Humor4u

Harry Potter has led a whole generation of children into the pleasure of reading a long book, but, advanced learners of English may find it quite hard to read a Harry Potter book because they will certainly come across a large number of unknown words in the descriptions of the book.   This lesson focuses on the descriptive vocabulary that is often found in fiction by analysing a passage in chapter 3,  The Letters from No One , from  Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Ston e. The lesson also incorporates two scenes of the film ( The Hogwarts Lette r and  A Visit from Rubeus Hagri d) to set the background and to show the aftermath of the text. The task includes a reading comprehension exercise, a short vocabulary matching exercise, and a longer word pairing task, which can be used as a revision, after the oral discussion. You can find all the materials on this link. As a lead-in, you can ask students if they have read Harry Potter's books or seen any of his films. Then, you can e

St George is part of an ancient tradition both in England and in Aragon.  He is the saint patron of England and also of Aragon and its flag is in the shirt of the second kit of Sociedad Deportiva Huesca.    The story of St George slaying the Dragon to rescue the Princess is still very popular in schools and it is often celebrated in the streets.  On this Wikipedia link you can read a detailed explanation of the legend and its iconography (this text is C1 level). On the right, you can watch a short video for children that tells the tale of St George in a very simple way.  The video has subtitles both at the foot of the cartoon and underneath, in the configuration spur wheel, so it can be understood by B1 students: It is not easy to find references to Saint George's Day in the British press, but you can try these: an article in the progressive newspaper The Guardian about the historical facts behind the legend of St George, or, on the other side of the British media spectrum,   a nu

The fatal road to +4°Celsius Extreme GHG and T°C rise rates exceed climate tipping thresholds Andrew Glikson Precis Global CO₂ rise and warming rates have reached a large factor to an order of magnitude higher than those of the past geological and mass extinction events, with major implications for the shift in climate zones and the nature and speed of current extreme weather events. Given the abrupt change in state of the atmosphere-ocean-cryosphere-land system, accelerating since the mid-20ᵗʰ century, the terms climate change and global warming no longer reflect the nature of the climate extremes consequent on this shift. Further to NASA’s reported mean land-ocean temperature rise to +1.18°C for March 2020, relative to the 1951-1980 baseline, large parts of the continents, including Siberia, central Asia, Canada, parts of west Africa, eastern South America and Australia are warming toward mean temperatures of +2°C and higher. The rate exceeds that of the Last Glacial Termination (L

Coronavirus isolation is creating new couples.  This BBC report tells the love stories of 5 couples around the world whose relationships have been rushed by the coronavirus lockdown. The article contains some very interesting colloquial language, like "to juggle" (to deal with and balance two important things), "to have a blast" (a great time), "to cuddle" (to hug, to embrace), "to wrap up" (to conclude), "to grab" (to take), "to hang out with" (to go out with), "to shack up with somebody" (to cohabit), "a craving" (a strong desire), "to latch on to" (to get hold on to) etc. C1 students should be able to read the article without too much trouble. And, in addition, here you can find a link to the BBC Reel video "How I Became Obsessed With a Stranger", where a Spanish young woman tells a compelling story of love, grief and Instagram obsession. The video has subtitles and half of it is in S

The coronavirus epidemic has spread fear and disease around the world, but it has also spread a colourful array of funny videos and memes to laugh at our plight.  A good example is this video with a conversation in Spanglish in Gibraltar, a British colony in Spain. This video is basically in Spanish, so it is suitable for B1 Spanish  students and above, In the case of other L1 students, a C2 level of Spanish is advisable.

Tipping points are abrupt climate changes that typically occur as self-reinforcing feedback loops start to kick in. Ten tipping points look set to hit the Arctic hard. Such tipping points can coincide and they are in many ways interrelated, making that the danger is compounded by the domino effect of tipping points hitting one another. 1. El Niño Above image shows March 2020 temperature anomalies, featuring very high temperature anomalies over Russia and over the ESAS, the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. Global warming is a catastrophic development and El Niño is global warming on steroids. As the Atlantic Ocean heats up along the path of the Gulf Stream, huge amounts of hot water get carried toward the Arctic Ocean, as illustrated by above image Current conditions still are El Niño-neutral.  Since the temperature rise is amplified in the Arctic, a strong El Niño later in 2020 can hit the Arctic particularly hard, which can act as a catalyst that triggers further tipping points to get cros

American Pie is, problably, the most popular, long song  (8:33) in the history of modern music and its lyrics are the most widely debated too.  It is number 5 in RIAA's project " Song of the Century",  which promotes the musical and cultural heritage in American schools, and it has been covered by many artists, including Madonna in 2000. The meaning of the lyrics have been discussed all over, in forums, books, in the press etc., but  Don McLean has  always refused to explain its symbolism and hidden references, he often tells his fans "American Pie means I never have to work again", as the BBC reported in 2015.  The song contains a deluge of references to the leading artists in pop music from 1958 to 1971, and some of the landmarks of the social history of the 1960's like segregation, the fear of nuclear war, flower power, Woodstock, the drug culture and heroin etc. According to the analysis on the webpage The Rare Exception, which is a dead link now, but

Understanding a poem like Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" is a tremendous achievement for any learner of English, and a considerable challenge for the EFL teacher. The topic is hard and the syntax is disjointed by the metric of the poem, a villanelle, but the pathos of the poem can be felt, if not understood, when you first watch these Welsh actors reciting the poem for BBC Cymru Wales: It is fascinating to hear the sounds and the words of a foreign language and to understand almost nothing, just like when you first started learning English a long time ago.  Reading poetry or song lyrics has a power, it can take you back to that initial stage when English had the magic of unintelligibility.  Yet, we want to know, we want to understand. This lesson shows how I tackled the challenge for a B2+ class, but, this class is problably more suitable for C2 students. The plan starts with some simple warm-up questions to get the attention of the students.  The