The Ghost of the Green Lady

The Ghost of the Green Lady tells the  mysterious story of a teenager who goes to live and study at a boarding school and there is this legend about a Lady with a green glow that appears in the lake nearby. It is well written and keeps the attention up till the end.

This reader will help my students of 3rd of ESO develop their reading comprehension and improve their vocabulary. As a teacher, I really like Burlington Books readers because of the stories they choose -normally they are close to my students likes- and because of the materials they offer to the teachers. If you want to listen to the book as you read it, you can do it in this link to their page.

I hope my students like it and I hope you leave your comments if you have read it.

Book Day 2014

Today we are celebrating the International Book Day. My students know that it is so because we also commemorate the death date of two of the greatest writers of all times: William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes. We are also about to celebrate the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth date and I came across this blog that shows how Shakespeare's Twitter would be today.

 I think that we have a lot of quotes and funny sentences that come from Shakespeare's works that fit into 140 characters, we can try and look for some. You can leave them in a comment and I will publish them in my Twitter account. 

Have you thought of any??If it is difficult for you to remember any, you can find Shakespeare's works online in English and in Spanish (for example, his sonnets). Have a look and choose your best!!!

Learning about Jane Austen through the use of PBL

Jane Austen by people from 3rd ESO.

I have always loved the English language and especially reading in English; one of the things that normally stay out of the curricula is learning about literature in English and Project Based Learning offers us a great opportunity to learn about literature and keep track of the curricula at the same time.

My third of ESO students (congratulations to them) have been working for two weeks answering the question: What important literary figure is going to appear in 10 pounds notes from 2017? With a bit of motivation at the beginning and a good deal of work in investigation, writing and especially cooperation among themselves, we can see one of the examples of the great works they have done. For me, one of the most important things apart from the obvious is that they now know who Jane Austen is and what she is important for.

If you are a teacher and want to give an opportunity to this project, you can read it or download it at Scribd.

If you are one of my students, you can say what you liked about the project and what you did not like in a comment.

A FOREIGNER IN AUSTRALIA by Fiona Smith (Ed. Burlington Books)

Burlington Books

This reader is a good way to get to know Australian major touristic highlights through the eyes of two youngsters, one of them Spanish. In the book, we learn about a new form of volunteer work called Wwoofing (this organization also exists in Spain) and, in this way, the two teenagers are able to discover different places and people.

Places so different as Ayers Rock or the Great Barrier Reef or the Daintree Forest and towns such as Seal Rocks or Byron Bay and then, the capital city, Melbourne; apart from the native people, the Aborigines. This is a very special trip for its protagonists, who at the end of the book, decide to go further in their relationship. Will you read their next adventures?

You can listen to all the chapters at Burlington Books website.

So, do you have any questions? Have you already finished reading it? Tell us, did you like it?

Victoria Connelly's "A Weekend with Mr Darcy".

This is a great book to read during the holidays: nice, easy, comfortable and cozy if you are a fan of Jane Austen. This book is what they call "fan fiction", and this means that it is fiction based on the fiction of a very famous author, in this case Jane Austen which is one of the greatest female novelists in the United Kingdom. In this type of fiction, the novel recreates the characters or the places and what could have happened to them or has new characters who are fans of the books or the famous writer whose relationships depend on the fiction of the famous writer.
 This is the case of this book, it takes place during a Jane Austen weekend conference and two female characters who love Jane Austen's fiction and think about the world in terms of what  Austen's characters would do or say. Jane Austen is famous for being able to show how the society of her time (end of 18th century) acted and how the love relationships were established. She usually wrote happy endings though it took their time to the couple to eventually get to understand they were the right couple.
 Many films and books have been filmed and written after her work, to just get a glimpse of that, go to the Jane Austen Centre page. If you browse around the Austen world in the Internet, you find that there are still places in which there are recreations of the Regency period balls and manners, just have a look at the blog The Secret Dreamworld of a Jane Austen Fan. This is what Victoria Connelly also does in this novel, in fact, the book is part of a trilogy.
The truth is that, although I enjoyed the book, I do not think very highly of it, it is just (and that is a lot) a good romantic novel; the good thing is that I have started to feel like reading more of Jane Austen's novels (she only wrote six because she died very young), so I am going to start reading Persuasion.

Did you know Jane Austen? What do you think of "fan fiction"? Do you have a favourite writer or novel? Tell us about it!!!!

William Shakespeare

Idyllically

William Shakespeare is one of the best-known, if not the best, writer of the whole world. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in the year 1564 and died in 1616. He moved to London and became an actor and playwright, that is, he wrote the plays in which he acted. If you want to know more about his life, you can watch a series of videos at Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

At that time, theatre, or drama, was person-based and some scenes were based on monologues or speeches of certain characters which have become very famous ("to be or not to be, that is the question" from Hamlet), another anecdote is that there were no women on stage; the clothes, tapestries and curtains were splendid and there were machines to move up or down things. We can see this is The Globe, the theatre were he played most of his plays.

Why is Shakespeare so important?
For me, he is so important because he was an expert in creating plays that treated many different topics (love, war, betrayal, foolishness ... and many more) and he did so in a way that he achieved to address to the inner emotions of people and they are as up-to-date now as they were when he created them.
He also wrote a lot of poetry (great sonnets), and invented many words of the English language.

Have you read anything by Shakespeare or attended to any of his plays? Do you know the names of his most famous plays?

How would you travel around the world?

Forbes

These days we are reviewing the different means of transport. My mind flew back to the book Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne. In this novel, Phileas Fogg takes a bet on travelling around the world in only 80 days at the end of the 19th century. Have you read this book?
I was wondering, how would this English gentleman do his trip nowadays? What countries would he visit? What forms of transport would he choose? How long would it take him to do this trip?
 I have a challenge for you: Imagine what his travelling plan would be and present it with a PowerPoint or Prezi presentation or, if you prefer, an infographic (you can do one with Piktochart) When you have done it, link it to Twitter and write my name @AnaGarciaTeacha in the tweet. I will choose the best and present them here in the blog. Remember to use the preposition "by"to introduce the means of transport and the different verbs that express movement in any of these transports.
 If you have any questions, do ask in the comments or in class. This hard work will be gratified in the final marks, of course.

Union Street by Pat Barker

I have just finished reading Union Street by the British author Pat Barker. She is very well-known for her trilogy on the effects of World War I, called Regeneration ( after one of the three books, the other two are called The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road), I strongly recommend these too. 

This is her first novel, published in 1982. The novel is set in Union Street, street home to the seven women who are the protagonists , neighbours, and each of them, name to the seven sections of the novel:

• Kelly Brown: preteenage girl who is raped.
• Joanne Wilson: factory worker pregnant before marriage to a boyfriend who would not marry her.
• Lisa Goddard: pregnant to her third unwanted child married to an alcoholic man that beats and steals her.
• Muriel Scaife: married to a young dying husband whom she loves.
• Iris King: mother to all of them,  has her own teenage daugter taken to get an abortion. As all mothers, is both loved and hated.
• Blonde Dinah: old prostitute.
• Alice Bell: 80-year-old lady who leaves her house on a winter day when she is about to be taken to an asylum for the sake of dignity.

As you can see, it is not light reading nor chick lit, the novel is set in a Northern British city during the miner's strike in the 1970s. It represents the harshness of life in a city beaten by poverty and unemployment. Through these women, she represents society and also how social hierarchy was established at the British homes at that time without victimizing. For me, it has been emotionally exhausting, because of the issues that it treats. Nevertheless, she is a great author and you should read her once in your life.

Did you know her?

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend.

Burlington Books

This is an adaptation of the funny and entertaining novel by Sue Townsend, a British writer who knows and depicts very well the British society and institutions. Adrian Mole is one of her best known characters and has featured many of her novels. In this one, we learn to know him at the age of 13 and 3/4. It starts at the beginning of the year with his New Year Resolutions and a complicated family life.

I hope one of your New Year Resolutions is to read this short and funny book for your English class;  to get the most of it remember that you can download the mp3 recordings of the reading of the book at Burlington Books; you can also answer the questions at the end of the book and send here any comments or questions.

Happy New Year!!!!!

Tom Sharpe's Wilt

Lope de Vega's theatre in Seville

Yesterday I went to the theatre to watch Wilt, the crime of the inflatable doll, an adaptation on a novel by Tom Sharpe. Tom Sharpe happens to be one of the most humorous and funny British novelists. He is well-known for writing a series of novels whose protagonist is a burnt out teacher in his forties, Wilt, who is long-married to a woman, Eva, who is always scolding him. The turning point of the play, adapted from his novel by José Antonio Vitoria and Garbi Losada, is the fact that his wife meets a fake rich woman who makes her rethink her life with her husband, so she leaves with them for a few days. Meanwhile, Wilt, who is a bit fed up with his wife, decides to plan his wife murder and rehearses it with a life-size sex doll, someone sees him and he is accused of the killing of his wife. It is a hilarious comedy, we had three or four great guffaws and kept smiling throughout. There is even a film based on it.

I guess it also touched me how he is a teacher who is not happy with his job, I felt sadness for him and wished he learnt a way to enjoy his profession, even though his students did not care about the literature he was trying to teach them.

The actors and actresses were great; as you can see, we saw on stage: Ana Milán, Fernando Guillén Cuervo, Ángel de Andrés, Koldo Losada and Aitziber Garmendia, the last two play four roles each.

Have you read anything about this author?
Do you like going to the theatre?
Please leave your comments!!!

Le premier jour by Marc Levy.

Ed. Planeta

Marc Levy is a French author, in fact, he is the most widely read French writer outside of France. A few years ago, I read Et si c'était vrai, a very interesting short novel by this same author and I must say I really liked it, it was quite emotional and innovative from my point of view because of its treatment of life and death. It became very famous and they even made a film of it starring Reese Witherspoon which was called Just like heaven.
So when my sister told me she was about to finish another book by him, I asked her to lend it to me when she finished it; so she did, and when I had some time  I started reading it, just a few days ago. That is one of its best things, it takes a short time to read its almost 500 pages. I liked the beginning because it started at two separate points in the world, two parts, a man and a woman, two scientists, obviously they would end up together...  then when they meet, they already knew each other from the past!!!

Nevertheless, the story is quite unbelievable. They start  looking for the solution to a mystery that the necklace she was offered by a little boy back in Ethiopia where she was working represents. Two scientists go through an adventure that would be difficult for mercenaries... and according to other blogs, the novel is full of inacuraccies. What is worst, at the end of the book, the mystery isn't solved!! You have to read the second part of the novel called La première nuit (The First Night)!!! I know I read it in Spanish, which is not the same as reading in the original language (French), but I was disappointed; nonetheless, I admit it is great summer reading, because of the love story which keeps the novel moving.

One good thing about the book is the fact that my sister lent it to me, I wanted to talk to you about the possibility of reading through lending the books you have already read; there are several pages in the web and different possibilities, that is, you can get points through giving your book like in BookMooch or you can get in contact with other people and agree on how to exchange the books like with Book to Book, or a similar web completely in Spanish called LibrosCompartidos.com or also there is a movement that consists in leaving the book in a public place so that others can read it, this is called Book Crossing.

Do you like reading books in the summer? Have you ever used any of these webs to read books?
Leave your comments and tell us your experience!!!

Amor deliria nervosa

What if love were a disease?

I have finished reading Delirium by Lauren Oliver, a young writer from New York, and I really liked it. Even though it is supposed to be  a young reader's book, it raises some questions that really made me think, such as love as an illness and the organization of society.

What is amor deliria nervosa?

The story takes place in a city of the USA, a country that found out that love is the worst illness and scientists have found a cure for it; therefore, all its people undergo a procedure to get cured when they are about to became adults. This creates a controlled society with no pain and almost no crimes. Nevertheless, nothing is perfect and there is a resistance of people who believe in love and have not undergone the procedure to be detached of their feelings.

What happens in the book?

Lena, the protagonist, is expecting her process of pairing (as there is no love, the government matches young people to provide for families) and the procedure for curing her willingly because her mother was infected with the illness and suffered a lot. During her evaluation process, there is a disruption and she meets Alex, unfortunately she falls in love with him. This leads to lots of adventures because their love is not only forbidden by their parents -as Romeo&Juliet's- but it is an institutionalised prohibition, by her family, the regulators and the police!! The only help they have is her best friend Hana and her cousin Gracie who has not spoken in years.

Why do I recommend this novel?

It is a well-constructed love story, it has friendship, hard family relationships and many adventures trying to get rid of the regulators and family and fight for their love. The novel ends when they are trying to get to the other side, the Wilds, where they will be able to live their love freely.

Have you read it? If you have, tell us your view in a comment!!!

P.D. James after Jane Austen

One of my favourite English writers is called Jane Austen, she lived in England from 1775 to 1817 and wrote only 6 novels in her life: Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion. She usually wrote about middle-high class families and most of her novels centre on the worry families have to marry women at that time. They are called novels of manners because they show the conventions of the society of the time.These novels usually have happy endings because the protagonist (female) gets to marry in the end.

Another of the greatest British writers, P.D. James has written a novel which continues the happy ending that Jane Austen gave to her novel Pride and Prejudice, one of her most famous due to the TV series featuring Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy, which appears constantly in the Bridget Jones' Diary. Even though P.D. James has continued in the mode of Jane Austen, she is a mystery writer and at the beginning of the book there is a murder which makes the complete happiness of the Darcy family tumble down.

I'm willing to get the book in English and read it,  you can read all the six novels by Jane Austen (you have a link in Pride and Prejudice) and I hope you enjoy them as I did; they also made me aware of how the life of women has been under male's control and determined by social conventions more than feelings or thoughts.

Have you read any of Jane Austen or P.D. James novels? Did youlike them?
 Leave your comments and tell us!!!

Black Comedy at Teatro Alcazar in Madrid.

Photo taken by Ana García

Last weekend I went to Madrid and I was lucky enough to get tickets for Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy. Peter Shaffer (1926-) is a British playwright and screenwriter especially famous for his plays Equus and Amadeus which were later made into films with his own help. Many of her works were represented for the first time at the National Theatre in London and in 2001 he became Sir Peter Shaffer.

The cast of the play was excellent, as you can see in the photo, and included Gabino Diego, Aurora Sánchez, Paco Churruca, Diego Molero, Ramón Merlo, Ana Arias and Eva Santolaria who did not act that night but was sitting in the stalls watching her mates.

Black Comedy is a very funny play, special for its lighting effects. Its name is a pun, that is, a play on words because it is about an electric short circuit and supposedly takes place in total darkness. There's only dim light when a match or lantern can be used by any of the characters. As the play starts, all the theatre is in total darkness and in complete normality. All of a sudden, the lights go out  and the stage gets well-illuminated though they act as if they were blind. 

Brindsley, a mediocre sculptor,  and his recent fiancée Carol are preparing a meeting with her father and a billionaire who is interested in some of his work and may buy something. Both are nervous and do not feel confident about Brindsley's furniture, so they have borrowed some from Harold, his art collector neighbour who is not at home. A variety of people come into scene: Miss Furnival, a funny neighbour who "does not drink alcohol" and profits from the situation; the operator of the London Electric Company, who is mistaken  by the millionaire because he knows about art; his former girl-friend,Clea, who wants to come back to him and, of course, Harold who comes before time unexpectedly and forces Brindsley to get his furniture back to his apartment at the same time as they are waiting for the billionaire.

It was an interesting and hilarious one-act play, we laughed a lot and had a look back at London in the seventies.

Do you know any of the actors or actresses? They have acted in some television series... If you recognize any, leave your comments and tell us!!!

World Book Day 2012

On the 23rd April 1616, two of the greatest writers of our world died, within 24 hours. One of them was William Shakespeare and the other was Miguel de Cervantes, who died during the night from the 22nd to the 23rd. As a result, this day has been chosen by the UNESCO to celebrate the World Book Day. Every year they centre the Day on some aspects related to books and this year they focus on copyright and translation because it is the 80th anniversary of the Index Translationum which is the world's bibliography of translation. A person who knows a lot about translation and has a very good blog is my friend Ángel. 

There is a very interesting proposal to celebrate this Book Day in the new social network called Pinterest in which people can post the picture of their favourite book and explain why they like it, they have called it The Wall of Books. If you want to, you can tell us which is your favourite book too. At the present time, mine is The House of the Special Purpose by John Boyne.

What is your favourite book??

  LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS!!

April Fool's Day

Spaghetti harvest, 1957
projectbritain.com

April Fool's Day is celebrated in many countries in the world on the 1st of April every year. It is not a bank holiday but people are used to making jokes to relatives and friends. Also, the television and radio take part in this festivity making jokes to their audience. In 1957, the BBC explained how families in Switzerland picked spaghetti from the trees as you can see in the photo. If you want to see the complete video, you can.

What is its origin?
 The origin of this festivity is not really clear but it has its oringins in Roman times. Nevertheless, the closest to truth that we know may be related to the changing from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar which started in the 16th century but which, due to the bad communications system of the time, wasn't accepted in England until 1752. In the Julian calendar, New Year was celebrated on the 1st of April and in the Gregorian on the 1st of January. It seems that people who started celebrating it on the 1st of January laughed and played tricks on people who celebrated it on the 1st of April on this same day. Even though all of this, there are references to this celebration in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales which dates back to the 14th Century!!!

If you want to learn more about this celebration, you can go here. Do we celebrate April Fool's Day in Spain? What date do we celebrate something similar? Leave your comments!!!

International Day of Theatre

John Malkovich

Today is the 50th anniversary of the celebration of the International Day of Theatre. Theatre is one of the oldest forms of literature and one that gets easily to the audience and may help to get people nearer to literature. This day started to be celebrated 50 years ago as a way to acknowledge theatre's importance and promoted by the International Theatre Institute (belonging to the UNESCO).

Every year an important theatre person gives a speech about theatre;  this year, it has been said by the well-known actor John Malkovich. You can have a look at his speech.

In Spain, there have also been celebrations, and also, all around the world!!!

Do you like theatre? What is the last play that you have seen?

Tell me about it and leave your comments!!!

CHARLES DICKENS

If life lasted long enough, Charles Dickens would be 200 years old these days. I would like to pay a little homage to this great Victorian author in the second hundred anniversary of his birth.

He was born Charles John Huffan Dickens on the 17th February 1812 in Porstmouth, Hampshire and went to live in London at the age of 10. In the times of the industrial revolution and eldest son to a difficult father who went to prison, he was one of the children who worked hard under hard conditions in one of those new factories that started to develop in Britain at the time. He described these harsh conditions and I think he would be shocked to learn that they continue still two centuries after his death.

A multifaceted married man, throughout his life was actor, parliamentary and newspaper reporter apart from his works as a writer. He wrote in installments some of his most popular novels such as Oliver Twist, he wrote a lot of novels like Christmas Carols, David Copperfield, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations in which he depicts the Victorian times with strong realism.

You can also visit where he lived in London

DAN BROWN'S THE LOST SYMBOL

I have just finished reading this long, long book (almost 700 pages) and I would like to write a little about it so that you can comment it with me.

 In the first part of the novel, we are introduced to the new characters (for this is part of a saga) and the magnificent scenery, Washington D.C. The beginning of the book pulls us into a world of intrigue and curiosity, setting the scene for what is about to happen: a vibrating, action-packed set of actions that evolve one into the next without giving us the time to breath, that is, to put down the book. Then, several adventures take place at the same time regarding the different characters in totally different places and fields of the story: science, hackers, the CIA and so on.

At the end of the novel when all the pressure has been released, this  well-known and best-selling American writer tries to give unity and truthfulness to what has been explained through the book about the masons and the  lost symbol not very convincingly from my point of view.

I enjoyed the reading even though I was a bit disappointed at the end, but there are two things I would like to point out from this book: the first one is its high filmability, that is, the capacity of this novel to be made into a film; and the second one is a quote about knowledge that I share with the author and hope my students will also share. It is on page 420 on my edition (Corgi Books, 2010) and says: "Knowledge grows exponentially. The more we know, the greater our ability to learn and the faster we expand our knowledge base".

To learn more about the symbology of the novel or what surrounds the book, you can have a look at Dan Brown's official site

CERVANTES MEETS SHAKESPEARE by Ramón Ybarra Rubio (Ed. Burlington Books)

In this book, an American girl moves to the UK and starts learning about Cervantes and Shakespeare to find out that they will be her guides to adapting herself to her new life by appearances through which they will give her interesting and useful tips making use of their own experiences in life.

Throughout the book we will also learn about how it is sometimes difficult to adapt to new circumstances and also about how important writers made their living in the 16th century, besides learning about the historical background of the time and puritanism in England.

You can get the audio to listen to this book as you read it at the Burlington Books website.