Sunday 5 November 2017



MORE ENGLISH FILMS


"BILLY ELLIOT" (2000)




Billy Elliot is a 2000 British dance drama film about a boy becoming a professional ballet dancer, set in north-eastern England during the 1984–85 coal miners' strike. It was directed by Stephen Daldry.


The film stars Jamie Bell as 11-year-old Billy, an aspiring dancer dealing with the negative stereotype of the male ballet dancer, Gary Lewis as his coal miner father, Jamie Draven as Billy's bullying older brother, and Julie Walters as his ballet teacher. The story was adapted for the West End stage as Billy Elliot the Musical in 2005

In 1984, Billy Elliot, an 11-year-old from the fictional Everington in County Durham, England, loves to dance and has hopes of becoming a professional ballet dancer. Billy lives with his widowed father, Jackie, and older brother, Tony, both coal miners out on strike, and also his maternal grandmother, who has Alzheimer's disease and once aspired to be a professional dancer...






Trailer







"I, DANIEL BLAKE" (2016)





Daniel Blake, 59, who has worked as a joiner most of his life in the North East of England needs help from the State for the first time ever following an illness.

He crosses paths with a single mother Katie and her two young children, Daisy and Dylan. Katie’s only chance to escape a one roomed homeless hostel in London is to accept a flat some 300 miles away.

Daniel and Katie find themselves in no-man’s land caught on the barbed wire of welfare bureaucracy now played out against the rhetoric of ‘striver and skiver’ in modern day Britain.



                TRAILER




More links

"I, Daniel Blake" reviewed by Mark Kermode


Kermode Uncut: My Top five Ken Loach Films


Ken Loach: life in austerity Britain is 'consciously cruel'


Ken Loach´s life and career










Sunday 15 October 2017





DESCRIPTIVE ESSAYS

The purpose of descriptive writing is to make readers see, feel, taste, touch and hear what we have seen, felt, tasted, touched and heard. Whether we're describing a person, a place, or a thing, our aim is to evoke a scene or to reveal a subject through vivid, carefully 
arranged details. A good descriptive essay is like a window into another world.


Use precise descriptive details to evoke a distinctive mood as well as to convey a memorable picture. Details that are carefully chosen and well organized can help to make a piece of writing more precise, vivid, convincing, and interesting. They serve the narrative in terms of dramatization, characterization, structure, and style. Choose words that convey something to which many readers can relate.


  • In describing a character, we look for details that not only show what an individual looks like, but also provide clues to his or her personality. Focus on the character´s habits and actions, not on the physical appearance.



  • In describing a thing, begin the paragraph with a topic sentence that identifies it, describe the item in four or five sentences, using the details that you listed after probing your topic. Explain briefly its significance to you and conclude the paragraph with a sentence that emphasizes the personal value of the item.

  • With thoughtfully organized details, we can also suggest the personality--or mood--of a place. As you write each paragraph, place signals to help to establish cohesion so that the reader can be guided  clearly from one detail to the next



20 Topic Suggestions


  • a waiting room
  • a treasured belonging
  • a favourite restaurant
  • your dream house
  • your ideal roommate
  • your memory of a place that you visited as a child 
  • an accident scene
  • a place that holds a special meaning
  • a place I could stay forever
  • a child's secret hiding place
  • the inside of a spaceship
  • your old neighborhood
  • a small town cemetery
  • a pet 
  • a painting
  • a character from a book, movie or television programme
  • a photograph
  • a hospital emergency room
  • a particular friend or family member



Friday 6 October 2017

Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to British author Kazuo Ishiguro


62-year old English author Kazuo Ishiguro has been awarded the Nobel Literature prize for 2017.
Mr. Ishiguro is best known for his novels “The Remains of the Day,” about a butler serving an English lord in the years leading up to World War II, and “Never Let Me Go,” a melancholy dystopian love story set in a British boarding school.

 “If you mix Jane Austen and Franz Kafka then you have Kazuo Ishiguro in a nutshell, but you have to add a little bit of Marcel Proust into the mix,” said Sara Danius, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy.In a career that spans some 35 years, Mr. Ishiguro has gained wide recognition for his stark, emotionally restrained prose. His novels are often written in the first person, with unreliable narrators who are in denial about truths that are gradually revealed to the reader. He has obsessively returned to the same themes in his work, including the fallibility of memory, self-delusion,  mortality and the porous nature of time.

The writer said that the award was “flabbergastingly flattering”. He said:

It’s a magnificent honour, mainly because it means that I’m in the footsteps of the greatest authors that have lived, so that’s a terrific commendation.”

Ishiguro was born in 1954 in Nagasaki to Japanese parents. But the family moved to England in 1960 when his father got a job as an oceanographer in Surrey.


Congratulations, Mr Ishiguro!




"The Remains of the Day" official trailer  (1993)




"Never Let Me Go" official trailer  (2010)



Tuesday 26 September 2017

This week´s film: "Victoria and Abdul"





Victoria & Abdul is a 2017 biographical comedy-drama film directed by Stephen Frears. A sequel to Mrs Brown (1997), the film is based on the book of same name by Shrabani Basu, and on the real-life relationship between Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and her Indian muslim servant Abdul Karim. 





Official trailer 



Abdul, the Munshi                   CLICK HERE

Victoria and Abdul: the story  CLICK HERE

Documentary                           CLICK HERE


Sunday 24 September 2017

BACHILLERATO: MONOLINGUAL DICTIONARIES USE

                 

Practice    Click HERE


   

 










Tuesday 19 September 2017

EVAU - MADRID




Formato de examen y consideraciones       Pincha AQUÍ

Últimos temas de composición                    Pincha AQUÍ




Friday 7 April 2017



Reading & Listening for pleasure: Walt Whitman


Walt Whitman composed the poem "O Captain! My Captain!" after Abraham Lincoln's assassination in 1865. The poem is classified as an elegy or mourning poem, and was written to honor Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States. Walt Whitman was born in 1819 and died in 1892, and the American Civil War was the central event of his life. Whitman was a staunch Unionist during the Civil War. He was initially indifferent to Lincoln, but as the war pressed on Whitman came to love the president, though the two men never met. 


O Captain! my Captain!

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.



O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,

For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head!

It is some dream that on the deck,

You’ve fallen cold and dead.



My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,

The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;

Exult O shores, and ring O bells!

But I with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.




The fallen captain in the poem refers to Abraham Lincoln, captain of the ship that is the United States of America. The first line establishes the poem's mood, one of relief that the Civil War has ended, "our fearful trip is done." The next line references the ship, America, and how it has "weathered every rack", meaning America has braved the tough storm of the Civil War, and "the prize we sought", the preservation of the Union, "is won". The following line expresses a mood of jubilation of the Union winning the war as it says "the people all exulting;" however, the next line swiftly shifts the mood when it talks of the grimness of the ship, and the darker side of the war. Many lost their lives in the American Civil War, and although the prize that was sought was won, the hearts still ache amidst the exultation of the people. The repetition of heart in line five calls attention to the poet's vast grief and heartache because the Captain has bled and lies still, cold, and dead (lines six through eight). This is no doubt referencing the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and Whitman's sorrow for the death of his idol.


In the second stanza the speaker again calls out to the captain to "rise up and hear the bells," to join in the celebration of the end of the war. The next three lines tell the captain to "rise up" and join in on the revelries because it is for him. He is the reason for their merriment: "for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills; for you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding; for you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning". Everyone is celebrating what Lincoln accomplished; the abolition of slavery and the unification of the people after a fearful war. Again the poet calls to the Captain as if he had never fallen. The poet does not wish to acknowledge the death of his beloved Captain, and he even asks if it is some dream (line 15) that the Captain has fallen "cold and dead".


The third stanza begins in a somber mood as the poet has finally accepted that the Captain is dead and gone. Here there is vivid and darker imagery such as "his lips are pale and still" and the reader can picture the dead Captain lying there still and motionless with "no pulse nor will". In line 17, the poet calls out "My Captain," and in line 18, the poet refers to the Captain as "My father". This is referring to Lincoln as the father of the United States. Lines 19 and 20 are concluding statements that summarize the entire poem. The United States is "anchor'd safe and sound". It is safe now from war with "its voyage closed and done, from fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won". In line 21, the examples of apostrophe, ordering "shores to exult," and "bells to ring" are again referring to how the nation is celebrating while "I with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead".

Saturday 1 April 2017

1st BACHILLERATO - SHORT STORY READING


Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes (pdf)

Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes (word)



Cinderella (mp4)






Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (mp4)






Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf (mp4)