Fourth Thursday of November

Thanksgiving USA

The American Thanksgiving holiday began as a feast of thanksgiving in the early days of the American colonies almost four hundred years ago.

In 1620, a boat filled with more than one hundred people sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to settle in the New World. This religious group had begun to question the beliefs of the Church of England and they wanted to separate from it. The Pilgrims settled in what is now the state of Massachusetts. Their first winter in the New World was difficult. They had arrived too late to grow many crops, and without fresh food, half the colony died from disease. The following spring the Iroquois Indians taught them how to grow corn (maize), a new food for the colonists. They showed them other crops to grow in the unfamiliar soil and how to hunt and fish.

In the autumn of 1621, bountiful crops of corn, barley, beans and pumpkins were harvested. The colonists had much to be thankful for, so a feast was planned. They invited the local Indian chief and 90 Indians. The Indians brought deer to roast with the turkeys and other wild game offered by the colonists. The colonists had learned how to cook cranberries and different kinds of corn and squash dishes from the Indians. To this first Thanksgiving, the Indians had even brought popcorn.

In following years, many of the original colonists celebrated the autumn harvest with a feast of thanks. After the United States became an independent country, Congress recommended one yearly day of thanksgiving for the whole nation to celebrate. George Washington suggested the date November 26 as Thanksgiving Day. Then in 1863, at the end of a long and bloody civil war, Abraham Lincoln asked all Americans to set aside the last Thursday in November as a day of thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday of November, a different date every year. The President must proclaim that date as the official celebration.

In 1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt set it one week earlier. He wanted to help business by lengthening the shopping period before christmas. Congress ruled that after 1941 the 4th Thursday in November would be a federal holiday proclaimed by the President each year.

For "Symbols of Thanksgiving" and more info:
http://www.crewsnest.vispa.com/thanksgivingusa.htm

A man sleeping in a Mexican airport for three months

Listen to this surprising story (I think we also had a similar case in Barajas Airport, Spain) and try to give some reasons why this men could be sleeping in an airport for so long? Do you think he could have any family? Money? Crazy? On the other hand, could be somebody left out from an airport in these conditions? What do you think?

meals

jajajaj

Yesterday, Nov 11th. Poppy Day?

Find Out Why People Wear Poppies In November...

You might have noticed that in November each year many people wear bright red paper poppies.
What are the poppies for?
And why November? Read on to find out…
Why are these poppies so special?


The First World War finally ended after four long and bloody years of fighting, on November 11 1918. The guns stopped on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

Millions of people were killed in the war and millions more were injured. In the years since 1918, even more people have died in wars around the world including, of course, World War Two.

November 11 was chosen back in 1919 as the special day each year when we would all think about and remember those who had died. To this day, almost 100 years later, at 11am on November 11 many people across Britain stay silent for two minutes to think about those who died.



The picture shows the two minute silence taking place high up on the London Eye.

All pictures:Courtesy of The Royal British Legion.

At first, November 11 was known as Armistice Day because 'armistice' is the word used for an agreement between enemies to stop fighting. These days it is more usually called Remembrance Day or Poppy Day.

So, we know why November 11 is special, but why poppies? The story begins back in 1915, during World War One…

These poppies are growing wild at Gallipoli, scene of an awful battle in 1915.


Keep on reading: http://www.show.me.uk/site/news/STO521.html

Could the crisis affect Spanish tourism?

Crisis, crisis, crisis.... is all you can read and listen these days in the news, the streets, the market... But, what about tourism? What about our tourism? Do you think there will be a crisis also in Spanish tourism? Do you think there could be some kind of change of preferences?

Have a look at this rather optimist article and try to give your opinion using the writing gidelines found in page 42 from your book.

Software developers vs language teachers?

According to the following quote from Mike Levy (1997:1):

Developers in user-friendly human-computers interfaces and higher-level languages and authoring systems insulate the developer from the lower level workings of the computer, allowing comparatively complex applications to be written with relative ease.

Do you actually think that applications to create quizzes like "Hotpotatoes" are perfectly easy and intuitive to use stuff for language teachers or they need some special training and knowledge to use them?

Use the comments button to answer to this question either in English or Spanish.

REMEMBER REMEMBER THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER…

Who are they?


What does this bonfire mean?



Who is this guy here?





Remember, remember the fifth of November,
gunpowder, treason and plot,
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes,
’twas his intent
to blow up the King and the Parliament.
Three score barrels of powder below,
Poor old England to overthrow:
By God’s providence he was catch’d
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, make the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
Hip hip hoorah!
A penny loaf to feed the Pope.
A farthing o’ cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down.
A faggot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar.
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head.
Then we’ll say ol’ Pope is dead.
Hip hip hoorah!
Hip hip hoorah!

(Source: http://mildcolonialboy.wordpress.com/2007/11/05/remember-remember-the-fifth-of-november/ )




Tell us if you have heard of this man, about gunpowder,treason and plot, etc.

What do you think of Guy Fawkes?

Do some listening too:

· if you have 2 minutes only and want a funny one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2stU2AGrSy4

· if you have 6 minutes, give us your opinion on:
http://crackle.com/c/How_To/Guy_Fawkes_fireworks/1621672

· if you have 7 minutes, give us your opinion on:
http://video.google.es/videosearch?q=guy+fawkes&hl=es&emb=0&aq=-1&oq=#

· if you have 28 minutes, try BBC’s (and then write!!) :
http://video.google.es/videoplay?docid=- 1784792634788226531&ei=IDcGSeOoIJHS2gLkg8AM&q=guy+fawkes&hl=es

BOO!

Halloween is round the corner, are you going to be a part of it?? Will you be a witch or a scarecrow? A black cat? Will you try Trick or Treat?
Carve a pumpkin? Listen: http://www.expertvillage.com/video/43280_creative-pumpkin-carving-weapons.htm
Why do you think Halloween has become so popular in Spain?
Have you heard of Samain as well?
We are looking forward to reading your comments. Boo!

Are you prepared for the new academic year?

You have been on holiday, and then after some exams, here we are, waiting for the next academic year to begin. At the beginning of a new course as well as the beginning of a new year people make lists of good intentions. Have you got one for this new course we are about to begin? Tell us about it.

Or you can tell us about your holidays. I've been to Italy and I have to say it's fantastic: the Roman ruins, the churches, the squares, the museums, and also the weather. Where have you been this summer?

Famed El Bulli chef Ferran Adria accused of 'poisoning' his diners - Telegraph

Famed El Bulli chef Ferran Adria accused of 'poisoning' his diners - Telegraph



As you may have read in the news this week, a very famous Spanish cooker, Santi Santamaría, has accused one of his colleagues, the also well-known Ferran Adria, of using dangerous product to created his most sophisticated dishes. This information has been transformed into articles like this one, found in the Daily Telegraph.

Do you think this kind of articles could damage the good image of Spanish gastronomy?

Visual Dictionary Online

Most of the times, you will need to use vocabulary related to architecture when trying to describe a monument from the place where you live. Here you are a very good visual dictionary which also includes the pronunciation of every word found in the picture (Am En).

This image is just an example, but you could also find other sections related to other units from our course, such as transport, leisure, gastronomy, etc.

Reading and Listening News in very simple English

I received today this recommendation from one of the collaborators in this website. It has a section devoted to offer very simple texts dealing with news, some of them, like this section, having to do with travel and tourism.

Simple English News - Travel

Of course our texts are much more difficult than these, but try to read them (and listen) very carefully paying attention to the structures and order or elements in the sentences. This could be a good help for you to write better compositions in the exam.

Would you like to have all your words to learn well-pronounced?

Have a look at this website and you'll see how easy is to listen all the words you want to hear pronounced by an English native speaker. First, try to find out some words related to tourism that you don't know how to pronounce (for instance). Then, register and try to add you own categories!!

Forvo: the pronunciation guide. All the words in the world pronounced by native speakers

After that, leave a message telling us if you enjoyed the experience!!

BBC devotes a whole serie of programmes to the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla

Listen to the following audio introduction about his life:

BBC - Radio 3 - Composer of the Week - Part One

Pay attention to the way the presenter describe his life, and try to do the same in the exam if you are asked to describe a monument along with the life of any relevant person who could have lived there.

After that, you could go on listening to this great music composed by Falla! By the way, do you like Falla's music?

Holy Week task

Imagine that you are working in a travel agency in London and you have been paid to promote the Holy Week in Andalucía, Spain. One of your clients was very interested on knowing what's a "paso de Semana Santa". Have a look to this link to learn somevocabulary on this topic and answer this question using "commments" button. Try also to contextualize it by telling more things about this festivity in Spain.

Find the difference...

BBC - London - Travel - Heathrow Terminal 5

Did you know that London has just opened a new terminal in Heathrow airport? Have a look at this BBC article and try to write differences and similarities with the new Terminal 4 opened last year in Badrid, Barajas.

Unit 6. Cultural Tourism task

and... spiritual tourism, why not? Did you know that this is nowadays one of the most demanded tourist products to get relaxed? In Spain, also, we are lucky to enjoy culture and relaxation at the same time with this kind of tourism, since most our our monasteries are Romanesque jewel of our history.



In order to do this task, go to page 106 from your book and read the instructions to write a good description of a monument. After that, visit some websites dealings with monasteries to be used as lodging for tourist to relax and try to describe to a future client what they will find in that "special hotel".

Here you are some webs to get information:

http://www.forbestraveler.com/resorts-hotels/spanish-monasteries-story.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17500498/

http://www.abadiadesilos.es/hospederia.htm

http://www.abadiamontserrat.net/castellano/index.htm

http://www.monestirs.cat/monst/conca/co22pobl.htm

and this one to remember some knowledge on the Romanesque art:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanesque_architecture

Of course, if you find more website add them here.

** Don't forget to use the comments option to do your task ;)

Birth of a company

Have you created a company? If so, congratulations, otherwise you can learn something about how to do it or just make some comments about it, on this blog http://birthofacompany.blogspot.com/.

This is a blog from one of you partners. He's trying to create a company, so he's divided the process in several steps. Oscar is writing about each step. If you thing he is right or not, write a comment on his blog. If you have a different opinion about the process, tell it to him. This is a good opportunity for you to write in English about something very important for you: your future job.

Don't be shy! This is good for you.

Remember you can find other students or teachers' blogs in the links on your right. Try some of them!

Resort Tourism

"A resort is a place used for relaxation or recreation, attracting visitors for holidays or vacations. Resorts are places, towns or sometimes commercial establishment operated by a single company. Such a self-contained resort attempts to provide for most of a vacationer's wants while remaining on the premises, such as food, drink, lodging, sports, entertainment, and shopping. The term "resort" sometimes is misused to identify a hotel that does not provide the other amenities required of a full resort. However, a hotel is frequently a central feature of a resort, such as the Grand Hotel at Mackinac Island, Michigan. A resort is not merely a commercial establishment operated by a single company, although in the late twentieth century this sort of facility became more common".

Do you like this kind of tourism? or Have you been a very special resort? Tell us about it.

Discover the real Spain - Travel - Independent.co.uk

Read the following article from the Independent and try to do the written task proposed in this post...

Discover the real Spain - Travel - Independent.co.uk

But, What's the real Spain according to us, Spanish people? Imagine that you need to write a guide about your own town or city. What landmarks would you recommend and why?

Use the comments links to do this task and don't forget to leave a link to the landmark you could like to recommend in your guide...

Video instructions to build a sand castle

Unit 6 deals with cultural tourism and everything this implies. This video will let you learn and revise vocabulary related to the parts of a building in a very curious way... Watch it, and after that use the comments button to write the words you've learned thank to this video related to architecture.



By the way... did you like it? ;)

Practice your listening!

Unfortunately, there is no way by now to practice our listening skills in this course so that they could be evaluated later. However, you know you can always find several links in our online course to listen either to real English or adapted on your own.

Trying to find something else, I came across this fantastic blog. I have added it to the links (feeds) on the right, so that you could download mp3 to listen away from your computer or do it at the exactly same time your read the same text on the screen.

Blogs Becoming Regular Reading for Business Travelers

Do you agree with this article? Are you one of those professionals who uses Blogs as a mean to be informed? Did to get shocked when reading this headline? Do you think that blogs are a good profitable thing for professionals of the tourism industry?

Have a look at the ones proposed here in the article and leave here your impressions. Would you use blogs from now on-wards in your daily work?

What's that little orange square on the right?

What this very short video and, after that, if you don't catch what's the meaning of those little orange squares, let me know, please... (using the comments button)

Those "headlines" on the right...

As I can guess from the activity in the last poll that I added here in this blog, I realize that you don't know exactly what are the links on the right. Well. Most of the most famous British and American newspapers have a specialized section on "travels and tourism".

What I did was including feeds from all these important publications (The Times on line, The Independent, The Guardian, The New York Times, etc...) so that you don't have to visit all those pages in order to look for articles dealing with tourism.

This way, articles will go to in real "fresh" English you and won't have to look for specialized text to improve your reading any more. But not only updated articles will be shown here in this blog using this method, also video (National Geographic) and audio archives could be listened and archived in your hard disk or mp3 player so that you could listen in the underground or by car...

You will find too feed to pages to learn English such as the one from the BBC or ESL About English

Talking about travels...

For those of you who want to practice listening and speaking in an asynchronous way, here you are this useful blog with voice to practice different languages. This link leads you to the "travel section", but you could find many more there...

You could also participate as tourism professionals to be and answering questions shown there by people!

Do you like "wiking"?

If you like this way of publishing, why don't to collaborate with wikitravel ? As you can see, you could just read articles in many languages, buy why not writing about the place where you live? It would be a good way to practice your English...There is also an incredible section devoted to "tourism topics" perfect for you to practice before the exam!! Have a look at travel topics!

A good way to compare linguistic structures....

Islamic Tourism Magazine

Today, I had the intention to suggest you to write a text in relation to the pilgrimage to the Mecca, but I found something better. It is website written in diferent languages (Spanish English and French among others) which is perfect for you to contrast grammar structure in two languages. Remember that one of the worst errors that you have with writing in a foreing language is traying to translate directly from your mother tongue, so that you get a text full of wrong built structures. You may find some fragments or text which are not literal translations of the other language version, that could be due to cultural or pragmatic reasons. Pay attention to this point too.

Will we have food enough in the future?

Last evening, I met I girl who told me she became vegetarian two weeks ago. I asked her: "why?" Are you sure you will survive in Spain without eating meat, the delicous cured ham? She replied that it was a question of ethics. It was a reason that I could understand at the begining, but then I did more or less. Now, I can understand it better with the help of articles and videos like these. I am still thinking of all that...

Is Europe a country?