Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

Do you like stories about the sea and its monsters? If you do, you'll probably enjoy reading one by Jules Verne




"Text adaptation by Lesley Thompson

When ship after ship goes down in the Atlantic, Dr Pierre Aronnax and his servant, Conseil, journey from Paris to learn more. What - or who - is attacking these ships?

Aronnax, Conseil, and the Canadian, Ned Land, find the answer to this question when they meet the strange Captain Nemo.

After a long journey under the sea in Nemo's submarine, the Nautilus, the doctor and his friends plan to leave for the surface".

This was mainly taken from the Oxford University Press web page.

Below you can have a look at its adaptation into the cinema.

There's also a version for children:  
 

For further information on this book, you'd bettter go to its wikipedia article, the English complete version , and some literature notes.

My Idol

Through this simple task. we'll learn how to present and describe someone that we admire or at least, we feel interested in sharing some of his or her ideas and preferences. My Idol consists of a series of activities which go from Speaking to writing and listening. They are all task-based activities with a concrete aim in mind: sharing student's information all over the course and among learners and teachers.


Process:

1st Step: Think about someone you feel interested by. Someone who really admire.

Reading and Thinking

1st Read the essay you've got in front.

2nd Complete the following sentences:
My / his /her best points are ...( grammar, structure, prepositions, etc)
I need to work more on...(spelling, verb tenses, expression, etc.)

3rd Final presentation:
1- Reading aloud (intro.)
2- Points to comment on (Examples)
3- Conclusion (recommendation- regards)

For more reading resources, you'd better click on here:

This is only an example for you to see how the text to speech works:

Click on say it

Hello, my name is Mike. Welcome to our language portal! I want to introduce a new text to speech service, which means I can read out anything you like. I and my colleagues speak English, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. Just type a word or a phrase, or copy and paste any text, and I'll say it back for you. You can also translate your text to any of the available languages, and I will read out the translation. You may want to master a foreign language by practicing the pronunciation. Just repeat after me! It will be fun!

Lack of writing inspiration

Lately, it seems difficult for students to come to class with some writing ideas. So, we must find a solution all together. We've decided to start reading four different readers that are much related to our class story, about police and robbers' matters.

Cristian is reading Help! by Philip Prowse, Lara is reading White Death by Tim Vicary, Laura is reading Love or Money by Rowena Akinyemi and Sara is reading Footsteps by . After reading these books, they must tell us about them, writing a review on each book. In order to do so, we must follow a writing guide, which can be found in our wiki.

Oxfam

You may wonder what Oxfam mean, well, this what we've found on the internet:

Oxfam ( Oxford Commitee for Famine Relief ) es una organización internacional de promoción del desarrollo y lucha contra la hambruna.



Finally, for further information you can go to the international web site of Oxfam.

How to write a story

We are writing a story all together in class, but before we need to plan our writing. Some steps must be followed and this is what we've been doing so far:

1st These are our characters: two robbers, two police officers, but we also need to add secondary characters like the owers of a mansion and other ones.



2nd Where is the action going to take place?
Well, mainly in Xinzo, but also outskirts and perhaps somewhere else too.

3rd What?

Two expensive cars and some money have been robbed from a rich mansion outskits and policeofficers from Ourense must find out what truly happened.

4th When? On Sunday morning at 11:00 am, the police received a phone call from Mr and Ms Dacal. However, when did the robbers take the money? Well, readers will be known the answer shortly.

5th Robbers need an alibi. So far we've just agreed that the robbers were reading a book at the library, but this is not definite. Lara suggests the recreation of the same image in front of the camera.

As you can see, these are the first steps to write a story, so you will read more as we spend more time in our writing workshop.

The Jumping Frog by Mark Twain

Why does this frog like jumping so much? Read through this short story written by Mark Twain and try to explain what the jumping is about. You can also use this web page.












Now you need to comment on the typical bets and races that people used to do at that time. You'd better explain this kind of gambling and then give your opinion about them.




Why was Smiley so proud of his frog? To answer this question, you need to read through the story and think about the reasons why. You can also use this web page.