Unit 4- Holidays (Days and months)

Print the material on the Scribd, read the material and listen the video. It's about Christmas, a well-known holiday for Western Civilization. Enjoy the music and the exercise.

Here's the activity below, make sure you print it:
UNIT 4 Activity
and below is the video of the song "The Twelve days of Christmas", sung by Burl Ives.



Enjoy the activity. It's fun when you sing it very fast, it can also be a tongue-twister if you do so :)

On Unit 3: Health-Showing surprise

Again, I have used some extra material on this: I'm relying again on Schoolhouse Rock (Grammar Rock) on Interjections, my favorite video!! I love classical music, and even though my favorite composer is Mozart, my love Handel's Messiah, the Hallellujah chorus, and this is an educational, yet hilarious way of learning. I have added the lyrics to the "Interjections" song, and the video is below the lyrics. Enjoy!


Schoolhouse Rock Interjections

and now, the video:

More on Unit 1: let's talk about Conjunctions

Since on Unit 1 we also learn some grammar (too, either, and neither) let's add up a little more: let's talk about conjunctions. What better way to talk about conjunctions than singing a song? You might think I'm crazy (sorry, this is the first line of an old 80's song from  The Cars), but I've got another song... When I was very young, I learned some grammar on Saturday mornings while watching cartoons. Yes, while we watched The Bugs Bunny & Road Runner Hour on ABC, there was a program during commercials called Grammar Rock. It was fun to learn grammar with those songs, and nowadays we are lucky to have YouTube to watch these "grammar oldies" of the 1970's, although in my own personal opinion, Grammar Rock is ageless!

Again, I will rely on my friend the "Scribd" to give you the lyrics, in case you don't follow the song, and the YouTube to enjoy the cartoon.

Here are the lyrics: 
Schoolhouse Rock-Conjunction Junction


And the video:




Enjoy it!

Unit 1 Supplement: Making Friends

Unit 1- Making friends

Imagine you want to get to know someone. What questions do you ask in order to know person some more?

When I think of this, I always remember a beautiful -and a Hollywood Oldie- from one of my favorite old movies: the musical film called The King and I, with Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner. It's an 1956 film, and my mother used to sing it for  me while playing the piano. She still plays the piano and sings it, so I can't forget this song.

The musical is based on the book Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon, and the plot comes from the memoirs of Anna Leonowens, who became school teacher to the children of King Mongkut of Siam in the early 1860s. Leonowens' story, The English Governess at the Siamese Court, was autobiographical, although her biographer, Susan Morgan, author of the 2008 biography Bombay Anna has discovered numerous inaccuracies and fabrications, possibly because she disliked the monarchy and because the king died and did not put her and her son into his will. Actually, King Mongkut did put Anna and her son on his will, but his successor and son King Chulalongkorn did not follow his father’s wishes and simply sent Anna a thank you letter.


 Exercise.  Follow the instructions on the document below, it's a Scribd document you can print, and it's got the lyrics to the song so you can sing along:
UNIT 1 Exercise

In case you can't see the Scribd, click on Scribd Exercise

Also watch the video, so you can answer the questions on the document.

For all survivors of these torrential rains

It all started on Monday... I was trying to get to an appointment with the Ophtalmologist when I sensed we were in for a "big one" this week. The winds at the Twin Center were a bad omen: palm trees were falling, branches from trees were dropping in front of me; umbrellas were upside down and people were walking diagonally, not upright. The rain was dropping as if darts were hitting on my face; I checked Spanish television to check out if this weather was going to pass, but it showed heavy storms, so I braced for what we saw yesterday. I stayed at home, yet my husband experienced the worst of floodings and weather hazards in Sidi Maarouf. 2m showed tragedy all over the place, from Rabat to Casablanca, and as I drove to campus this morning, I couldn't but stare at a huge hole across the main road to UIC and the detours we need to do in order to get there.

Reuters have some of the story of this tragedy, but you need to see what happened in person in order to sense what people have gone through.


Heavy rain and floods kill 30 in Morocco
Tue Nov 30, 2010 5:18pm GMT

RABAT (Reuters) - At least 30 people have been killed in Morocco after heavy rain and floods, official sources said on Tuesday.

The official MAP news agency said 24 people died when a bus carrying them was swept away by a flooding river in the Atlantic coastal town of Bouznika, south of the capital Rabat.

Four people, including three from the same family, died when heavy rain brought down their homes near the central city of Khenifra and in Sale, near Rabat, MAP said.

A young girl drowned on Tuesday in Tiflet, east of Rabat, when she was swept away while trying to cross a bridge. In the north, one man drowned and rescue services were looking for seven other people swept away by a river in flood.

In Casablanca, schools were ordered to shut on Tuesday after Morocco's biggest city and business centre received a record 18 cm (7 inches) of rain overnight.

The head of Morocco's state-run weather service, Abdellah Masqat, told 2M television the heavy rain would continue until Thursday.

News footage from state television station Al-Maghribia showed suburbs of Casablanca submerged.

Flag carrier Royal Air Maroc said flights were disrupted from the country's main airport in Casablanca because flooding on highways and railway tracks prevented some passengers reaching the airport.

In the capital Rabat, people formed long queues in front of a rare working ATM machine after communication systems of some banks were put out of action.

"The lines are down because of the rain. We can't process any operation for the moment," said an employee at a branch of Attijariwafa Bank in downtown Rabat.

© Thomson Reuters 2010 All rights reserved

 Would you like some photos? Take a look at these pictures below:

  If you want to see a video on this, and if you have facebook, here's the link

Georgians (Former Soviet Bloc Country) say "yes" to English

BBC informs that "When it comes to high literacy rates, Georgia is leading by example. In a bid to keep its place at the top of the scale, the government is revolutionizing its system by getting all children to learn English, rather than Russian. Aiding in that effort are 1,000 teachers from the United States and Canada, who are on their way to help."

As you can see, English is widely spoken, and I encourage you to broaden your horizons more.

Click here to the link and video

Welcome to our English 2 class blog!

I'm very happy to announce this blog is open now for all students to learn, comment and enjoy all types of learning sources on this English trip to the English language experience. This blog is for you, English 2 students at UIC -and we welcome other groups too, of course-, in order to supplement the textbook and the online workbook material.

Welcome!