Good morning, afternoon, evening,

watching films in class  is a great experience. 

We choose one as a "propeller" for ideas, evaluations.

Have you ever watched a film in its original language? Ever thought that just watching a film in English means acquiring the Language? 

Try to concentrate and enjoy it; follow the plot, let the film fascinate you, let the Language do its work: leaving signs, memories, in a meaningful context.  

Train yourselves to pay great attention to both, listening and written comprehension and try to line them up. Your mind will do that for you, due to its importance if you feel deeply motivated.  There are clever strategies inside ourselves,  and experiencing is the best way to find out what they are and what results they can get for us.

You have a worksheet here you can work on after watching the film.

Reply to the questions either here as a comment or as homework before coming back to class.

Enjoy your English, see you in class,

Anna - Coordinator

Source: Italian DVD cover  

Quite late reply I'm afraid, Velma.

It would be very stimulating for our pupils and students reading some more comments of yours and interacting, when in class, sending their own writings as a reply to yours.

Keep up, looking forward to reading you again!

Anna

Thank you Fabio, Homework Solution, Cristina and Giulio.

Watching films is such an enjoyable resource to acquire a Language, cinema offers this great opportunity, living for a while in a different world and being not the same anymore, but richer.  

Last January we started our blog with "A Long Walk".

Visit the Archive and find it.

It's still Africa now, everybody's first home, with "The Long Walk", Nelson Mandela's one, saying good bye to one of its children.  

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/nelson-mandela/9958896/Archive-Nelson-Mandelas-walk-to-freedom-in-1990-after-his-release-from-prison.html

Let you be fascinated by his speaking, his true love  and enthusiasm

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/boxing-mma/nelson-mandelas-love-of-boxing-gave-him-strength-in-his-long-quest-for-reconciliation/story-fni2urrv-1226781060832

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQQQgqxsgSrHM2KZCweNRy3IKe8wpkBjz1YKrN0sNiSqIV3IZlb

Very, Very Dear Nelson Mandela, Madiba, 

we all owe you a deep debt of gratitude

we will never be able to repay,

but we will continue to try. 

Source: "Time", December 23, 2013

Rita, Kaylene, Design Tips, Chocolate Fondue,

thank you so much for appreciating what is being done on this blog. The aim is spreading English as a tool for a worldwide communication, just talking or training pulils and students, any age, any profession.

It would be great if you could participate, offering comments that could be used in class. 

Choose a subject you like, leave a comment, so that I can involve students here, and an interaction can start, mainly for students' benefit, but also for everybody's one. 

Looking forward to hearing from you, Anna

Hello Agnese, Alessandra, Anna, Gabriele, Martina, Samuele, 

for sure you like animals, and definitely the reindeer are fascinating ones. 

This is a worksheet for you to reply after reading the article we listened to in class. You can either answer here on the website consulting your parents, or on your worksheet at home and in class.

Whoever among the students following our courses or just  out of interest wants to practice his/her English letting him/herself be involved in such a nice topic, is very, very welcome.

Enjoy your English, it will be nice reading you

Anna - TEFL Teacher - Coordinator

Sourse: Speak Up, December 2009 and http://www.caingormreindeer.co.uk/

Good morning, afternoon, evening,

after last classes we thought that uploading worksheets here could be helpful so to have them at one's disposal with just a few clicks. 

We are very busy trying to coordinate all our courses, be faithful, we'll succeed. 

And what about you, are you busy these days? 

So far, you can find here a worksheet about Parmitano as an astronaut and experimental flight test engineer/pilot, since the subject has been of so great interest to so many of you. 

After listening to an interview with him on the Italian radio, Rai Radio Tre Scienza on 25th November, we thought the questions asked him could become interactive class material.

Here are a few of the questions he was asked, and for you the task is guessing what he answered.

You can write down your answers and in class we'll give each one the chance to be compared with his ones. Have you heard Parmitano speaking? What language? Any comment on any special perception of yours ? Think of them and let you be fascinated by languages. They are friends.

Go to March in the Archive and please find the first man who went into space in 1961, plus one more Italian astronaut we can be so proud of. 

There's reason now to wish Samantha Cristoforetti all the best for her mission "Futura" to the ISS, the International Space Station, starting in November 2014. We thought that Leonardo's Italian words about flying could be a good omen for the whole "Futura" mission.

  Do you Do you think Leonardo would have liked to wish Italian astronauts a good flight? How would you say in English what he wrote and that you have here? 

I would also like to thank Silvia, a new student, who so willingly came to class the first time with the three papers you can find below to study. 

Come to class ready to speak about what you've written and never forget to enjoy your English, that's great!

Anna - Coordinator  

Source: self and //www.esa.int/ESAhttp://www.esa.int/ESAhttp://www.esa.int/ESA; ESA Bullettin Number 145 February 2011

Wind, sand and stars – (with apologies once again to De Saint-Exupery)

Posted on November 10, 2013 by raffaella

 

Mesospheric Noctilucent Clouds capture the first rays of a new day’s sun

That is my planet.

I gaze lovingly at the surface with its boundless and beautiful colours. How many times have I explored its borders as the dawn immortalises its curves, glowing in an indescribable light-blue that is perfectly outlined by the light of iridescent mesospheric clouds: the colour of infinite patience.

Shrouded in silence I look out: I feel our planet’s heart beat as I watch the vital water run along infinite veins across the land, nourished and protected by the clouds that cover Earth’s surface like the cloak of a vestal virgin. Its breathing is calm and eternal like the tides but large as ocean waves. It holds the power of winds that sweep sand from a hundred deserts to the tops of a thousand mountains in one breath.

In a few hours, all this will be a memory. My spaceship is quiet and dark in waiting, but soon it will turn into a dramatic theatre when we return to Earth. Everything that has a beginning must come to an end: this fragility makes each experience unique and even more valuable.

I try to fill my eyes, my mind and my heart with the colours, nuances and sensations so that my memories will be witness to the experience. Underneath me on Earth, lands merge: country boundaries are non-existent when you look down from up here in the Cupola. I observe the lands of men.

I always feel the irresistible attraction of the sky and stars when I look up on Earth. I encourage my mind to lose itself in the infinite and the unknown. It is in our nature, our Ulysses gene. Nonetheless, Ulysses returns to Ithaca after many travels: his island always in his dreams. If I had been born in the interstellar darkness, if I had spent my entire life traveling far from our world, I would look back at our bright-blue waters and diverse continents with the same admiration. Every sunrise and every sunset would instil the same sense of awe. I would dream of sinking my feet in the warm sands, to feel the cold embrace of snow and the caress of the salty sea-breeze that blows towards land. I would wonder how it feels to bathe in its waters, to bask in the warmth of the Sun.

But I am lucky: I was born there.

That is my planet. That is my home.

 

 As  coordinators of a project encouraging anyone to acquire English to communicate all over the world, we would like to thank whoever, including Luca Parmitano and his colleagues in this last mission, speaks and writes it from elsewhere.

An invitation to have no barriers, no borders, the same human being everywhere, eager to communicate, each time with new eyes, into the space and on the planet.

Do we have these new eyes to see what's new every day? 

What did strike you most of this mission into the space?   

Find videos on the Internet with the astronauts speaking English and let us know what they were talking about. 

 

Enjoy your English

 

Anna - Coordinator          Source: http://blogs.esa.int/luca-parmitano/2013/11/10/wind-sand-and-stars-with-apologies-once-again-to-de-saint-exupery/

Good morning, afternoon , evening, 

these are very busy days, we are designing new projects, meeting people to understand and plan the best perspectives for them, running courses in high schools and for adults.

For also restarting to work on the web is very important, so far Lower Intermediate Level is what you can read here. Have a look!

Once more we invite you to participate in this practice, writing here, on the web site, and speaking in class. 

That's why you have here an article talking about what we can do in our square foot - or meter, but it's larger  - to improve our world.

Never forget you can be the change you want to see in the world, the way Mohandas Karamchand Ghandi used to say.  

Add your comments with ideas of yours and we'll talk about them in class

Anna - Coordinator

Source: Speak up, May 2010

Good morning, afternoon, evening, 

we are going to update you all about what English Generation is.

Can you guess the double meaning of the expression? 

Please write it down as a comment.

For you to know, it is Stage Two of our project with teenagers at school. 

We would like to thank all of those who worked hard the whole Summer at ITIS Galilei Livorno with Summer English courses. Have a look at their website, www.galileilivorno.it  

We encouraged students to train their English the way they do with sports. The more you train, the better your results are. Perfectly comprehensible and pursued, it worked very well.

Enthusiasm and vitality, more competence, the true beginning of bilingualism, English-Italian.  

Everybody enjoyed all the activities of the courses, including "English in the open air".  

To acquire a language what's important is "to behave" the language, being active, dynamic while performing.

We watched films, documentaries, we wrote dialogues, talked about cool T shirts' writings students wore, we competed with scrambled words, had parties. All the activities were successful, integrated by grammar all the times it was necessary.

So much kindness by English speaking  Mediterranean cruise passengers, visiting Livorno and meeting us; so much beauty was unexpected.

Very gentle people, all the possible accents of Great Britain, any age, all of them curious to know why all those young Italian people were there to meet them on a hot Summer day. We took hundreds of pictures all the Summer and students edited a video.  www.galileilivorno.it 

It would be nice hearing from you, having a comment about what the double meaning of English Generation is, if there's more than one. 

Working with so many teenagers has been stimulating; teenagers are clever, tenacious, full of interests, hardworking, collaborative, serious, creative, competent when properly stimulated. Now it's time to organize all our activities and courses and to continue on the web too. 

Enjoy your English, read, watch movies, talk, listen to English speaking people and write.

Anna - Coordinator 

Sources: photos taken by Coordinator with the Institute, students and families' written permission. 

Good morning, 'afternoon, 'evening,

we would like to welcome a Universe, one of the so many we would like to know.

It's the one of young people from the high school ITIS Galilei Livorno, all the students who are going to start studying English with us in the Summer.

Each one a Universe, all of them a Multiverse.

We are going to update the web with our work, wishing you, dear students, to acquire a Language that will be yours, wherever you go, always ready to help you to get what you mainly desire and to make you feel at home wherever you are.

Trust yourselves and be ready to find out the so many resources inside yourselves who are just waiting to be enhanced and spent for your own purposes,  all the times you meet other people.

Thank you all for participating, enjoy your English.

Anna - Coordinator 

Source: Booklet of the exhibition "Stories from the other world"  "The Universe inside and outside ourselves" Pisa, Palazzo Blu, March - July 2012, By INFN 

Good morning, afternoon, evening

our English classes ended with May, and we can certainly say that trying out the use of the web has been very positive. Technology can empower our English training. Keeping alive a language is like any other training, the more you do it, the more the results improve.

There is a deep need to use  the Internet in class, as an important contribute to the exposition to English, so thet all the perceptions you can develop and train in a class, are involved. English spoken, written by anyone who is on the net. Each one's contribution is essential, because it is so different from any other's. Variety is such a resource in a class; it relies also on each one who is present, since it asks for the maximum effort to pay attention and exploit any single moment to make advantage of anything surrounding you.

The class is the right place where technology can enhance human potential as soon as it surfaces; thanks to technology it can be even more productive, offering the possibility to be creative and highlight it more. Try to think of how useful a webcam could be in a class, with English students on the other side to practice English.  

In Summer we should continue the work we started in May surveying high schools. English teaching can be integrated by activities so to reinforce each one's skills aiming at visible and immediate results such as the performance improved, the autonomy increased, self confidence developed. Young people understand immediately how useful English can be to pursue any objective, that a language is for life, and life is theirs. Up to them/you to decide whether having more arrows for your bow. 

Below there is the leaflet to inform students about Summer courses; they will enroll at school.  

Can you try to translate in Italian the three-line motto on the cover? 

What are you going to do for your English in the Summer?

Do not stop training it, vary in types of sources, but never, never stop practicing. 

Anna - Coordinator 

Source: www.galileilivorno.it 

Hello, 

Two films for you to watch.

Maybe you already know what is the story of The Great Gatsby, since it is a remake, but you don't know anything about The English Teacher. 

Up to  you to decide which film you prefer to write a comment about.

As regards The English Teacher, following the tips given by the very short review, try to build up the story. We'll see together how different the film is as soon as we  can watch it on DVD, with the original language and subtitles. Try to experience watching films in English, choose the gender you like and enjoy them, your English will improve spontaneously.  

Anna - Coordinator Source: Speak Up, May 2013