What's your limit?

Thursday, March 21st, 2013 - What’s your limit?

Did you know that speaking and listening in a foreign language for long periods of time can be mentally exhausting, especially if you are not reasonably fluent?

Each learner has a limit: they are able to hold an everyday conversation with a native speaker for at least 8 to 10 minutes. What kind of topics would an everyday conversation include?

Question: Can you think of other verbs to substitute “hold” in the phrase “hold a conversation”?

But when the discussion starts to extend to more serious and dense topics: that’s when learners start feeling one of the following:

the words don’t come

the mind goes blank

the language sounds unnatural

the speech gets slow

the foreign accent gets  stronger

the anxiety builds up

What could have been may never be

We probably all know who she is by now. Amalia Damonte, Pope Francisco's childhood sweetheart. 

This leads us to the central topic of our lesson:

What do you remember about your childhood sweetheart?

Some typical answers to such a question:

It was my first heartbreak
It was SUCH a long long time ago = It was CENTURIES ago = It was millennia ago = It was AGES ago

It was nothing serious = It was puppy love = It was a childhood fling.

So what if Amalia had accepted? Would they have gotten married? Would we have a different pope?

The cartoon humorously explores this idea, but only inversely:

SO, how would you complete the sentence below:

If I had ..., I would have ...

On another note, we could also talk about the Pope's social work. 

This takes us back to the purpose of our class: speculating about past events.


If Jorge Mario Bergoglio had not been involved in so much social work, would he have been chosen as the new Pope?

What were the driving factors to him being chosen?

Work routines, confusing words and rephrasing

How many expressions can you think of with the word “time”?

How could I rephrase this question using these words/phrases?

1. leave
2. clock out
3. head out
4. call

What time do you get off from work?

What social problems will governments never be able to free themselves of?

(Free yourself of something means the same as TWO of the expressions below)

• liberate
• release
• eradicate
• lighten up
• get rid of

Where were you when?

I was flooded out
My street was completely flooded
I had to wait for the water to subside

It was the only maintenance they ever did on the street
It transformed into/became a river
When I was young, the streets were covered in cobblestones, so the rain would absorb into the ground much easier


Throwing garbage on the streets worsens the problem (NOT increase a problem)

Throw rubbish on the street = litter

The lack of maintenance added to people throwing things on the streets is what caused the disaster last Tuesday.

This sum of factors aggravated the problem like what we saw on Tuesday

As the main roads were flooded, I took an alternative route

I spent an hour and a half in the restaurant waiting for the water to subside

The day after

It’s easier to litter than to put something in a bin

What should be prohibited is people giving out pamphlets or flyers on the streets

It's a big/huge/tremendous/ mistake

The more laws the less developed the society

You can create laws but you need to have someone to enforce them

Buying new technology to take preventive measures against flooding after what happened yesterday is a case of “Lock the stable door after the horse is stolen’

1. Some people managed to get out, others didn’t.

What amazes/upsets/enrages/pisses me off is that the stadium is still at that stage of the renovation

AND YOU

Have you ever had to go though something like this? What happened exactly?

Homeless or not

Tuesday, March 5th, 2013 - Being Homeless can be a choice

People used to live on the streets for the sake of proximity to the office and for the sake of saving money on transport. They would only go home on weekends. Most of these people used to have informal jobs
There is another case where people would work two jobs or would have two workloads
http://vimeo.com/56135940

Could he afford the rent?
Is it a form of protest?


Reasons for living on the streets
price
freedom to travel - not feeling chained to one place
a romantic rejection
a bout of depression

Sometimes these people go over a tipping point, a point of no return
a tipping point = a dividing line between equilibrium and madness for example
a turning point = a situation that changes a person's life for good

being an environmental nut
a nut = a fanatic
a nut = a mentally deranged person
a nuthouse = a nut farm = a sanitarium

In the beginning of the 20th century, women who had a higher level of education than male members of their family would be put in a nuthouse

period telenovelas or soap operas
period movies

Ex-wives can be the plague of many politicians
We don't need to live on the streets in order to feel free
He lost his north
His wife left him and he just couldn't get over the loss
Homeless people have incredible stories

Thursday, February 28th, 2013- Movietalk

Question: What do the Sound of Music and singer Guilherme Arantes have in common?

The word: FAREWELL


Can you see the HALO?

By resigning from the papacy, Benedict XVI is gambling with God.

The movie reminds me of a monolog in which the character talks about his experiences as a fugitive in 15th century South America. He was able to give us the impression that he was in a hammock
He had to sew up the Indians after they were attacked by rival tribes (to sew /sou/)
When he was sewing up the last Indian, he ran out of thread

to sew up = to stitch = to suture