CULTURE

PRACTISE, PRACTISE AND CONTINUE TO PRACTISE

How can you improve your English skills? The answer is very simple and also obvious: practise as much as you can, in all kinds of areas and with all sorts of written and oral texts.

An old joke:

A fellow with a ticket to a concert at Carnegie Hall was visiting New York City for the first time. He was unsure of his directions, but soon saw an elderly gentleman who was carrying a violin case.

"That elderly gentleman must be a musician," he said to himself. "Surely he must know the way to Carnegie Hall."

So the fellow approached the elderly gentleman and asked, "Sir, how can I get to Carnegie Hall?"

The elderly gentleman stopped, smiled, and answered, "Practise, practise, practise."

The moral is that there are no shortcuts, no quick and easy ways, to improve one’s skills in anything, from athletics to nuclear medicine. You just have to work at it -- all the time. Use it in areas that interest you, from martial arts to serious literature.

Look for websites that help you to have fun while you learn at the same time, in content and in language. You will achieve several goals at the same time. Learn interesting things, learn more about the language and also how to use it properly.

Go to my FCE help website and feel free to look around.

http://moodlehub.com.edumoot.com

Enter as a guest. You won't need a password for this.

 

INTERESTING EXPERIMENT

This is very interesting to watch!

Gabi can eat one piece of candy now or two pieces later... Based on Walter Mischel’s Marshmallow experiment, in which four year-olds were offered a marshmallow, which they could eat if they wanted.

Self-control is the key to success

David Brooks, New York Times Service

May 2006

AROUND 1970, psychologist Walter Mischel launched a classic experiment. He left a succession of 4-year-olds in a room with a bell and a marshmallow. If they rang the bell, he would come back and they could eat the marshmallow. If, however, they didn’t ring the bell and waited for him to come back on his own, they could then have two marshmallows.

The children who waited longer went on to get higher SAT scores. They got into better colleges and had, on average, better adult outcomes. The children who rang the bell quickest were more likely to become bullies. They received worse teacher and parental evaluations 10 years later and were more likely to have drug problems at age 32.

The Mischel experiments, along with everyday experience, tell us that self-control is essential. Young people who can delay gratification can sit through sometimes boring classes to get a degree. They can perform rote tasks in order to, say, master a language. They can avoid drugs and alcohol. For people without self-control skills, however, school is a series of failed ordeals.Life is a parade of foolish decisions: teenage pregnancy, drug use, gambling, truancy and crime.

The good news is that while differences in the ability to delay gratification emerge early and persist, that ability can be improved with conscious effort. Moral lectures don’t work. Sheer willpower doesn’t seem to work either. The children who resisted eating the marshmallow didn’t stare directly at it and exercised iron discipline. On the contrary, they were able to resist their appetites because they were able to think about other things.

 

 

INDEPENDENCE DAY

Next year our country will be celebrating its bicentennial, 200 years of independence. I feel proud to be a Chilean, and I’m sure we all feel the same way. We celebrate this day every 18th of September, dancing cueca, our national dance, eating all sorts of delicious national dishes and sharing moments with our families and friends. 

 

VIDEO COURSES ONLINE

 

Have a look at the following site, which offers lectures and courses from Berkeley, MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, UCLA and Yale. I’m sure you’ll find something to interest you! The courses cover areas which include Biology, Chemistry, Literature, Engineering, Entrepreneuship, Mathematics, Law, Psychology, etc.

http://www.academicearth.org/

 

SQUIDGY BROWNIES IN SPANISH

 

If you want the English version, go to archives February 2007.

250 gr. margarina
3/4 taza chocolate amargo en polvo
3 tazas de azúcar
6 huevos - ligeramente batidos
pizca de sal
chorro de vainilla
1 1/2 taza de harina
2 cucharaditas de polvos
3/4 taza nueces picadas gruesas (o maní)

Derretir margarina en cacerola mediana. Una vez derretida, retirar del fuego. Agregar las tres tazas de azúcar, batir bien, el chocolate en polvo, sal, huevos,vainilla, harina y luego las nueces picadas.
Verter en asadera rectangular, forrada con papel mantequilla aceitado.
Hornear en horno moderado por MEDIA HORA. (no mas) Apagar el horno, dejar semi abierta la puerta unos cinco minutos y luego dejar afuera para enfriar.

Cubierta
Derretir a baño maría 150 gramos de chocolate Ambrosoli Pastry Choc(cobertura semi amarga) con unas dos cucharadas de crema, hasta que esté cremoso. Esparcir y dejar enfriar. Cuando esté frio, cortar en cuadrados del tamaño deseado con un cuchillo pasado por agua hirviendo.

FOLLOW THE PEGMAN

You may ask yourselves, What  or who is a pegman? It looks rather like a clothes peg, the old-fashioned wooden kind of peg people used to attach their washing to the clothes line. But this pegman refers to a new application Google maps is setting up, available in only a few countries at the moment. It is called Street View, and it permits you to virtually sit on the street wherever you want in the world.

Below is a short video explaining how it works. If you click on the link, you'll be taken to a site which gives your more information.

http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/#utm_campaign=en&utm_medium=van&utm_source=en-van-na-us-gns-svn

 

 

If you want to investigate zoom properties of Google photo navigation, click on the following link:

http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2009/07/zoom-photo-navigation-in-street-view.html

HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW YOUR HARRY POTTER?

http://www.kidsreads.com/HP07/content/trivia.asp

Go ahead! Do your best. There  are lots of Harry Potter quizzes to choose from.

PEANUTS FOREVER

 

 

PRONUNCIATION IS IMPORTANT

Welcome back on Monday!

A CAREER IN ANIMATION

Watch this video, which I found absolutely fascinating! Those of you who are artistic and love making cartoons and other things, have you ever considered making it your life work?

 

 

SOLAR ECLIPSE

 

Seen from India

Partial eclipse view behind a statue of Gandhi

As seen from Hong Kong

A Tokyo resident watches the progress of the eclipse!

The next solar eclipse will be in the year 2132.

 

 

GOOGLE MOON

 

Click on the following link to find out about Google's new application: Google Moon, which gives you the possibility of exploring the lunar surface.

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=8129310

Video of the Apollo 11 astronaut's descent to the Moon's surface, forty years ago.

ANIMAL JOKES

What day do fish hate?

Fry-day!

How can an elephant get down from a tree?

He can get on a leaf and wait until autumn!

Why did the elephant wear red shoes?

Because his white ones were dirty!

What do you call a chicken fromm outer space?

An egg-straterrestrial!

Why do chickens sit on their eggs?

Because they don’t have chairs!

What do you call a sleeping bull?

A bull-dozer!

How did dinosaurs know we were coming?

Because Bronto-saw-us!

Why was the baby ant so confused?

Because all his uncles were ants!

What do you call a worm in a fur coat?

A caterpillar!

What is the most valuable type of ant?

An ANT-ique!

What has two humps and is at the North Pole?

A lost camel!

What does a fish play the piano with?

Fish-fingers!

 

 

 

HOW TO MAKE AN ORIGAMI MUSHROOM

Happy Holidays !

TWILIGHT ZONE TOWER OF TERROR

How many of you have been on this ride?

 

 

EXPEDITION EVEREST DISNEYWORLD

PEANUTS FOREVER!

HOW QUIDDITCH WORKS