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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4CRkpBGQzU

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.

Image at: http://www.ielts-exam.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=167&Itemid=32

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.

 Image at: http://www.ielts-exam.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=184&Itemid=32

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

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

TheNewYorkTimes interview to Julianne Moore

Julianne Moore's red hair is unmistakable even in a black and white video  and she knows that since she remembers how her first director warned her that sometimes she would have been casted for particular roles because of her hair.

As an actress she developed the conception  that behaviour is something mutable and you can change it depending on where you are; so there's no one way to do anything, it depends on where you are, on the rules of the community in which you are.

She met Tom Ford in 1998 and he made her a beautiful black dress for the Oscar which she still keeps.

She always plays tragic roles but not for lack of trying to do comedy but "because people think of me as a tragic bore" she says.

link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecDKIB55vOI&feature=BFa&list=SL&index=9

Conditionals

Conditionals from the article : http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/mar/18/what-if-star-wars-never-existed 

-How would cinema have been affected had Akira Kurosawa made it as a painter and never made Seven Samurai? What if the 1998 best picture Oscar had gone not to Shakespeare in Love, but Gummo?(2 type)


-And, more particularly, how the next few months might look had the one movie that changed studio films forever not had the chance to do so. In short, where would we be now had there never been a Star Wars?(3/2 type)


-Harrison Ford, for example, would have stuck with his carpentry, turning out 34 years' worth of occasional tables and leaving Blade Runner to have starred, as was long mooted, Dustin Hoffman or Burt Reynolds.(3 type)


-Free of the dead hand of typecasting, meanwhile, Mark Hamill would have frolicked into the sunlit professional uplands and claimed roles in Apocalypse Now and Raging Bull.(3 type)


-In a Star Wars-less history, for instance, sci-fi and fantasy would never have so momentously interbred, the latter remaining the preserve of Krull and The Dark Crystal rather than some of the last two decades' most profitable franchises.(3 type)


-But even that's rivalled for impact by the disappearance from cinema of the man who by his own account would have stayed a truck driver without having seen Lucas's opus: James Cameron.(3 type)


- Because there is a school of thought that goes thus: had all that swords-and-sorcery-in-space not corrupted the average filmgoer, the golden second age of Hollywood that was the pre-Star Wars 1970s would have just kept on trucking, with Terrence Malick, Hal Ashby and Robert Altman dominating the screen into the 80s.(3 type)


- Without Star Wars, we wouldn't have all the faux-religiosity and Yoda impressions, but George Lucas wasn't the first mogul to milk a cash cow.(3/2 type)


-And the terrifying thing here is that, even without all the merchandising and fanboys, I wonder if the whole creaking edifice of cinema might not have come crashing down sometime between 1977 and now.(3 type)


-Indeed, it seems to me that the original Star Wars fans and their Comic-Con descendants would, without Lucas, have never come to the movies at all, drawn instead to a full-time relationship with comics and games – and that film, with all the wily survival skills of a survivor from the fag-end of the 19th century, evolved in order to take their money.(3 type)


-Without which, let's face it, the real alternate history may have been a sea of boarded up cinemas, and in the final analysis even less chance of catching a good movie than you'll have this summer.(3 type)

Vocabulary from "Pretty woman" (the restaurant scene)

Rumors : -information that is  passed from one person to another and may not be true

             -“Many rumors are flying around President private life”

Snails: -a small creature with a long soft body and no legs that has a round shell on its back

Delicacy: -a rare or expensive kind of food

                   “snails are considered a delicacy”

Sell off the pieces: -to sell things quickly and cheaply

                             -“the shop is closing and selling everything off at half price”

Shipyard: -a place where ships are built or repaired

Slippery:  -smooth or wet and difficult to hold, walk on etc.

                 -“a slippery mountain path”

Watch out: -to be careful and pay attention, because something unpleasant might happen

                   -“Watch out! You might cut yourself!”

Tear sth/sb apart: -to destroy something or someone

Napkin: -a small piece of cloth or paper, used for protecting your clother and cleaning your hands while eating

                           “Rich people throw their napkins a lot”

Relic: -an old custom idea or thing that still exists

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkKviMfi24s&feature=related

Five minutes vision of "The Holiday":vocabulary

to rephrase: -to say or write something in different words so that its meaning is clearer
                  -"Let me rephrase the question"


to win sb over: -to persuade someone to support you, agree with you, or like you
                       - "The President managed to win over his critics"


to stand in line:-synonymous of "to queue"
                      -"I stood in line at FedEx to make sure she got her present on time"


to join a gym:-to become a member of a gym
                    -"It doesn't matter how many gym you join..."


to get over somebody:-to forget somebody who hurt you in the past
                                  -"So that's why you've joined here? You're getting over somebody?"

link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnnHO6mgr7U

Mr Porter’s new theory

Michael Porter, a well known business man for his theories such as the “5 forces analysis” and his successful 18 books, exposes nowdays an idea which doesn’t seem very convincing : the one of the “shared values”.

It is undeniable that the three main points of this theory (the creation of market “ecosystems”, the need for firms to expand their value chains and the creation of new industrial clusters), can be useful to overcome the financial crisis we’re facing but it’s also true that if Mr porter isn’t going to work more on his idea it will probably keep a lot of flaws.

Source: http://www.economist.com/node/18330445