Humor4u

Jonna Jinton is a Swedish artist who decided to move from the city to a remote little village in the North of Sweden with "no plan, no money and no job", to follow her dream and live close to nature.  In the middle of the forest, she became a photographer, an artist, a blogger, and, finally, an influencer.  In this beautiful video, she tells the story of her life in her slow, crystal clear English, which is subtitled, so the document can be accessible to B1 students and above. Thanks to my student Cristina L., who sent me this link. I f you want to see an example of her ephemeral nature art, you can click here and watch another of her YouTube videos "The Art of Balancing Stones",  She says that it is "still and quiet, in a world that is constantly moving. "

The coronavirus pandemic is sweeping the whole world and millions of people are in lockdown or self-isolation to fight the spread of the epidemic.  The disruption of family life may be hard to understand by very young children.  This is a BBC story about a self-isolated dad in Wales, and the while-lie he is telling his daughter.  It is a short video with subtitles, so it is suitable for B2 students. I would like to thank one of my students, María A., because she passed me this link. But in these times of global confinement, there is also a positive side:  the spread of memes, jokes, and parody songs that give us sound advice with a pinch of humour. Some of the key words you'll come across: allergies, flu, hand sanitize, shivers, social isolation, the flat curve, scrubbing, sneeze, droplets, crappy, latex gloves, tissue, mask. Here, you can watch three videos.  Which one do you like best? Queen's "Coronavirus Rhapsody": The Beatles' "I Gotta Wash My Hands!&quo

Hugh Laurie (Doctor House) and Stephen Fry (Peter's Friends) became popular in the 1980's with the sketch comedy "A Bit of Fry & Laurie". Here you can watch a parody of football coaching. This video, with subtitles, is quite visual, but there is a lot of language too, so it can be suitable for C1 students and above.

Photo by Caroline Feelgood on Unsplash Now that many schools around the Coronavirus-stricken globe have been closed, teachers have had to come to grips with the idea that many have heard about or maybe even experimented with, but never really implemented in earnest - teaching online. I've lost count of how many webinars and online tutorials on various online tools and platforms I have attended in the past week. Most of them were organised by various institutions I work for with each one choosing to use a different synchronous learning platform. The fact that most of these webinars were delivered by tech people exemplifies pretty much how you should not go about implementing edtech: instead of inviting (and paying!) a teacher experienced in remote teaching to do the job, let's ask the college's Moodle guy! On the other hand, teachers have taken to Twitter sharing activities, ideas and advice that is more pedagogy- rather than technology-driven. In a matter of a few days, t

WORLD GOVERNMENTS MUST LEARN CORONAVIRUS EMISSIONS SHUTDOWN AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE - by Albert Kallio Global Circulation Models (GCMs) are computer models of the world's atmosphere based on observations and assumptions if there are no direct information available. World emissions shutdowns are a novel opportunity to learn about how climate system responds under different circumstances that cannot be normally experimentally checked. It is vitally important for the world's governments NOT to shut down meteorological measurements. Indeed, efforts must increase to use opportunity to test and search regional responses of the highly unusual situation. World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and national meteorological organisations must quickly come up with new research proposals to gain every possible bit of information as this helps to understand how world's climate will respond as the world moves towards ZERO emissions. It is a tremendous tragedy if this unique opportunity to fin

7 Grammy artists (Taylor Swift, Lil Nas X, Lizzo, Billie Eilish, Rosalía, Bon Iver and FKA) talk about how they made their latest hit song.  These seven videos from the New York Times are really hard to understand for different reasons: the clips are fragmentary, so they are a bit like a voice puzzle; there is a lot of technical language about writing and producing songs (jingle, shuffle beat, verse, chorus, bridge), various accents (listen to Lil Nas X!), slang words (so dope, beef up)..., so it is, basically, a document for experts (Ex level).   The less difficult video is Rosalía's about her reggaeton track "Con Altura" (C1 level).  There is a full transcript of the words, which you can listen to while you are reading the text, which is really valuable help for learners of English.

On the morning of March 12, 2020, peak methane levels were as high as 2902 ppb (parts per billion) at a pressure level of 469 mb (millibar, equivalent to an altitude of some 6 km (almost 20,000 feet). What did cause this very high peak? The image on the right shows the situation at 695 mb. High levels of methane, colored in magenta, show up over the oceans at high latitudes north, especially around Greenland and around Svalbard. The image underneath on the right shows methane even closer to sea level, at 1000 mb. At this altitude, such magenta-colored high levels of methane only show up over an area in between Greenland and Svalbard. It appears that these high methane levels did originate from this area. What could have triggered this? The image below shows that an earthquake with a magnitude of 4.6 on the Richter scale hit an area in between Greenland and Svalbard on March 11, 2020, at  21:30:03 (UTC) , 2020, at depth of 10 km. It appears that the earthquake did cause destabilization

BBC News reports on the round of applause that was given to health workers in Spain to show gratitude for their work to fight the corona virus epidemic, in this period of lockdown. This short video with subtitles can be suitable for intermediate learners, B1 and above. If you want to read some more, this article from The Independent explains the story and gives it some background.  This report is suitable for B2 students and above.

Shoppers in the UK are rushing to the supermarkets to stockpile toilet paper, hand sanitiser, tinned food or pasta as fears to the spread of coronavirus grow (B2 level).  If you want to find out more about the pychology of panic buying, and how it has been observed in different crisis and natural disasters all over the wold, you can read this longer article (C2 level). 

It's time to stop denying how precarious the situation is. Remember the Paris Agreement? In 2015, politicians pledged to hold the global temperature rise to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pledged they would try and limit the temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Well, an analysis by Sam Carana shows that it was already more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial when the Paris Agreement was reached. View details of Sam Carana's analysis In Sam Carana's analysis , the year 1750 is used as the baseline for pre-industrial. The analysis shows that we meanwhile have also crossed the 2°C threshold (in February 2020) and that the temperature rise looks set to rapidly drive humans and eventually most if not all species on Earth into extinction. Yet, our politicians refuse to act! Accelerating temperature rise Indeed, there are indications that the recent rise is part of a trend that points at even higher temperatures in the near future, as also discussed

Time Magazine has published a special issue with the 100 Women of the Century.  Some of them made the cover of the magazine at the time, but there are many whose contribution to the world was initially overshadowed: scientists, mathematicians, business leaders, activists, atheletes, royals, artists etc, here you can read their stories. This reading can be suitable for C1 students and upwards.

In February there were severe floods in the UK caused by Storm Dennis. Here you can find several BBC reports about this recent example of extreme weather.  There are witten reports, videos with interviews to local people, pictures etc.  Some of these materials can be suitable for B2 level and above. And if you are really interested in the topic, here you can find a special programme from ITV News Central on the impact of storms Ciara and Dennis. It is a 29 minute long video, and although you can use subtitles, this material is more suitable for C1 and C2 students.