KEY to Song YOU GOTTA BE

a bad
b bold
c wiser
d hard
e tough
f stronger
g cool
h calm

1 holds
2 fears
3 cry
4 read
5 view
6 to
7 face


2 lovers they may cause you tears
3 Don't be ashamed to cry
4 Herald what your mother said; Read the books your father read
5 Some may have more cash than you
6 Others take a different view
7 time asks no questions; leaving you behind if you can't stand the pace

KEY to Grammar Bank 1B

Student's Book p.132

a.                    1. isn´t   2. Did    3. didn´t 4. Would             5. does                6. Has   7. won´t 8. Can´t

b.                   1.am             2. Isn´t         3. Is              4. Don´t                       5. Have         6. Haven´t                 7. have          8. don´t        9. do             10. don´t       11. do            12. would

Septic Peg

PERSONALITY

Some interesting links on PERSONALITY:

• Learning English CROSSWORD Adjectives of Personality

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/quizzes/crossword/121019_crossword_personality.shtml

• Learning English QUIZNET Adjectives describing Character

http://www.bbc.co.uk/apps/ifl/worldservice/quiznet/quizengine?quiz=1542_adjectives

Graphology

To find out more information about GRAPHOLOGY and how it can be used, visit http://www.britishgraphology.org/

Handwriting Personality Quiz

What does your handwriting say about YOU?

Spanish news in English

El Pais in English 

Elder vs Older/Elder vs Eldest

There are four items: Older, Oldest, Elder and Eldest.

The difference between Older and Oldest, and between Elder and Eldest is obviously that the ones that end in -er are comparatives whereas the forms that end in -est are superlatives. The difference between Older and Elder, and between Oldest and Eldest is not so obvious, but Use of English says that the ones starting with an E- are limited to talking about people and, most commonly, about family members. In contrast, the forms starting with an O- are most generally used:

My elder/older sister lives in that building over there. The building is the oldest/eldest in the area.

Also, the E- forms are used as an adjective before the noun whereas the O- forms are not restricted to a prenominal position. This is a very important difference.

My sister is older/elder than me.

Elder can also be used as a noun; it's a historical term to describe the wise old people of a tribe or settlement:
The village elders discussed the problem.

The other choice is that of deciding whether to say my elder sister or my older sister. In theory, that depends on the number of sisters you have and who you are referring to. If you have just the one sister, you'd refer to her as your elder sister. BUT if you have, let's say, two sisters who are older than you, and you talk about your eldest sister, that would be the one that was born first, your elder sister being the one born between her and yourself. 

I've got two sisters who are older than me. My sister Ana is my eldest sister. My sister Cristina is my elder sister. Ana was born, then Cristina, then me.

You see? That's in theory. In practice, they're pretty much interchangeable when talking about family.
And in any case, most native speakers would talk about "my big sister" (meaning older than me) or "my little brother" (meaning younger than me).

Guía de acceso a PASEN

En http://www.eoicordoba.es/PASEN/guiapaseneoico.pdf podéis acceder a la Guía de acceso a PASEN. Puede ser de utilidad para alumnos, padres... que se den de alta por primera vez este año.

On COLLOCATIONS

Last week we did some class work on word pairs and collocations. Collocations are words that "collocate" together: they usually come as a pair and it is important to learn these word chunks as lexical units as it will make a huge difference to how natural you sound when speaking English. So, whenever you learn a new word in English, try to learn the words that go together with it at the same time. For instance, we Spanish "ponemos la mesa". But do English-speaking people "put the table"? I don't think so! I don't mean that they're lazy and don't do any housework: the problem here is that the collocation is different in English and in Spanish. It would then be advisable to learn the words together "to lay the table" or "to set the table" so as to avoid making this kind of mistake. Try to make a concious effort in the future to make note of these collocations whenever you are learning a new word. Do not learn new words, learn new word chunks! By the way, do you "do an effort" or "make an effort"?

There is a dictionary which is very helpful to become aware of common collocations. It is the OXFORD Dictionary of Collocations, which looks like this:

You can find the online version, which is free, here: 5yiso.appspot.com Look up "effort" and answer my question above, or just re-read this entry to find out.

Along the same lines, there is a series of self-study books by Cambridge for those of you who want to put some extra work into your studies. It's called English Collocations in Use. Units are classified by theme:

Sex and the city - Speed dating

Key to HW Grammar Bank 1A

1. Do you ever send text messages? 2. When was the last time you went to a party? 3. Could you tell me if there is a bank near here? 4. Who usually cooks the dinner? 5. Who do you like going shopping with? 6. What don´t you like doing at the weekend? 7. What kind of car would you like to buy? 8. Do you know what time the concert finishes?

1. Do you do 2. wrote 3. this book costs (cost) 4. happens (happened) 5. Did you enjoy 6. does Tim usually listen to 7. stole (hast stolen) 8. the swimming pool opens (opened) 9. are you meeting (are you going to meet) 10. she lives

The Guardian Q & A series

Every week the British newspaper, The Guardian, chooses people who have been in the news recently, and publishes a short interview with them called Q & A: The Guardian Q & A series

Romeo and Juliet - The balcony scene.wmv

Romeo & Juliet - Balcony Scene

Howdyusay...?

How do you say...?

Spanish and English are two very different types of language, and this is especially true when it comes to pronunciation. In Spanish, we hit all the words as they come out in a sentence. However, in English, some words are more important than others. The words that are important are called strong words.The words that are not as important are called weak words. Sometimes words have a strong form and a weak form depending on whether we pronounce them in context or in isolation, fast or slowly.
In general, we could say that when a not-so-important word is pronounced fast and in context, the weak form appears because the word is linked to the word that precedes or follows it. A typical example is the auxiliary word have. If you pronounce it together with, for instance, the modal verb might, the slow pronunciation of MIGHT HAVE would be very different from the fast pronunciation, where linking between the two words happens (a phenomenon that in Linguistics is called liaison) and a weak form of have appears. 
To help you learn this difference, there is a free online talking dictionary of English pronunciation on howjsay.com. Type the words MIGHT HAVE in the search box and see what happens.