HOLIDAY

Dear students,
I'm writing to you after your results, and I know that everybody knows them!!!Simone...remember my words.....and study!
How is it going with your summer? At the seaside? In the mountains? Still at home?
Wherever you are......I'm with you. Just kidding!!!!!
I want to wish you a good period of relax, but I'd like to remember your task, too.
Read Frankenstein and repeat your grammar through the lessons I'll send you (I still don't know how).
Have fun and send me suggestions if you want, or ideas for our next school year.
With love
Your teacher of English
Giulia

The top 10 Conditionals Song Lyrics

What do you think of revising the Conditionals through songs?
Look and ...write your opinion! :) :) :)

http://youtu.be/8Qqlvg2LfOQ

What is Mother's Day?

Mother's Day is a celebration honoring mothers and celebrating motherhood, maternal bonds, and the influence of mothers in society. It is celebrated on various days in many parts of the world, yet most commonly in March, April, or May. It complements Father's Day, the celebration honoring fathers. Celebrations of mothers and motherhood occur throughout the world; many of these can be traced back to ancient festivals, like the Greek cult to Cybele or the Roman festival of Hilaria. The modern US holiday is not directly related to these. One of the early calls to celebrate a Mother's Day in the United States was the "Mother's Day Proclamation" by Julia Ward Howe. Written in 1870, it was a pacifist reaction to the carnage of the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. The Proclamation was tied to Howe's feminist belief that women had a responsibility to shape their societies at the political level.

Comparison of 'The Decameron' and 'The Canterbury Tales'

Despite huge differences in plot and subject matter, there are many striking similarities between “The Canterbury Tales” and “The Decameron” by Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio respectively. Both of these 14^th century stories, The Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio, and “The Canterbury Tales”, by Geoffrey Chaucer, are strikingly similar in many ways, leading the reader to notice a significant amount of “borrowing” from some tales of Boccaccio by Chaucer in select Canterbury Tales.   

Canterbury Tales Key Facts

full title  ·  The Canterbury Tales

author  · Geoffrey Chaucer

type of work  · Poetry (two tales are in prose: the Tale of Melibee and the Parson’s Tale)

language  · Middle English

time and place written  · Around 1386–1395, England

date of first publication  · Sometime in the early fifteenth century

publisher  · Originally circulated in hand-copied manuscripts

narrator  · The primary narrator is an anonymous.The other pilgrims narrate most of the tales.

point of view  · In the General Prologue, the narrator speaks in the first person, describing each of the pilgrims as they appeared to him. Though narrated by different pilgrims, each of the tales is told from an omniscient third-person point of view, providing the reader with the thoughts as well as actions of the characters.

tone  ·  The Canterbury Tales incorporates an impressive range of attitudes toward life and literature. The tales are by turns satirical, elevated, pious, earthy, and comical.

tense  · Past

setting (time)  · The late fourteenth century, after 1381

setting (place)  · The Tabard Inn; the road to Canterbury

protagonists  · Each individual tale has protagonists, but Chaucer’s plan is to make none of his storytellers superior to others; it is an equal company.

major conflict  · The struggles between characters, manifested in the links between tales, mostly involve clashes between social classes, differing tastes, and competing professions.

themes  · The pervasiveness of courtly love, the importance of company, the corruption of the church

Quiz about Canterbury Tales

1. Why are the pilgrims going to Canterbury?

(A) To meet King Henry III

(B) To see a medieval mystery play

(C) To worship the relics of Saint Thomas Becket

(D)Because they are tourists

The Titanic was the newest, most luxurious passenger ship on the seas when it was launched. Yet it sank on its first voyage. Why?

There were many factors. To begin with, it was night. The hole in the hull was just long enough to sink it. Another ship was near enough to see the Titanic’s flares for help, but failed to come to her rescue.
Yet there was one more factor: human error. The ship was moving too fast for the dangerous waters. If the Titanic had been moving more slowly, the calamity might never have happened.

CHILLING PARALLELS

A similar tragedy occurred in the harbour of Chicago, in the United States, three years after the Titanic sank.
The Eastland, a passenger ship, was built in 1903. It was popular for vacations on the water before the automobile became America’s way to travel.
But even from the first day, there were concerns about the Eastland’s safety. The ship was 82 metres long but had a width of only 11 metres. She was more than seven times longer than she was wide. Despite early fears, however, the Eastland was a profitable passenger ship for more than a decade.
By the end of the 1914 season, though, the teak deck of the Eastland was wearing out. Instead of replacing it with expensive hardwood, a new wonder material, cement, was chosen. Cement decking added much weight, high above the waterline.
To know more....
http://www.eastlandmemorial.org/ 

iPAD POSITION AND POSTURE: RESEARCH RECOMMENDATIONS

Studies are still going forward, but a few good recommendations have already emerged:

April fool's day

Practical Jokes, Pranks, and Buffoonery in Italy on April 1st
In Italy, as in much of the world, April 1st is traditionally a day of practical jokes, pranks, and silliness. The origin of this custom is ancient and ambiguous, but one thing is certain: much buffoonery and hilarity will take place.

CAR THEFT

Last week in the US, a woman reported to police that she had had her car stolen. In
the report that she gave the police, she mentioned that there was a car phone inside
the car.

Students' interviews

About London
What’s living in London like?
Great, cool, expensive. They like it but too many people.

What do you think is worth visiting in London?
Parks (Hyde Park, St. James Park), entertainment (theatres, cinema).

Hi students!

Now it's time to go on!!!!
Let's start literature....
First of all look at the links on your right. It's just to have quick and pleasant information about a playwright you're going to study: William Shakespeare.
In London we're having workshops on 'Romeo and Juliet' and 'The Merchant of Venice'. So I'd like you to know the plot of these two plays. There are some nice links from Youtube, such as Shakespeare Animated Tales from BBC, (http://www.ikwote.com/) easier for you to be understood. Look for and let me know as soon as possible. March is near!!!!
Good work!!!
Your teacher

WINTER HOMES For evicted reptiles

Housing and industrial developments are slowly forcing snakes out of their natural
habitats and these are consequently in search of new homes.

KARATE KID

 The remake of the cult film “Karate Kid” makes allusions to the original, but also brings in new elements.
Dre is an American boy who moves to Beijing with his mother. There he is badly bullied. He has no friends in
the new country.

Italy country profile by BBC NEWS

Take the art works of Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Tintoretto and Caravaggio, the operas of Verdi and Puccini, the cinema of Federico Fellini, add the architecture of Venice, Florence and Rome and you have just a fraction of Italy's treasures from over the centuries. 

Astonishing accident involving eight Ferraris 'world's most expensive car crash'

Afleet of high-performance cars, including eight Ferraris, has been involved inone of the most expensive accidents in history after an astonishing multi-carpile-up in Japan.

Read the article and write a comment

Origin of Thanksgiving Day

Thanksgiving is America's preeminent day. It is celebrated every year on the fourth Thursday in the month of November. It has a very interesting history. Its origin can be traced back to the 16th century when the first thanksgiving dinner is said to have taken place.

T-SHIRT tells all.

That's right, a t-shirt with inbuilt intelligence! UC3M (Carlos III University in Madrid) has developed an intelligent t-shirt, designed for use in hospitals, to monitor certain body functions and conditions.

EVERYTHING I SAW WAS GONE

For the past months, a series of violent storms have been pounding the US. The

extreme weather conditions have claimed hundreds of victims. On Friday, the death toll had reached 280. Last week alone, more than three hundred tornadoes were reported. On Wednesday, 128 people were killed, just in Alabama. Entire areas in the town of Tuscaloosa have been levelled to the ground.

---

"It just didn't seem real", said one eyewitness. "I can't describe what I saw," said another. "You could hear it. That classic rumble, the train, and all of those other things
that you hear people talk about."
Heavy rains have aggravated the situation. Rivers have flooded, lightning has set buildings on fire, and hailstones the size of golf balls have caused extensive damage.
A state of emergency has been declared in Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and Oklahoma. The army has been called in for rescue operations. 

Watch the video

This video is from the EF4 tornado that went through Tuscaloosa, AL on 4/27/11. It was taken from the University Mall parking lot. Probably the closest video to the storm your going to see.

Now write a test on what happened in Liguria last week in no more than 80/100 words.
You can insert images if you want.  

Italian sport in shock after death of Simoncelli

SEPANG: Italian sport was in shock on Sunday after Marco Simoncelli died following a crash at the Malaysian MotoGP motorcycle race. He was 24.