Humor4u

Rural depopulation is number one problem in Spain, according to this BBC Assignment report. This documentary explores the "Caravans of Love" that have succesfully matched couples in rural Spain for several decades; Marta Corella, the mayor of Orea, who tries to create meeting points like the church, the social bar, or the social bakery to promote human contact in villages under 500 people; "neorurales" who move back to the countryside and other initiatives to make villages in Spain more attractive to live. This report has extracts is Spanish and the topic is close to Spanish learners, but there is no script, so it is classified as C2.

Tara Westover started school at the age of 17.  She was brought up on a farm in Idaho, in a survivalist family who stocked food and weapons to defend themselves from the government and to prepare for some kind of war. She had no birth certificate, she never saw a doctor and she was home schooled until she felt she wanted to learn music and was admitted to college at 17.  She finally earned a PhD in History from Cambridge University and she has recently published the book " Educated ", about her personal journey to become an independent woman. This long NPR interview (38':21") can be used by C1 students with the support of the script.

It's Nowruz, Persian New Year, a celebration of Spring for more than 300 million people around the world, including Iran, Tajikistan, Russia, Turkey, India and Iraq. Find out more about the celebrations, Persian style, in this short BBC video with subtitles which is accessible from B2 level.

"The Dawn Wall" is a documentary film that shows how Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson managed to climb El Capitan's southeastern face, called "The Dawn Wall" in Yosemite National Park, California.  It took them 19 days to go up the vertical granite, and six or seven years to prepare that remarkable feat.  "It's highly precise" Jorgeson says of the preparations and he compares the moves across the rock to a dance choreography or to a gymnastics routine in this NPR interview. The beginning of the interview contains some technical descriptions of the climbing equipment, so this 31':49" interview could be classified as C2.

The Peugeot family, one of the main shareholders of the PSA group (Peugeot, Citroën, DS, Opel, Vauxhall) has stated that they are ready to support a new acquisition, if an opportunity presents itself.  Fiat Christler is a candidate for a merger, New Delhi TV reports.   This short article is classified as B2. Reuters reports that shares of Fiat Chrisler jumped 5.2%  yesterday as a result of the Peugeot family announcement while shares of Peugeot also rose 2.7%.  Reuters mentions General Motors and Jaguar Land Rover as other ideal partners in a future merger.   This financial story contains more technical language, so it is classified as C2.

Britain is a paradise for hikers: the green countryside, the hills, forests and lakes, the weather, which is never too hot, allow you to enjoy rambling 12 months a year (always with a mackintosh in your backpack in case it rains).  Here you can find a short BBC article with beautiful pictures about some of the most popular walks on the island: the Lake District, the Pennines and the Yorkshire Dales in the north of England; Snowdonia in north Wales; the Hebrides and north Aberdeenshire in Scotland; Dartmoor and the north Devon coast in the south of England.  But wherever you go, you are certain to find a beautiful walk to relax and breathe. This is a very short and easy text to read, so it is classified as B2.

This short video is a perfect example of British comedy at its best, with Stephen Fry ( Peter's Friends , etc) and Hugh Laurie ( Dr. House ) in " A Bit of Fry and Laurie ", a BBC production. An absurd humorous sketch starting from a couple of simple questions at a police station: "What's your name? and What's your address?" Humour is always a challenge for learners of a foreign language, but the subtitles can be invaluable help, so this video is classified as a B2 link.

Dynasties is a BBC Wildlife documentary that explores the social structure of 5 different animal species, tigers, emperor penguins, chimpanzees, lions and painted wolves. Producer Michael Gunton talks to Fresh Air on NPR about the social relationships of these groups of animals:  their kinship and affections, their rivalries and power struggles and about the two years that the naturalists took to shoot the documentary, which is narrated by Sir David Attenborough. This is a C1 listening task with the script. If you want to look directly at the documentary webpage and watch some clips of the episodes you can click here, on the BBC.

CUP booth at IATEFL Poland in Wroclaw (September 2018) Can you spot my book? This is just a quick update. I know it seems like I haven't been blogging much since my book came out, except for the traditional  News Quiz . But, in fact, I've written a few pieces that have appeared elsewhere in the past few months, mostly on the Cambridge University Press (CUP)  World of Better Learning blog. Here are the links to my latest posts: Reviewing Chunks through Prompted Recall   Here you can see a sample activity from Lexical Grammar - a fairly easy, low-prep activity I often use in class. Teaching Business English Chunks Another sample activity from Lexical Grammar, in which I focus on verb+adjective combinations which would not normally be identified as collocations, but which nevertheless occur very often together, for example:   promote economic ... (growth/development) require further... (information / assistance)   P.S. I thoroughly searched COCA for such two word strings to fin

Siobhan Lowe, the headteacher at Tolworth Girls' School in Surbiton, South London, admitted that she had to scrub school loos and work in the school canteen because of the shortage of funds. According to the Education Policy Institute, the number of local authority (state-run) secondary schools in deficit has risen from 8.1% to 30.3% in the past 4 years. If you want to read more, you can find the BBC report here, a B2 reading task. But if you actually want to listen to the original BBC Radio 4 interview to headteacher Siobhan Lowe on Today (08/03/19), you can find the full recording of the radio programme here.  The interview runs from 1:17:37 to 1:23:44. There is no script, so listening to this interview directly, without reading the report above first, could be a C2 task.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the second woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in history.  She was a brilliant Law student who had to face work discrimination in her youth, before she turned into a staunch advocate for gender equality and women's rights.  She has earned deep respect from her colleagues at the Court and in recent years, she has become a popular icon for her refusal to step down, despite her age, her serious health problems and her minority position in the Supreme Court.  She is known as "Notorious R.B.G."   In this B2 text from Inc . magazine you can read some of her most inspiring quotes. You can read more about her life and career on this Wikipedia link.

Theresa May has served as Prime Minister during the stormy times of Brexit in the UK.  She has often been dismissed as a weak leader, but she has grabbed the helm of the country with determination to survive defections in her Cabinet and a no-confidence vote in Parliament and to sail over her political rivals in the opposition and in her own Conservative party. This article from Fox News talks about her political career, her gritty character and her upbringing as the daughter of an Anglican vicar.  The rich vocabulary of the text and the references to the ins and outs of British politics make this report a C1 reading task.

Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the most powerful female politician in the USA now, and the leader of the opposition. She has fought long and hard to get respect and power from her fellow male colleagues in the Democratic Party "Nobody gives you power, you have to take it away from them", she says.  She lives in San Francisco, she is rich and this makes her "the quintaessence of California limousine liberalism", an easy target for Republicans to caricature. But she is one of the toughest, hardest working and shrewdest politicians in Capitol Hill.  Nancy Pelosi is also the mother of 5 children.  Here you can listen to a long NPR interview (36:59) to New York Times Magazine journalist Robert Draper who is an expert in Washington politics. Although this radio interview is scripted, the complexity of American politics makes it a C2 listening task.

This is a conversation lesson about "Cinema" which can be used with B1, B2 and C1 students (with adaptations). Here you can find the lesson plan, two lists of the winners of the Goya and Oscar Awards 2019, an article about the 2019 edition of the Goya Awards, a fill-in the gap task with the lyrics of the song " Shallow " form A Star is Born , and the full script of the lyrics.

Laughter is, basically, a social activity.  Humans laugh as a way to bond with each other -or to separate from those who belong to another social group. Other animal species also laugh, rats or apes, but the reasons why humans laugh are many and very nuanced.  This BBC article describes laughter and explains some of the reasons why we laugh. Although the vocabulary in this article is very rich, the text can be accessible to B2 learners.

The World Mobile Congress in Barcelona whirled around 5G technology -which won't be widely available until 2020- while it showcased the latest in mobile phones, foldable smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S10, the Huawei Mate X or the Nokia 9 PureView -with more rear cameras than any other. But there were other gadgets on the Fira Gran Via floor:  Microsoft presented its HoloLens 2, a light mixed reality headset only available for enterprises right now.  The best camera zoom was the Oppo 10x and the biggest microSD card was the ScanDisk Extreme with 1TB of storage capacity.  Huawei launched a faster and more powerful laptop, the MateBook X Pro (2019). The prices of these devices match their top-notch quality, as you can read in this link to Mashable, which opens the door to the technology you will be using in the future. Although the Mashable report above is short and it illustrated with photos, the density of the information and the technical vocabulary makes this text a C1 readi