Model composition: Who was Sara Montiel?

Sara Montiel together with James Dean (photo taken from Rohmerin's blog)

Just five days ago, two very well-known women (for different reasons) died on the 8th April. The two of them may be quite unknown for our students, one of them was Margaret Thatcher and the other was Sara Montiel. We can take advantage of this and practice the past simple to talk about life events, as we did with Jane Austen or Frida Kahlo.

Sara Montiel was born as Mª Antonia Abad in Campo de Criptana in 1928. When she was just 15 years old, she took part in a talent show and won. She started making films in Spain and, very soon, she decided to go to America to start making films there. In 1954, she made her first Hollywood film called Veracruz with  very big actors like Gary Cooper. She came back to Spain and became a great diva and star.

At the beginning of the 1970s, she decided to stop making films in Spain and dedicated her work to singing. She has been married four times, the first in California, the second in Rome, the third in Palma de Mallorca with her great love, Pepe Tous, with whom she adopted two children and the fourth a few years ago with a Cuban men much younger than her.

Sara has sung together with her own son and other Spanish artists and has conducted two TV programmes in Spain. She wasn't ill and her death took everybody by surprise even though she was 85 years old.

Did you know her? Have you seen any of her films?

International Women's Day 2013

Tomorrow many of us will be celebrating International Women's Day. In these hard times, it is important to remember all the things women (and also men) have achieved since almost a century, the time which we have been celebrating this date. Women can vote now, we can work... and many other things.

This year, the United Nations have united some women across the world to sing this song called One Woman. I just want to say HAPPY WOMEN'S DAY!!! to all those who believe a better world is possible having women and men working and living together.

International Women's Day 2012

Fighting against gender violence.

Dragonslippers

Today is an important day, not only for woman, but also for men. For me, it is a day to be aware of what kind of relationships  we have with our partners and to weigh if it is a healthy one or not.

 The other day with my students when we were talking about gender violence, I told them that the first time he hits you, it is too late. Today, I am leaving you the link to a comic by Rosalind B. Penfold, a woman who went through the horror of an abuse relationship. Her way out was drawing this comic that she later made into a book. You have an excerp of it here, but you have the link to the complete comic where she talks about the signs that make you see that you can be in danger:

• He wants to go too fast.
• He makes you think being with him is more important than anything else.
• He makes plans for you without your agreement.
• He talks badly about your friends and family.
• He makes you feel less than others in public.
• He doesn't want you seeing anybody.
• He mistreats you and then quickly goes back to treating you too well.
• He abouses you and then makes as if it had never happened.
• He says your behaviour is your fault.
• He is too jealous.
• He wants to know everything you  do and where.

Please, have a look at the comic and take it into account!!!
If you want to learn more about the author, you can read an interview with her at El Mundo.
What are you going to do to balance gender roles today? Tell us!!!

BEAUTY FEVER

Gema Herrerías from A5Farmacia.

Today I had a great day, a fantastic day!! I have to say thank you to Irene Romero from Mi Universo de Belleza because she has organised a fantastic meeting for Beauty Bloggers  called Beauty Fever in its second edition this year. I had an appointment with three friends to spend the day attending to talks related to beauty and visiting stands of different dermopharmaceutical companies.

In the photo, you can see my friend Gema giving a talk on the combination of social media and beauty; Gema is a great expert on social media, she has a great, very informative blog (linked above) and has her own chemist here in Sevilla. You should read her blog because it shows you how important it is to look after our skin.

We did  not have the time to visit all the stands, but we did go to those of Apivita, they work with natural ingredients mainly taken from what the bees produce, great scents!!; Bioderma, in which they explained their best product called Matricium to us; the Carebell one, with fantastic eyebrow make-up and the fantastic Caudalie one with its marvellous frangance which they take from grapes and wine.

In the afternoon, we attended a talk on the concept of beauty, about how it is imposed on us or what is it that makes us feel beautiful and sense beauty around us, really interesting!! After that, we were offered some water and a flat cake with orange and chocolate flavour by Chocolate y limón.

What do you think of my Saturday?

Tell me about your Saturday in the comments!!

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!!!

Civil Rights Movement.

What is the Civil Rights Movement?

These days we are talking about the Civil Rights Movement in the USA, focusing on the fight that African-American people led through non-violent boycotts and sit-ins against racial discrimation and segregation. Not only did the African-Americans fight for their rights, but also the Chicano, Indian, Homosexuals and Women protested peacefully (most of the time) to get recognition and rights. This happened from 1955 to 1968.

How did it start?
This all started when Rosa Parks decided that she would no longer stand up in the bus to give her seat to a white person in Montgomery. 90% of the African-American people of her town followed her in her social disobedience led by a very young Martin Luther King who became the leader of the movement nationwide. Many other non-violent demonstrations followed. He got the Nobel Peace Prize  in 1964. A few weeks ago, President Barack Obama sat at Rosa Parks' seat in the Montgomery bus. He also got the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.

What did they achieve?
Trough pacific means, they attained the passing of very important laws regarding the banning of discrimination in many aspects, the opening of the USA frontiers to non-Europeans citizens, the actual right to vote; these laws were called: Civil Rights Act, Immigration and National Services Act and Voting Rights Act.

You can watch the video of one of his most important speeches in Washington while you read it: I have a dream speech. It is very touching, it always moves me, especially because some things have not been attained yet, 40 years after it.

Have you ever heard or read it? What do you think of it?
Leave your comments and tell us!!

What would happen if bees disappeared?

Bees have lived for 80 millions of years and their population is decreasing alarmingly even up to 50% of the  bees are disappearing. I have heard lately that Einstein said something like: "Should bees disappear, the human race wouldn't outlive them more than four years". There would be no pollination, some vegetal species would not survive, therefore, some animal species would vanish as well and all our food chain would be altered.
 We have been working on conditionals and this post is written in the second conditional because it is an unreal or improbable situation. Let's see a quick review:

Types:	Form:	Use:	Example:
Zero type	If present simple, present simple.	Habitual results.	If you heat water up to 100º, it boils.
Type I	If present tense, will+infinitive.	Probable results.	If it's sunny, we'll go to the beach.
Type II	If past tense, would+infinitive.	Improbable, unreal situations. Also advice.	If I won the lottery, I would travel around the world.
Type III	If past perfect, would have+ past participle.	Impossible situations because they refer to the past.	If I had listened to my mother, I wouldn't have been so miserable all my life.

 You can practice a little bit at English Grammar 4U online or at Perfect English Grammar.

What do you think? What would you do if bees disappeared?
Leave your comments and tell us!!!Use the second conditional type!!
Just in case you get too negative, you can listen to this song by Beyoncé which is one of my favourite songs, especially because of the lyrics. (it is written using the second conditional because she talks about how she would behave if she were a boy)

Beyoncé's  If I were  boy:

You can learn more about conditionals in this other post of the blog.

ADELE: Someone like you.

Adele is a great British singer and song-writer.Born in Tottenham (north of London) lived with her young mother alone. She had a talented voice since she was very young and, even though her economic circunstances were not very good, she went to the Brit School for Performing Arts & Technology. She was discovered by a record company because a friend of her posted a demo by her on MySpace.

I like this song very much and I think that this video is perfect for class use. First, the lyrics can be seen paying attention to the tenses or even filling gaps to use the different tenses (present simple, past simple, past perfect, "will"  future, and also, the imperative or conditional); there are many different tenses and also time lines can be used to explain time referencies and how they are organised in a text. As the video also has the lyrics on, we can enjoy a karaoke version with the whole class or even have the class divided and make competitions between the two groups!!

If you want to know more about Adele, visit her official website.

What do you think? Do you have any other ideas?

Please, leave your comments!!!

International Women's Day 2012

Public Local  Clothes Sink at Belalcázar, Córdoba (Spain)
photo taken by Ana García.

I wish...

I wish we did not have to celebrate this day, that is,

 I wish it wasn't necessary. 

Unfortunately, and I see it every day, 

there are many people who still think that women should do certain things and men other certain things; 

these ideas push society backwards, 

they make  it continue the same,

follow in the same mood.

I saw these sinks and thought how hard it was to be a woman not so long ago...

I wish society will move forward,

I wish we don't need to celebrate this day.

What are your wishes?

Leave them in a comment!!

If you want to know more about International Women's Day, why it is celebrated today and so on, have a look at the Wikipedia.