CHRISTMAS FOOD.

For many people, sometimes, the most important part of Christmas is the food.
In Catalonia, there is a different food for every pointed day. On Christmas day, on 25th of December, the people start the meal eating canopés or little tapas dishes before the escudella. The three-part dish, is carn d'olla, that includes botifarra sausage and a grant meatball, wich were used to make the soup. Next, is roasted poultry such as capon, turkey or chicken. The dessert consists in torró, and tube-shaped biscuits, and of course, it's all accompanied by several glasses of cava.
The next day, on Sant Esteve, people usually eat canelons.
On New Year's Eve, the people eat 12 grapes accompany of the 12 strokes of midnight for good luck in the next year.
The last day is el dia de Reis, and the special food of this day, is kings' cake. Hidden within the cake is a king and a butter bean. Who extracts the butter bean, must pay the kings' cake the next year, and who extracts the king, will have good luck throughout whole year.

This new is extracted from the magazine Resident Costa Brava, December 2007, nº28.

NEW VOCABULARY LEARNED:
troughout: per tot.
tube-shaped biscuits: neules.
giant meatball: pilota.
butter bean: fava.

FORMAL LETTER.

54, Avinguda Onze de Setembre

Sant Pere Pescador
17470

I.E.S Castelló d'Empúries
Rentador Street
Castelló d'Empúries
17486

9th, December 2008

Dear Ms. Pintó,
I want to write a letter to you to show the negative and positive points about our school.
About the negative points, I think that the walls could be more colorful and more decorated, because everything is grey. This colour makes us pessimist when we come into the school. Maybe, if the playground was not full of sand, and was full of grass the school will be nicer.
About the positive points, I thinkt that it is a good idea the "tamagochis", because the parents of the classmates can control better his sons and daughters. About the batxillerat classes, do not have class in the afternoon is a good point, because we have more time to do our homework and study more hard.
Well, apart from negative points, I think that this school is not really bad, so it has points that will be able to change to positive and it will be better.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerly,

Laura Carrera.

MARTIN LUTHER KING'S AND OBAMA'S EXTRA POINTS.

Questions for preparing Martin Luther King's text:

1. What rigths did black people have in the UThew werSA in the 1960's?
They didn't have any rights.

2. What was "segregation"?
Black and White people must be repartated in a lot of places: buses, beaches, churchs... and when a black person was found in a place for white people, he was arrested. In the train and buses black people must leave their seat to white people.

3. What did states as Georgia, Mississippi or Alabama have in common in the 1960's?
They were segregationit states.

4. Who were the "Piligrims"?
They were the irst english people who arrived in America.

5. What is a "spiritual"?
A spiritual is a song that sing black people in their religions congregations.

VOCABULARY:
Rooted: radical
Rise up: Aixecar
Creed: creença
Hold: aguantar
Swelter: acalorar
Heat: calor
Rough: aspre
Crooked: encurvat
Straight: en línia recta
Flesh: gènere humà
Despair: desesperança
Hope: esperança


Questions for preparing Barack Obama's text:

1. When did women get the right to vote in the United States?
Women get the right to vote in 1917.

2. What was the "New Deal"?
Is an slogan used by Roasvelt as a creed in electrons in 1932.

3. Paragraph 6 refers to "the bombs" fallin on "our harbor". Which bombs and which harbor is B. Obama referring to?
Japanese bombs in Pearlt harbor.

4. What was the "Montgomery bus boycott"?
Black people didn't catch buses because police had arrested a black woman who didn't want give her seat to a white man.

5. To know who the "preacher form Atlanta" was, check.
The Preacher from Atlanta was Martin Luther King.

6. When did the Berlin wall fall down?
The Berlin wall felt down in 1989.

7. What happened in the Edmund Pettus Bridge, outside Selma, in 1965?
It was here that rights marchers were vidently confronted by law enforcement on March 7, 1965. The day became known as Bloody Sunday.

8. To understand the reference to the Birmingham hoses, check:
The Birmingham hoses were used to protect themselves from firemen with hight pressure water hoses.

VOCABULARY:

Ballot: papereta de votar
Cast a ballot: tirar el seu vot
Slavery: esclavitud
Creed: creença
Despair: desesperança
Conquer: vencer
Witness: testimoni
Preacher: predicador
Sum up: recapitular/resumir

PIRATES.

This Wednesday, an official said that an Indian warship has exchanged fire with a pirate "mother vessel" off the hijacking-plagued Horn of Africa, leaving the ship ablaze in the Gulf of Aden.
The skirmish took place Tuesday evening about 525 kilometers southwest of Oman's Salalah port.
The Saudi owners of a hijacked oil supertanker carrying an oil cargo worth up to $100 million, which pirates Tuesday anchored off the Somali coast, said they were negotiating with its captors.
The ministry said that the pirates were seen roaming on the upper deck of this vessel, with guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
On wednesday, it wasn't clear, that if the mother ship sank afther the naval fighting.
The assistant director of the International Maritime Bureau in London, said that they never seen a situation like this with the pirates.
On Tuesday, pirates hijacked a Thai fishing vessel and a Chinese-flagged Iranian cargo shio carrying wheat in the waters off the Horn of Africa.
Noel choong, said that 95 pirate attacks have taken place so far this year in the Gulf of Aden.
Of those 95, 39 resulted in successful captures; 17 of those vessels and their crews remain in the hands of the pirates (a total of about 300 sailors).
But the seizure of the 300.000-ton supertanker Sirius Star took place well sout of the gulf, in the Indian Ocean of Kenya.
Pirate attacks are spreading farther north to the Gulf of Aden and farther soutf of the Kenyan coast.

This notice is taken from this link.

NEW VOCABULARY:
Hijacking: segrestador/segrest.
Skirmish: escaramussa.
Deck: coberta del vaixell.
Vessel: embarcació.

EUROPASS LANGUAGE PASSPORT.

ORAL PRESENTATION.

TOPIC: HAPINESS.

Presentation:
1. Did you use any resources? Yes, powerpoint.
2. Were the resources relevant and attractive? Yes.

Body language and eye contact:
3. Did you look at your audience most of the time? Not most of the time, but yes.
4. Did you read from your notes? A little.
5. Did you do any gestures/movement to hold the attention of you audience? A little.

Structure:
6. Did you organize your ideas in order of importance? Yes.
7. Did you use discourse makers to make your ideas more clear? A little.

Content:
8. Did you introduce interesting, NEW information to your audience? Yes.
9. Did you look up information/facts/ideas in the Internet/books? Yes.
10. Was your information more superficial or more detailed and original? A little of everything.

Language:
11. Did you use check your grammar? Yes.
12. Did you use rich vocabulary looking up the dictionary? Yes.
13. Did you use sentence linkers? A little.
14. Did you use fillers? A little.

Pronunciation & Intonation:
15. Did you know how to pronunce all you words? Yes.
Did you check the pronunciation with a dictionary, a classmate or the teacher? Yes, all of them.
16. Did you change your tone of voice or use a monotone tone all the time? The same tone all the time.
Did you speed in a fluid continuum or with breaks and interruptions? With breaks and interruptions.

Self-Evaluation:
If I was the teacher, I would put a maximum of 6.


Write down a LITERAL TRNASCRIPTION of your presentation.
Hello, my name is Laura and I'm gonna want to speak about Hapiness. I'm the first of do the oral presentation so I'm a little nervous.
Well, I will start with the definition of happiness that it's my topic.
Hapiness is an emotion that express your feelings in a concret moment of your life with laughs and good moments.
We are sometimes happy because we like the world around us or we feel good with ourselves for example when we stay with our friends, when we pass a hard exam, when happens something that make us very satisfaid.
We can't be always in a permanent state of happiness or sadness. Our brain alows short moments of hapiness or sadness. He can't tolerate be happy or sadness forever.
As you can see in the graphic I think that it's incorrect because we can stay sad and two minutes later stat very happy... I'm not saying that it's impossible, but I don't believe in it.
I think that it's the best state of mind because you aren't happy but your aren't sad.
We can't live in a roller coaster of emotions, we need a medium state.
Usually happiness drives to the optimist. I think that it's better to be optimist than pessimist because you can look you life in another point of view and everything could be better.
If you think I can, I can, I can... you would can, and if you think I can't, I can't, I can't you would can't.
In the world, not all the countries have the same degree of happiness, as you can see in the map, the countries that have green and blue colors, are happiness than the others, like Australia, New Zeland, Canada, United States are more happiness than subdeveloped countries.
I think that the people that are from developed countries are happy because they mustn't worry about necessities like food or a place to sleep everynight.
I think that the money doesn't drive to the happines, but you feel better thinking that you mustn't worry about it.
I choose to talk about this topic because now we are in the one of the best periodes of our lives.
Because we don't have any preocupation, we must study, enjoy ourselves and be happy.

Check your Language and Structure. Can you correct your mistakes?

In my next oral presentation I think that I must be more calm, and don't be nervous.
I must look more the people that are listening me, and use more sentence linkers, more fillers...
I think that if my oral presentation was more longer, it can be better.
I believe that these are the big mistakes in my oral presentation, so in the next, I will try to improve them in the maximum as I can.

Now, if you want, you can look my PowerPoint.

HORROR STORY (CORRECTION).

Julia and Peter,they were a couple of Catalan people who went to New York for work. They spend two weeks searching a flat, but they didn't find anything. Meanwhile they stayed in a cheap hotel in the suburbs of New York, when their work was in the middle of the city.
One day, when the couple went to work, they saw in the newspaper an interesting advertising. A big flat in the centre of New York, in the most popular district, was offered for a very low price. They were surprised and they phoned to the state agent immediately.
They moved to the flat quickly, and they were very happy.
Everything began when thet went to sleep. During the night, they heard a little noise in their bedroom. the first weels, they didn't worryy about it. Every night, the sound was higher. Julia was afraid, but Peter laughed. One day, when Peter was having a shower, Julia wanted to discover the origin of the noise. She searched around the bedroom, and when she looked under the bed, she began to cry. Peter heard her, and when he wanted to went out of the bathroom, suddenly, the door was closed. He couldn't open it. Julia was crying a lot because she saw an awful elf playing with little glass balls. He looke her with eyes full of hate. she didn't stop crying, and the elf started running around and throwing the little glass balls to her. The elf put into the balls all of his hate, and they killed Julia. The elf returned under the bed and Pere could open the door. In the bedroom he saw Julia dead on the floor covered of blood.

- Words in red are those I've corrected.

THIRTEEN & ADRIAN MOLE.

About the life of the two teenagers, I think that Tracy, it's harder than Adrian Mole.
Tracy at the begining of the film, was a really good student, she had two friends, a normal friends, but later, she began to go with Evie, a false friend, because she was involved in drugs, smoke, alcohol... but Adrian, didn't change during the book. Adrian was a typical adolescent, with his problems in house, with his spots, with girlfriends... Adrian was an hypocondriac, a shy person who had bulling at school, trough the fault of Barry Kent, that hurt him.
Both have one common problem, the divorce of their parents.
Tracy, during the film suffered saveran changes, like passing of dressing as a 13-year-old girl to dress as one of 19, consuming drugs, smoking, and the worst thing: cutting herself. Tracy was anorexic.
I think that if Evie didn't appear in the Tracy's life, Tracy didn't change, because the only that Tracy wants, was be like Evie, a very beautiful girl that the boys were behind yours and have many boyfriends to choose, but the plan to being a popular girl, proved badly.
I don't know anybody who has gone through the same experiences, but if I'll see someone, I'll help him in everything that he need:)
I disagree with the sentence "If you're not that way, you're nothing", because someone can be a kind person even if he isn't a fashion victim.
I think that you don't have to do a thing that you never will do to be friend of another people, who in the end, will be harmful for you.
I don't think that Tracy is a fashion victim, I think that she does it to be a friend of Evie, like stole a purse and then bought a lot of clothes with her friends.
I think that Thirteen is a shocking film because see that a girl of thirteen years old is changing to bad, and it's starting to go with "bad" people, isn't very agreeable...
The most shocking of the film for me was when Tracy began to cut herself. I think that you must be very bad to do things like that.
Finally, I have liked both, the book and the film.
In comparision, I think that they are different points of view to see the adolescence. Thirteen it's harder than Adrian Mole, but both have problems of the adolescenthood.

ADRIAN MOLE.

Adrian Mole, is an hypochondriac adolescent.
He has many problems with his spots. He has a lot of spots, and he believes that it's for not eating vitamins.
In his spare time, he helps Bert Baxter, an old man.
Adrian is in love with Pandora, a new girl in his class. Time later, Pandora start to going out with Nigel, and Adrian is so angry, apart from that Nigel has a new bicycle, the same that Adrian wants.
His parents have a divorce. His mother go up with his neighbour, Mr.Lucas, and his father it's lonely, with he, in his house.
The father of Adrian losts his job, and they haven't any money to pay the telephone and light bills.
Adrian has problems in his school. There is a boy who hurts him; Barry Kent. He tells everything to his grandmother and his grandmother go to hurt him, and Barry Kent stops to hurt Adrian.
Nigel and Pandora have broken up, and Adrian is very happy.
His father starts to going out with Doren, who will be his girlfriend.
Adrian must go to the hospital, because he has tonsils, and he must remove it.
Adrian was a time going out with Pandora, but she wouldn't have sex with Adrian, and Adrian was worried.
Finally his parents going out again, because his mother says that Mr. Lucas treat her like a sex object, and Adrian is very happy.

E-MAIL.

Hi!
My name is Laura. Now I want to tell you my Summer.
This Summer I was working in my town, Sant Pere Pescador in a place where my family has always know called Mas Gusó.
I stayed on the bar. I did ice-creams, cocktails and prepare the drink because the waiters can serve this in the terrace.
I began to work on 1st of July and finished on 11th of September.
I enjoyed so much with the people that I worked. We went to party so much and we smiled a lot!:)
I think that fifty words are few to explain my big Summer!=)
See you.
XXX
Laura.

VITAMIN B6.

The vitamin B6, has become an increasing source for energy and to combat our stress.
If we take a lot of this vitamins, could be bad for our health, because we can reduce our touch of the hands and feet, and we could have other problems of the nervous system.
When we want to vitamin B6 in a natural way, we can find this in the pork, cereals, fish, poultry, eggs, fruits and vegetables.
If you want to take vitamin B6, be careful;)


This notice is taken from this link.

NEW VOCABULARY:
Sensory: sensorials
Widely: ampliament
Widespread: generalitzat

GOING SHOPPING.

Two friends, Laura and Laura, will go to shopping in the afternoon. They are talking by phone and meet for one hour.

[Riiiinnng, Riiiinngg]

Laura Penkert: Hello?
Laura Carrera: Hi! I'm Laura! How are you?
Laura Penkert: Oh, very well, and you?
Laura Carrera: Good as well. I wanted to ask you if you want come shopping this afternoon with me.
Laura Penkert: Yes, of course! I wasn't doing anything today! What time?
Laura Carrera: Mmm... I don't know... at four?
Laura Penkert: Ok! Let's meet at the bus station.
Laura Carrera: Yes, see you later!
Laura Penkert: Bye!

[...] One and a half hour later...

Laura Carrera: Laura! I'm here!
Laura Penkert: Oh! Sorry... I'm a bit late, did you have to wait for a long time?
Laura Carrera: Don't worry! I've just arrived.
Laura Penkert: Well, let's look what the new fashion is!
Laura Carrera: Ok, where shall we start?
Laura Penkert: Let's just keep going.

[...] When they are walking around the city...

Laura Carrera: Oh! Look at this t-shirt! I really like it! Let's go into the shop!
Laura Penkert: Yes, I love it to! Laura, Laura! Come! Look at this. Do you think that this trousers would suit me?
Laura Carrera: Yes, of course! Go and try them on!
Laura Penkert: And you take the t-shirt!
Laura Carrera: You look wonderful with this trousers Laura! You must buy them!
Laura Penkert: And I love your t-shirt as well. ;)
Laura Carrera: Let's pay and go to another shop.

[...] After to pay, when they are walking...

Laura Penkert: We don't need to go into this one. Everything is too trendy. I don't like it!
Laura Carrera: Yes, we must! I love this brand and this type of clothes!
Laura Penkert: If you want it...
Laura Carrera: I'm going to buy this trousers and this two sweatshirts.
Laura Penkert: You are mad! How can you spend so much money on this horrible things?
Laura Carrera: Don't complain my style please!
Laura Penkert: Ok, sorry, but now, let's go and drink something. It's enought shopping for today.
Laura Carrera: Good, I'm thirsty too and I'm happy with my new clothes.

HAPINESS.

Only we could see some 25-30 minutes of the movie.
Hapiness isn't a movie with a plot or a story that happens.
There are several cases that happen in a life day every day. Problems in house, with family, whith friends, work...
There were several cases, one, was a marriage that wanted to divorce, another was a manifestation of a company worker, another was the death of a friend of one block of flats and there was a girl that was in love with him.
This films was some bored, I prefer the films that happens a story, and for choose, a comedy story.

THE STORY OF CHUPA CHUPS.

Enric Bernat, a Catalan confectioner, invented the "sweet ball on a stick". At the begining, he called it GOL, but later became Chups and more later, thanks to a jingle, became Chupa Chups.
Chupa Chups was sold in 168 countries, and was the best bussines of Catalonia. Enric Bernet, sold his bussines for 40.000 milion of € to an italian company.
The daisy logo was crated by Salvador Dalí in 1969.
Chupa Chups started with 18 grams, but in 1970, slimmed down to 12 grams.
The famous lollipop have 127 flavours. Strawberry is the most popular flavour worldwide. Other flavours are Cola, Peach, Kiwi, Passion fruit, Blueberry...
In 1965, the company used milk for the production of the Strawberry Cream flavour. In the past six years, they invented a Chupa Chups sugar-free, called Cremosa, and Relax Chupa Chups with contains herbal extracts of lemon balm and flowers.
The company, participed in campaigns with SEAT, FC Barcelona...

This article is taken form the magazine's President of the March 2008 (number 31)

NEW VOCABULARY:
Worldwide: arreu del món
Aghast: horroritzat
Slightly: lleugerament
Struggling: lluitar contra un contrincant
Well focused: donar-li atenció
Whooping: enorme
Geard: preparat específicament(en aquest cas)
Pinched: robar
However: per descomptat

AN HORROR STORY.

Julia and Pere were a couple of catalan people who went to New York for work. They spend two weeks searching a flat, but they didn't find nothing. Meanwhile they stayed in a cheap hotel in the suburbs of New York, when their work was in the middle of the city.
One day, when the couple went to work, they saw in the newspaper an interesting advertising. A big flat in the center of the city, in the most popular city district, was offered for a very low price. They were surprised and they phoned to the state agend immediately.
They moved to the flat quickly, and they were very happy.
Everything began when they went to sleep. During the night, they heard a little noise in their bedroom. The first weeks, they didn't worry about it. Every night, the sound was higher. Julia was afraid, but Pere laughed . One day, when Pere was having a shower, Julia wanted to discover the origin of the noise. She searched around the bedroom, and when she looked under the bed, she began to cry. Pere heard her, and when he wanted to went out of the bathroom, suddenly, the door was closed. He couldn't open it. Julia was crying a lot because she saw an awful elf playing with little glass balls. He looked her with eyes full of hate. She didn't stop to cry, and the elf started to run around and threwing the little glass balls to her. The elf put into the balls all of his hate, and they killed Julia. The elf returned under the bed and Pere could open the door. In the bedroom he saw Julia dead on the floor covered of blood.