To make us think ...

... about disability.

Can you see through the eyes of a child?

 

A short story

It takes only 20' to watch this fantastic short video. I hope you find the right moment to watch it. You won't regret it.

 

Antisocial networks?

Watch this video and decide.

Rafa Nadal and John Carlin

Dedicated to those students who enjoyed so much 'Playing the Enemy' and gave me a really nice present 2 years ago.

Private conversation

 

What's your word bug?

You can listen to different people talking about words or expressions they find annoying. What's yours?

Mine is "Isis", for obvious reasons.
Now it's your turn!

The Power of Negative Thinking

Both ancient philosophy and modern psychology suggest that darker thoughts can make us happier

By OLIVER BURKEMAN

The holiday season poses a psychological conundrum. Its defining sentiment, of course, is joy—yet the strenuous effort to be joyous seems to make many of us miserable. It's hard to be happy in overcrowded airport lounges or while you're trying to stay civil for days on end with relatives who stretch your patience.
So to cope with the holidays, magazines and others are advising us to "think positive"—the same advice, in other words, that Norman Vincent Peale, author of "The Power of Positive Thinking," was dispensing six decades ago. (During holidays, Peale once suggested, you should make "a deliberate effort to speak hopefully about everything.") The result all too often mirrors the famously annoying parlor game about trying not to think of a white bear: The harder you try, the more you think about one.

Alex Nabaum

Variations of Peale's positive philosophy run deep in American culture, not just in how we handle holidays and other social situations but in business, politics and beyond. Yet studies suggest that peppy affirmations designed to lift the user's mood through repetition and visualizing future success often achieve the opposite of their intended effect.
Fortunately, both ancient philosophy and contemporary psychology point to an alternative: a counterintuitive approach that might be termed "the negative path to happiness." This approach helps to explain some puzzles, such as the fact that citizens of more economically insecure countries often report greater happiness than citizens of wealthier ones. Or that many successful businesspeople reject the idea of setting firm goals.
One pioneer of the "negative path" was the New York psychotherapist Albert Ellis, who died in 2007. He rediscovered a key insight of the Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome: that sometimes the best way to address an uncertain future is to focus not on the best-case scenario but on the worst.
Seneca the Stoic was a radical on this matter. If you feared losing your wealth, he once advised, "set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: 'Is this the condition that I feared?' "
To overcome a fear of embarrassment, Ellis told me, he advised his clients to travel on the New York subway, speaking the names of stations out loud as they passed. I'm an easily embarrassed person, so in the interest of journalistic research, I took his advice, on the Central Line of the London Underground. It was agonizing. But my overblown fears were cut down to size: I wasn't verbally harangued or physically attacked. A few people looked at me strangely.
Just thinking in sober detail about worst-case scenarios—a technique the Stoics called "the premeditation of evils"—can help to sap the future of its anxiety-producing power. The psychologist Julie Norem estimates that about one-third of Americans instinctively use this strategy, which she terms "defensive pessimism." Positive thinking, by contrast, is the effort to convince yourself that things will turn out fine, which can reinforce the belief that it would be absolutely terrible if they didn't.
In American corporations, perhaps the most widely accepted doctrine of the "cult of positivity" is the importance of setting big, audacious goals for an organization, while employees are encouraged (or compelled) to set goals that are "SMART"—"Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely." (It is thought that the term was first used in a 1981 article by George T. Doran.)
But the pro-goal consensus is starting to crumble. For one thing, rigid goals may encourage employees to cut ethical corners. In a study conducted by the management scholar Lisa Ordóñez and her colleagues, participants had to make words from a set of random letters, as in Scrabble. The experiment let them report their progress anonymously—and those given a specific target to reach lied far more frequently than those instructed merely to "do your best."
Goals may even lead to underachievement. Many New York taxi drivers, one team of economists concluded, make less money in rainy weather than they could because they finish work as soon as they reach their mental target for what constitute a good day's earnings.
Focusing on one goal at the expense of all other factors also can distort a corporate mission or an individual life, says Christopher Kayes, an associate professor of management at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Prof. Kayes, who has studied the "overpursuit" of goals, recalls a conversation with one executive who "told me his goal had been to become a millionaire by the age of 40…and he'd done it. [But] he was also divorced, and had health problems, and his kids didn't talk to him anymore." Behind our fixation on goals, Prof. Kayes's work suggests, is a deep unease with feelings of uncertainty.
Research by Saras Sarasvathy, an associate professor of business administration at the University of Virginia, suggests that learning to accommodate feelings of uncertainty is not just the key to a more balanced life but often leads to prosperity as well. For one project, she interviewed 45 successful entrepreneurs, all of whom had taken at least one business public. Almost none embraced the idea of writing comprehensive business plans or conducting extensive market research.
They practiced instead what Prof. Sarasvathy calls "effectuation." Rather than choosing a goal and then making a plan to achieve it, they took stock of the means and materials at their disposal, then imagined the possible ends. Effectuation also includes what she calls the "affordable loss principle." Instead of focusing on the possibility of spectacular rewards from a venture, ask how great the loss would be if it failed. If the potential loss seems tolerable, take the next step.
The ultimate value of the "negative path" may not be its role in facilitating upbeat emotions or even success. It is simply realism. The future really is uncertain, after all, and things really do go wrong as well as right. We are too often motivated by a craving to put an end to the inevitable surprises in our lives.
This is especially true of the biggest "negative" of all. Might we benefit from contemplating mortality more regularly than we do? As Steve Jobs famously declared, "Remembering that you are going to die is the best way that I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose."
However tempted we may be to agree with Woody Allen's position on death—"I'm strongly against it"—there's much to be said for confronting it rather than denying it. There are some facts that even the most powerful positive thinking can't alter.

—Adapted from Mr. Burkeman's book "The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking," published in November by Faber & Faber.

A version of this article appeared December 7, 2012, on page C3 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Power of Negative Thinking.

Look up from your phone

Make a difference!

Can you hold a conversation in English?

Can you do it? How well? Just compare the percetage in Spain and the rest of Europe. Don't you feel you are privileged? Let's do anything to increase the number of Spanish people who can speak English.



If you want to read an interesting article by Jakub Marian, click here:

Map of percentage of people using English_ article

Accents in UK

Really interesting!

A different way to look at Spain

This is how you can look at things if you see the glass half full.

 

Amazing! and frightening?

Watch this amazing video. I felt really "frightened" after watching it. Will the future be like this?

Baidu Turns to Big Data to Forecast Flu Outbreaks

 

Chinese Internet giant Baidu will be watching closely when users of its search engine type “cold,”“fever” or other terms possibly linked to the flu.

The firm, which says its search engine attracts more than 160 million users daily, is working with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention to use big data to forecast flu outbreaks.

The project is one of several big-data initiatives that Baidu is planning, including efforts to monitor real-estate and financial markets, movie sales and career trends. A big-data-fueled visualization of the most popular travel routes for Chinese flocking home to celebrate the Lunar New Year with their families is already online. For that mashup, Baidu looked at data from its location-based applications.

The firm declined to comment on its latest health-focused project, saying that it is still in the works. However, given that Google has previously launched a similar big data initiative, Baidu is expected take some cues from its U.S. counterpart.
The decision by Baidu and Chinese authorities to launch a prediction tool for flu trends in China was inspired by the creation of Google Flu Trends in 2008, said Lai Shengjie, a researcher at the CDC’s infection prevention and control department, according to a report in China Daily.
One challenge for Baidu will be how to address the same types of problems that have resulted in an overestimation by Google of the number of flu cases in recent years. Researchers have found that the algorithms Google used haven’t been good enough to beat the accuracy of results derived from more traditional data, including reports from doctors.
The traditional flu monitoring system, via surveillance from hospitals, is thought to have more gaps in China compared to developed countries, as locals don’t necessarily visit doctors regularly and may wait longer for symptoms to develop before seeking professional advice. Data from search engine activity would in theory give Chinese health officials faster access to information that could point to emerging trends, such as possible flu outbreaks in certain localities.

 

Pinpointing the exact location that might be harboring viruses is essential for containment. Chinese authorities said earlier this year that a January outbreak of the H7N9 bird flu remained contained after the strain was found in three members of a Chinese family in Hangzhou. Apart from such family members, only humans who have had close contact with poultry have contracted the virus, authorities said.
Having previously suffered through severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the country remains perpetually on the alert against the threat of pandemics: The increase of H7N9 infections including deaths in Zhejiang this year, for example, led officials to shut down live poultry market in the province, in order to minimize possible transmission from chickens to humans.

By Chao Deng
 (DIGITS)

End of Year Questionnaire

Amazing video! And frightening?

New technologies, which aren't new any more, are really spreading to every area in our daily lives. And it also includes vital sections of big companies such as logistics.
Watch this interesting video to have an idea of what goes on when you buy something on the Internet.

A day in the life of a Kiva robot

 

Sentence completion

As apparently some of you are having problems to find the key to the exercises of rephrasing and sentence completion, I copy here the link to the key.

Sentece completion - key

Come on! You can do it!

Is anybody studying English or is everybody watching the match?

Canada, Seychelles and India presentations

Dear students,

As you were all expecting, here you have the 2 links to youtube to see the presentations you did about Canada and Seychelle Islands. Here you have the 2 videos:


Canada presentation

Seychelles presentation

The photos are here!

Fotos Seychelles


Unfortunately and due to technical problems, the presentation about India was not recorded but I can show you some of the photographs taken during and after the presentation.

You can see here the photos of the presentation of India. 

Fotos India

MOOC cloze test

Dear students,
I'm afraid there are a couple of typos in the cloze test I gave you in the last class. Please check them in the document I attach here (they are highlighted, one in the text and another one in the grid with the words provided)  and, if possible, tell your classmates about it so that they can also make these changes.
You don't need to print the cloze again, as I'm just talking about 2 words.

MOOC2- cloze test

Sorry about that!

So sorry!

Women in India

Everyone but  especially those who listened to Manjula Balakrishnan talking about the role and the problems of women in India, will find this video very interesting. Here they show us how women protest nowadays in India and how much they still suffer.

The world is mad. In Nigeria and everywhere.

But not much seems to be done to change it. The latest news about the kidnapped girls in Nigeria has shown again that we can easily get used to drama and shock and simply continue with our lives.
Let's fight to change the world!

Open doors activities and the event and dinner on Friday

We have ahead 3 days full of activities and celebrations and I'd like to share with you everything we have organized.

First of all you can click here to see all the activities you have on Wednesday and Thursday:

Actividades Puertas Abiertas

As for Friday, I just want to remind you that we'll be meeting at 6.30 at the Auditorium Joaquín Rodríguez and then we'll have dinner and dance until 2.00 am at the IES Burgo de las Rozas (Avda de España 141). Make sure you take with you the entrance ticket I gave you in class. Even if we changed the place of the celebration, the ticket is the same and it'll be requested for entrance.

I'll see you at school!

EOIFITUR: INDIA

Next Wednesday in classroom 3 we will be able to listen to the NA1 students (group Monday- Wednesday) talking about India. Afterwards Manjula Balakrishnan will talk about Women in India: Past to Present.

You are all welcome!

And to have an idea of the marvellous things you're going to see, you can watch this video. Enjoy it!

Welcome to India

25th anniversary & celebration

Dear students,

As you already know, soon after Easter Holiday we'll celebrate the 25th anniversary of our school. Some of you have participated in different ways in the activities proposed and some could still be the winners of some of them. Who knows?

The Open Days will be on 7th and 8th May and different activities will take place along the 2 days. Some of you are preparing EOIFitur and also have joined the teams of Pasapalabra. I'm sure many people will enjoy what you are preparing.

On May 9th will be the big celebration. We'll meet at 6.00 p.m. at the Auditorio Joaquín Rodrigo to have a good time going through the story of the school, watching the best videos and photos and giving the prizes to the winners.

Then at 9 p.m. we will go to IES BURGO DE LAS ROZAS, (avd de España 141, in Las Rozas, next to Parque de Paris) to have dinner (picoteo & 2 drinks), to dance ceilidh (Scottish & Irish dancing) and to chat and dance as much as we want afterwards at the disco. The price of the ticket (all this included) is 17€ and you have to buy it in class. There aren't many left, so make sure that you reserve yours as soon as posible.

More informations will be provided in the class.

See you soon!

Adolfo Suárez, father of Spanish democracy, dies at age 81

The first prime minister of the democratic era, the man who guided the transformation of Spain after the Franco dictatorship, passed away in Madrid on Sunday

King Juan Carlos and Prime Mininster Adolfo Suárez, pictured in 1976. / MARISA FLÓREZ

Adolfo Suárez, Spain’s first prime minister following the Franco dictatorship, the man who spearheaded a rocky but successful transition to democracy by legalizing the outlawed Socialist and Communist parties and the labor unions, died on Sunday after a long battle with Alzheimer’s. He was 81.

The former prime minister had been suffering from the disease for the past decade and had not appeared in public since 2003, when he attended a political rally for his son, Adolfo Suárez Illana.

On Friday, a tearful Suárez Illana announced at a news conference at the Cemtro de Madrid clinic that physicians had given his father no more than 48 hours to live. "The disease has progressed a lot and everything indicates that the end is imminent," he said.

The elder Suárez had been taken to the clinic on Monday suffering from a respiratory infection.

History will remember Suárez for his bravery in standing up to a gang of Civil Guard officers who tried to take over the young Spanish government in an attempted coup on February 23, 1981. Led by Civil Guard Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero, the armed men stormed into Congress the day lawmakers were voting on the prime minister’s successor, Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo.

As deputies ducked for cover when Tejero and his men began firing their weapons, a stoic Suárez remained calmly seated without even flinching. The entire event was captured by television news cameras.

King Juan Carlos looks on as Adolfo Suárez is sworn in 1976. / EL PAÍS

Born in Cebreros, Ávila province, Suárez studied law at the University of Salamanca. He held several top government posts during Francisco Franco’s regime.

In 1976, months following the death of Francisco Franco, King Juan Carlos had asked Suárez to take over as prime minister from Carlos Arías Navarro – the dictator’s last prime minister – and organize free elections. The monarch’s choice didn’t sit well with many leftists because Suárez had held various Cabinet posts under Franco, including minister of the National Movement – the only legal political organization during the dictatorship.

A mastered negotiator, Suárez ruffled feathers in the military and among the far-right after he invited Socialist leader Felipe González, who had been living in Paris, and Santiago Carrillo, the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) chief who was in Moscow, also in exile, to join the democratic process.

To read more, click here

Adolfo Suárez (El País in English) 

Adolfo Suárez (BBC News) 

Rest in peace Mr President.

 

 

Homework for Monday & Tuesday and 'Going Solo'

As we are spending the whole week doing exams, I'd like to set the homework for next week, for both groups, Monday& Tuesday:

- Reading and lexis of the file 5A (Who's in control) for Monday 24th & Tuesday 25th:

     - exercises a - d  (reading) and
     - e, f  (lexis)

-Going Solo:
 As some of you have asked me to postpone the date to talk about the next pages (up to page 140) of the book, these are the new dates for both groups:
     - Monday 31st March
     - Tuesday 1st April

I hope that after the stressful week of exams you'll find some time to relax before we start again.

March exam - IMPORTANT

Dear students,

To make sure we can give you more time to do the exams, we have decided to split them into 2 parts:

Monday or Tuesday (depending on your group):
Writing exam

Wednesday and Thursday:
Listening comprehension and Reading

We'll reorganise the orals after the first part of the exam.
Sorry if this can cause you any inconvenience.

PLEASE TELL EVERYBODY IN YOUR GROUP!

Infinitive or gerund?

As promised, the key to the exercises.

Key to exercises ing-infinitive
 

INFINITIVE OR GERUND?

I know it's quite hard to know when the verbs are followed by infinitive (with or without to) or gerund in English.

You can see here a table which has a list of verbs for all the cases, including when they are followed by an object and when it's posible to use a 'THAT clause'. You can also find verbs that change their meaning depending on the verb form that follows.

I hope you find it useful.

Infinitive or gerund

A new war? Will we ever learn from our history?

Russia keeps pressure on Ukraine with Crimea stand-off
BBC News

Russian and Ukrainian troops in Crimea are involved in a tense stand-off but fears of an imminent Russian assault have eased.

Ukraine's main military bases on the peninsula remain surrounded by Russian forces. Thousands of Russian troops have been pouring into Crimea.

An alleged ultimatum for Ukrainian forces to surrender - denied by Moscow - expired without incident.

Russia says its troops went in upon a request by the ousted president.

Viktor Yanukovych asked Russia to send troops across the border to protect civilians, Moscow's UN envoy Vitaly Churkin told the Security Council. He said Mr Yanukovych had written to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday.

Meanwhile, Russian troops who were on exercises in western Russia, near the Ukrainian border, have been ordered back to barracks after completing their tasks, the Kremlin says. Up to 150,000 personnel were involved in the exercises, which started last week.

The BBC's Richard Galpin in Moscow says the exercises had fuelled fears that Russia was preparing its armed forces for a full invasion of Ukraine.

In Crimea, two Ukrainian warships are reported to be blocked by a Russian minesweeper in the port of Sevastopol.

The Ukrainian navy headquarters in the city was surrounded by pro-Russian gunmen and civilians, who formed a human chain.

And at Crimea's Belbek air base in Sevastopol, pro-Russian troops who have seized it fired warning shots into the air to prevent around 300 Ukrainian soldiers approaching, the Associated Press news agency reports.

Ukraine's UN envoy Yuriy Sergeyev says Russia has deployed about 16,000 troops to the península.

Click here to read the whole article:

BBCNews_Ukrania
 

Roald Dahl. His biography & darkest hours

Probably you have already read the biography of this writer. But I post here an article about his darkest hours which will help you understand better his dark novels. You can also find his biography, just in case you have't found  time to read it yet.

It's a bit long but I hope you find time to read it all.

Roald Dahl. Dark hours.

Roald Dahl biography

Quotes

"Children are ... highly critical. And they lose interest so quickly. You have to keep things ticking along. And if you think a child is getting bored, you must think up something that jolts it back. Something that tickles. You have to know what children like."

"As I went on, the stories became less and less realistic and more fantastic. But becoming a writer was pure fluke. Without being asked to, I doubt if I'd ever have thought of it."

"A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men."

"The writer for children must be a jokey sort of a fellow. He must like simple tricks and jokes and riddles and other childish things. He must be ... inventive. He must have a really first-class plot."

 

 

Spanish flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia dies at 66

World-renowned Spanish guitarist Paco de Lucia has died aged 66 in Mexico, reportedly of a heart attack while playing with his children on a beach.

The death of one of the most celebrated flamenco guitarists was announced by the mayor's office in Algeciras, southern Spain, where he was born.
He is said to have died in the Mexican resort of Cancun.
Famous for a series of flamenco albums in the 1970s, he also crossed over into classical and jazz guitar.
He also worked on films by Spanish director Carlos Saura, notably appearing in his 1983 version of Carmen, which won a UK Bafta award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1985.
Algeciras is to hold two days of official mourning. Its mayor, Jose Ignacio Landaluce, called the musician's death an "irreparable loss for the world of culture and for Andalusia".
He had lived both in Mexico and in Spain in recent years.

Paying tribute to a "very special musician", fellow Spanish flamenco guitarist Paco Pena, 71, told BBC Radio 4's Front Row: "Once in a while someone comes along in a musical discipline who changes everything, who sees things that others have not seen up to that point, and Paco de Lucia was one of these people.
"After him, flamenco radically changed and the proof is that so many young people have taken his lead and now flamenco is full of that virtuosity."
'I knew every rhythm'

BBC News

Read the whole article here:

Paco de Lucía dies_ BBC 
 

Going Solo, by Roald Dahl

As you already know, this is the next book you have to read.  What do you think about finding out something about the author's biography? I'm sure you'll be really surprised.

You have to read the first 4 chapters, that is, 50 pages.
We'll talk about it on Thursday 27th Feb, and Monday 3rd March, depending on your group.

Enjoy the story!