Good morning, afternoon, evening
Caterina, Monica, Isabella, Valentina, Matteo, Alessio, Francesco, Fabio, Maurizio, Samuele,
have you ever listened to the TED Talks on the Internet? Read this article and find your own subject of interest among the so many available on the web.
Tell us in a comment what Talks you are interested in and us too, we will listen to them, so to be able to speak about them in class together.
Anna - Coordinator
Source: Speak Up October 2014
Good morning, afternoon, evening,
quite often we can face the subject of talented teenagers in our text books, finding out later that they have become professionals, artists, capable of designing their own extraordinary lives.
Malala is not only a name to bear in mind, but also a pattern to follow.
She didn't mean to show any special talent, she was just doing what she believed in.
Malala started a blog to promote girls'education when she was only thirteen, choosing the side of life she wanted to stay on.
She chose education to change everyone's destiny, to open that view on the entire world that takes into account everyone's interest.
1. Is it just a matter of choices waiting to be done? 2. Or decisions to take?
3. Is there any important choice we can do of a similar importance? 4. When?
5. What role do you think education can play in a child's life?
6. What do you think of such a girl?
Listen to her speaking English on the Internet, when she delivered a speech at the United Nations on the day of her sixteenth birthday, on July 12th, 2013, after recovering in Great Britain for being so severely injured in Pakistan by the Taliban.
She talks about the importance of education, the only way for us as human beings to live as equals, both women and men.
"Let's join her, let's all do our part to help unlock the extraordinary talents and potential of all our children."
There might be so many other talented children among us like Malala or different from her, all of them capable of contributing to a better world for everybody. 
Anna - Coordinator
Source: Time, October 27 2014
Good morning, afternoon, evening Matteo, Fabio, Emanuele, Francesco, Maurizio,
and whoever wants to join us acquiring English as a second language;
this is the article for you for our next class. Plus films to watch, summaries and comments to write and when together opportunities to speak.
Again Ireland
1. Is there anything in common between this and the previous article?
2. What does the Irish Landmarks Trust do?
3. If you had the chance, which lighthouse would you like to visit among the ones described?
4. Is the one proposed in All Island Lighthouse Tourism Trail a type of vacation you would choose?
Visit also other pages of our website and enjoy practicing your English
Maria Luisa: very good job. I'm sure you can find the very few mistakes you made, just reading again your writing.
To deliver your speech before your class, give everybody the "big picture", I mean try to contextualize the lighthouses in Ireland as part of a project intended to preserve and utilize historical buildings.
See you in class
Anna - Coordinator
Source: Speak Up September 2014
Good morning, afternoon, evening, Caterina, Monica, Rocio,
nice welcoming you and anyone else who likes partecipating in this job of ours to make our English improve.
This article is for you to read and then write your comments.
We can continue talking about Cat Cafés in class among the so many other subjects that usually we like talking about.
1. What is the aim of these cafés with cats that are spreading from Taiwan?
2. Do you think they would be successful in our country?
3. Have you visited the web site whose address is in mentioned in the article? If so, tell us what is the core of it and how it works.
Anna - Coordinator
Source: Speak Up September 2014
'morning, afternoon, evening to everybody,
Natalia came to class with The Illusionist, John brought us Finding Nemo, and we watched them. The Illusionist has no English subtitles on this DVD, that's why we watched the film with the Italian ones.
Here you have questions to answer: do your own research on the Internet to find more accurate information about the film, so to pay great attention to formal correctness when you answer.
1. Where does The Illusionist begin?
2. Why did Eisenheim start to be interested in magic tricks?
3. Who did Eisenheim fall in love with?
4. Was she of his same social class?
5. Were they allowed to see each other?
6. What happened?
_________________
7. When do they meet again?
8. Who is she engaged with?
9. Does the Crown Prince Leopold kill her?
10. Where is she found?
11. Who does the Illusionist summon in his next show?
12. Is the end of the film what you expected?
13. Can you summarize it?
You can also say if you think that watching films is profitable and why, it will be interesting to compare ideas.
Anna - Coordinator
Source: Italian version of The Illusionist DVD
Good morning, afternoon evening,
with great pleasure next week we are going to meet English speaking cruise passengers, to welcome them to our town.
It will be an occasion for the whole town to practice English, since whoever likes the idea can join us.
In addition to all of you students who are coming to our Open Lessons, I would like to thank all the managers and employees of our Municipality and Province for being so supportive.
We would like to contribute to a change: becoming bilingual or multilingual means being more open minded, mature and both feeling and offering home to whoever speaks the same language, i.e. communicating.
See you there
Anna - Coordinator
Source: Alitalia "Arrivederci" 1997 Special Issue about Livorno
Good morning, afternoon, evening,
Michele, Paolo, Francesco, Simone, Marco, Alessio, Fabio, Samuele, Matteo, Gabriele, Giovanni, Sara, Leonardo, Gabriele, Giacomo, Pietro, Emanuele, Sara, Dario, Filippo, Lorenzo, Emanuele, Sara, Giulia, Natalia,
Ireland is definetely a place to visit in Summer, giving you also the opportunity to practice English and experience cordiality.
Have you ever been there?
If so, what are your memories of the land? And of the people you met? Where did you go? What did you visit? Cities? Wild lands? How did you go there? Did you take any photographs? What are your favourite ones? Would you mind coming to class with them?
If you haven't ever been to Ireland, would you like to go there?
Read the article from Speak Up, July Issue, in class we'll listen to the CD.
Anna - Coordinator
Good morning, afternoon, evening,
we are very busy running our Summer Courses, but very pleased to see how many students want to improve their English understanding how useful it can be for their future.
Join us and practice enjoying what you do. That's the secret we would like you to get.
Would you like to go and study in Oxford, Giulia, Natalia and Sara?
Writing skill:
What strikes you most in this article?
What is there at the Oxford Union in the library on the walls?
Who painted them? What do they represent?
We will use a few photographs from these pages to train the oral skill.
To find and acquire very useful expressions requested for describing photos in the oral test of the First Certificate Examination, select "A Photo Description" from March 2013 in the Archive. We'll practice in class.
See you there, Anna - Coordinator
Source: Speak Up, June 2014
'Morning, 'Afternoon, 'Evening to everybody,
all of us are very pleased to warmly invite you to continue encouraging curiosity the way knowledge started, that is what happened at the beginning of our life and of the human mankind.
Start reading the attractive English texts of this exibition " Balle di Scienza" by the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Phisics at Palazzo Blu, in Pisa, and let them do their job: fascinate you and make you become part of that immense army interested in Science.
Dazzles and errors populate the road that man has walked to understand and to interpret the universe.
This happened not only in the ancient vision of an anthropomorphic nature, made of spirits and gods, but it was also the case after the method of Galileo who taught us to look more carefully and understand natural phenomena.
Even today, in our era of hyper-technological and global communication, we happen - and often - to take amazing blunders.
The exhibition "Bales of Science" at Palazzo Blu in Pisa, will tell you how the errors inevitably accompany the human desire to know: great discoveries - made sometimes by accident - are interwoven with glaring oversights.
Scientists in fact bring in the laboratory, and it is difficult to do otherwise, their religious, philosophical and cultural beliefs. Correct mistakes is the very essence of the scientific method, which was inaugurated by Galileo 400 years ago. What matters is not to lose curiosity and wonder to the world. Being wrong is part of the game.
Anna - Coordinator
Source - Our camera when visiting "Balle di Scienza" 
Hello Martina, Alessio, Paolo, Marco, Elena, Laura, Chiara, Lidia, Sara, Diego and Cristiano,
you are a really good group of wonderful students.
After working together yesterday, do you want to practice your English a little more?
We used present simple, present continuous and past simple.
Here you have a few questions to revise English we learned together:
1. Did you like the English Laboratory with Breakfast and Sport?
2. What did you learn?
3. Do you like practicing English and having fun?
4. What is Susanna doing in the photograph?
5. Do you like the photo of all of you together?
Continue enjoying English and have fun! It is the best way to learn!
Anna - Coordinator
Source - Self acquired material authorized by parents
This is a special hello,
mainly to the teenagers' families and their children, our students.
There are a few questions we would like to ask you, after the experience we have been sharing for several months so far
For parents:
What is/has been your child's involvement in this English course?
Do you speak about our classwork at home?
Has our classwork been useful to support your child's English at school?
What are your ideas about this experience and advice for a next one?
For pupils:
Has it been useful to partecipate with your friends in our English course?
Has it been a demanding task? Was it fun?
What do you think of the work we have done in class and the one you have been asked to do at home?
Have there been any results? If so, what are they?
For both families and students
Do you think that English Summer Camps, very short holidays where daily life and any other activities were performed in English could be useful for you to improve the language? We have plenty of ideas!
We have our very last classes together to talk about that, then you have to pass your final exam at school, and Summer is ready for anything you like most, including enjoying and improving your English.
Leave a comment, we'll make a use of it.
The article above is an invitation to think about technology; how to use it. The point is making a tool of it, having clear ideas of what the aims are. Find out what Hikikomori is aqnd write about it with your own words. .
Anna - Coordinator
Source: Speak Up, May 2014
Good morning, afternoon, evening,
this is a special homework for students working at the port of Livorno dealing with car stevedoring on board of ships.
Task n° 1: You received an informal email from Germany, enquiring about the transport via vessel of a few models of Bizzarrini cars.
You are requested to reply to the email, giving all the information required.
Task n° 2: after listening in class and talking about the two audios related to "Car shipping into containers" and "Faust, a gigantic car carrier", you have to write the answers to the questions on the worksheet above.
"Dear Franco,
as I recently bought two models of Bizzarrini cars, I would like to join the so many other owners of these fairytale cars for an exibition that will be held in the States. My English teacher told me that I can bear on you for a perfect service of car stowage at the Port of Livorno, since the securing requirements provided by the Company you supervise are of excellent quality.
I'm sure you know that Bizzarrini cars are unique designs, creations of a genius, the Italian Eng. Giotto Bizzarrini from your town, Livorno, and periodically gather in selected places in the world so to remember the glories of their designer?
Could you please tell me how this type of cars are loaded onto vessels, if they are containerized, how they will be retained on board and what are the procedures to be followed in order to have them perfectly transported and desembarked in the States where I would be right to take them back in charge?
Thank you for all the info you will give me and that I would like to forward to my collector friends who would like to come to Livorno to embark their cars.
Helmut"
For all the other students either interested in exclusive cars like the ones designed by Eng. Bizzarrini or just interested in knowing something about this genius, search on the Internet and write down for everybody what strikes you more. Also news about the gigantic Faust Ship can be found on the Internet, of course.
Enjoy your English
Anna - Coordinator
Source: "The genius behind Ferrari's success - Bizzarrini" Jack Koobs de Hartog
http//users.skynetbe/Bizzarrini
Good day,
what do you think of the idea of leaving planet Earth and go to Mars?
If you were offered this possibility, would you accept it?
In the States there are 200.000 applicants for one way trip to Mars, and one thousand have already been selected fo this one way journey foreseen for 2023.
A human mission will follow and unmanned one, carried out by a Rover explorer to find the best place for the human mission to settle.
Mars too will be colonized then, after two living units, two support systems and two supply units will have been launched to make human beings settle on the planet. The first crew will be there in 2023 and every two years a new one will join them.
What does strike you most about this article?
What do you think of the differences among peoples living on planet Earth?
Would you take into consideration the idea of leaving planetEarth?
Anna - Coordinator
Source: Speak Up April 2014
'morning, afternoon, evening,
just breathing. Yesterday in class we talked about how also everyone' breathing can be so meaningful.
There are times in which we should pay more attention to the simpliest things in life, but so important as breathing for example. Before reading the article reply to these questions:
do you feel any necessity to be more capable of concentration? Why?
what could be breathwalking aimed at, according to you?
do you live a stressfull life?
are there only disadvantages in having a stressfull dayly routine?
what are the tools you use to improve the quality of your life?
if so, why is your life so stressful?
any possibility to change it from being so stressed to being resourceful?
And now read the article and start thinking about breathing and your self perception
any thinking of training your breathing this way?
Let us know, find your time and improve its quality with just self awareness. It is a first step, but any path
is made by single steps.
Anna - Coordinator
Source: Speak up October 2007
Good day,
we could say so much about speaking English as Italians.
If you acquire English as a second language, or third or whatever, it is one more identity you can add to your one/s.
It allows your potentialities to surface, since so many other skills of yours were submerged and a second language is just the tool, sometimes it is just the excuse, to make you observe more, pay grater attention, listen more carefully, write to find out that there are accuracy and style, that can be transferred to your other languages; in case you are Italian, your mother tongue too can improve.
Speaking too, giving any single word an intonation to accompany any speech of yours, becomes that enjoyment the way anything related to English is. It is that one more house you can have and offer to everybody, feeling at home wherever you can hear it spoken.
Something in common, this feeling equal, and making the others feeling the same.
Up to you to continue what English is for you, your past and present experiences, to let our readers know.
It would be a pleasure reading them.
Comparing experiences, what is one of the best things Mike Strevens has ever done? Why? And yours? Why?
He speaks about Italian teachers of English. What does he say about them and what is your general evaluation about English spoken in Italy?
Where did you learn English? How long have you been studying it?
What do you do to improve it? Does it work? How do you evaluate that?
We think that Mike Strevens says something quite true about the common Italians' behaviour when speaking English. Integrating school classes' programs, we see that students tend to be afraid or ashamed to be laughed at, and be seen objects of derision by the others.
We are convinced that the approach to a second language at school should consider it behaviour, not a subject. A language is a matter of life, a lifelong competence, a vehicle for any meaning you want to communicate and talk about. With the teacher acting in English, it should be perceveid as such. A language is you and your entire body, the way you feel at ease with it.
Read the article, think of it, write a comment for us to read and talk about when back in class.
Thanks everybody, enjoy your English
Anna - Coordinator
Source: Speak Up, March 2014
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