domenica 15 maggio 2011

Conditionals 3

"Who Knew" P!nk

2nd type
3rd type


You took my hand
You showed me how
You promised me you'd be around
Uh huh
That's right
I took your words
And I believed
In everything
You said to me
Yeah huh
That's right

If someone said three years from now
You'd be long gone
I'd stand up and punch them up
Cause they're all wrong
I know better
Cause you said forever
And ever
Who knew

Remember when we were such fools
And so convinced and just too cool
Oh no
No no
I wish I could touch you again
I wish I could still call you friend
I'd give anything 

When someone said count your blessings now
For they're long gone
I guess I just didn't know how
I was all wrong
They knew better
Still you said forever
And ever
Who knew

Yeah yeah
I'll keep you locked in my head
Until we meet again
Until we
Until we meet again
And I won't forget you my friend
What happened

If someone said three years from now
You'd be long gone
I'd stand up and punch them out 

Cause they're all wrong and
That last kiss
I'll cherish
Until we meet again
And time makes
It harder
I wish I could remember
But I keep
Your memory
You visit me in my sleep
My darling
Who knew
My darling
My darling
Who knew
My darling
I miss you
My darling
Who knew
Who knew

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJWIbIe0N90

Conditionals 2

2nd type
3rd type


"One of us" Joan Osborne

If God had a name, what would it be
And would you call it to his face
If you were faced with him in all his glory
What would you ask if you had just one question
And yeah yeah God is great yeah yeah God is good
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home
If God had a face what would it look like
And would you want to see
If seeing meant that you would have to believe
In things like Heaven and in Jesus and the Saints and all the Prophets
And yeah yeah God is great yeah yeah God is good
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home
He's trying to make his way home
Back up to Heaven all alone
Nobody calling on the phone
Except for the Pope maybe in Rome
And yeah yeah God is great yeah yeah God is good
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home
Just trying to make his way home
Like a holy rolling stone
Back up to Heaven all alone
Just trying to make his way home
Nobody calling on the phone
Except for the Pope maybe in Rome

Describing graphs (2)

The chart shows that there is a high variance of people using London Underground depending on the time in which they’re travelling.
We can see three peaks: one at 8:00, then at 14:30 and the last one at 18:30 and they obviously coincide with the office timing; opening, lunch break and closing.
10:00, 16:00 and then 20:00 are the hours in which people use less the undergroung probably because in reference to the first two hours mentioned everyone is working at these time, while talking about 20:00 everyone has reached home.
Another increase, not really significant, is recorded at 21:00.

Describing graphs (1)

Both the graphs give us an idea of how much overseas visitors have risen throughout the years.
The line graph suggests that in 2005 there are almost 20 millions more people than in 1975 who chose Australia as their destination, and we can see that the trend has always been growing.
Looking at the “total” of the second graph ,the table, we can find the same result because it shows the difference in the number of visitors for each country from 1975 to 2005; infact this chart explains in detail where the largest number of visitors comes from, that is to say Japan and South Corea.
In contrast only few people from the USA and China(respectively 1.1 and 0.8 millions) decided to travel to Australia.

Key word transformations

New expression:
-to place the blame on: to say it is sb/sth's fault if sth has happend
                                  "Joe has placed the blame for the accident on Sarah".


While I had some problems at choosing the right order of words in the sentence e.g.:
-Do you have any objection to me coming over to see you later?
-When you have made up your mind what you want to do please let us know.
link to the exercise: http://www.flo-joe.co.uk/cae/students/tests/strtest1.htm

Second exercise http://www.flo-joe.co.uk/cae/students/tests/strtest3.htm
New expressions:
-to be taken aback: "He was taken aback by Mary's arrival."
-to take the wrong turning: "I was sure we had taken the wrong turning but I didn't want to contradict him."
-to lose track of sth: "I lost track of the time."

OPEN CLOZE

As I tried to complete the "open cloze" exercise I found some problems from the 8th gap on.
I think my mistakes are due to the fact that I should do more reading rather than listening to songs or watching movies, interviews, because when I hear someone speaking in English my priority is to recognize key words not all the words in a sentence.
link to the exercise: http://www.flo-joe.co.uk/cae/students/tests/ocltst3.htm

The second exercise was easier to complete:
 http://www.flo-joe.co.uk/cae/students/tests/ocltst2.htm

Third exercise
new words:
-far afield: adverb, same meaning of e.g. far away
http://www.flo-joe.co.uk/cae/students/tests/ocltst1.htm

martedì 10 maggio 2011

Evaluation of the presentation

Today, May 10th 2011, I did a presentation with my colleague Marta about the French economical crisis.
As our colleagues said the strenghts of our presentation were that it was easy to follow and understand I think especially because we exposed at the beginning its three main points and we didn't lose them throughout the
speech.
Maybe sometimes we didn't keep the eye contact and speaking about me I can say that even if I repeated my part at home I didn't feel very comfortable once I had to speak to my audience so sometimes I got lost through the presentation and had to search on my paper where I was.
I also had some problems with the pronunciation and my intonation wasn't that good while reading.
Our colleagues asked us a question and we answered it without any problem.
For the future I'll use clue cards so I hope I won't read no more.

Questions from: http://www.uefap.com/speaking/exercise/speakex.htm