
Lionel Barber, Chrystia Freeland and Edward Luce of the Financial Times interviewed President Obama in Washington on March 27 2009. This is the transcript of the interview.

It's a 20-minute interview but worth your while. I suggest following these steps as a listening&reading task:

1. Read through the text and note down any words you don't know, then find the meaning by using an online dictionary, e.g. http://www.wordreference.com/
2. Listen to the interview without reading the text; I'm sure you will be able to follow a lot.
3. Listen and read at the same time.

Listening tips

Interesting link with tips for you to improve your listening skills:

http://www.englishclub.com/listening/everywhere.htm

Furthermore, you can read while you listen ;O)

Podcasts to practise listening (& reading) skills

http://www.manythings.org/e/podcasts.html

This website offers you a variety of podcasts to download or simply to listen to by clicking the play button. This is the list:

Learn a Song Podcast

Listen and Repeat Podcast

Jokes in English

Selected MP3 Files for EFL/ESL Students

VOA's Special English Programs in a Podcast RSS Feed

Links to Other People's ESL Podcasts
20 Newest ESL Podcasts
ESL : Listening : Podcasts

How does it sound in other languages?

Would you like to have a go at languages???!!!

1. Click on the link "How does it sound in other languages?" in the Useful Links section.
2. Enter a word, a phrase, a sentence...
3. Choose a language and click on "Say it"

...........voilà!!!!

Feel like doing some English work this weekend?!

http://www.presentationzen.com/

Two entries to focus on:

1. (March 11) Text & narration on screen (with a twist)>> Interesting tips as well on how to upgrade a presentation; bit hard to read as the text scrolls up&down.


2. (March 8) If you only had a minute to pitch your story>> Do you remember that job advert that said "The best job in the world"? If you can't, click here: http://www.boingboing.net/2009/01/14/best-job-in-the-worl.html for a reminder. Well, in this entry you will be able to watch some of the author's favourites. I think they grab you and the contestants have managed to "pitch their story", indeed.

Wondering what "pitch" means in this context???? The Compact Oxford English Dictionary says: "a form of words used to persuade or influence"