Week 15

• Our final class, we made the expositions, each of them were related to terrorism and activism groups, around the world. Such as the IRA, Al QAEDA, LA FAMILIA, FARC and the SHINNING PATH.
• At the end, we each of the students, reviewed with Professor Eric, about grades and paper works.

Week 14

• We Reviewed about the restaurant menus, how Latin word can or cannot be translated depending on the purpose or quality level of the restaurants. 
• Regarding on translations and manners to speak, we reviewed a blog´s page from a North American teenager , who in real life, is describing his life and environment almost as he speak, lacking of grammar, and a very strong southern accent. 
• At the begin was hard to discovery the real word, as we kept reading was understandable by context.

Week 13

• I was excused to dismiss the class for personal reasons 
• Although, I leave my Railroad Essay and the Restaurant Menu to the professor that afternoon.

Week 12

• From the book North Star 4 Reading and Writing, Pearson Longman, Unit 8, we read The Chinese Kitchen by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo. Related to family kitchen culture and traditions, as well kitchen related with life. 
• We reviewed phrasal verbs. 

1. PV: verb + particle. Used them in every day communication.

• Narrative essay 
• Uses events, memories and personal experiences to tell a story 
• We read from the book: A Most Memorable Meal. About a person who described his memorable meal in life, a heavenly experience.

Week 11

• This week class, we reviewed about Indirect Speech: speaker´s own words Direct Speech: reporting speaker´s words.
• From writing part, we learned how to classify when creating essays.
• Classifying: braking down into parts when is a large topic.
• Classification essay: each paragraph describes a subcategory.

Week 10

• Regarding about the short story: The Country Doctor, we learned the types of narrator when writing:

vFirst person

vSecond person ¨quotation¨

vThird Person limited (disembodied)

vThird Person omniscient

vThird Person objective

• We watched a video, of one of the movies of Charles Chaplin: A Dog´s Life
• From the Book North Star 4 Reading and Writing, Pearson Longman. We read the story of Justin Lebo and his philanthropy work.
• We did some brainstorming about volunteering and mandatory volunteering at schools.

Week 9

• On this week we couldn`t have class, instead, some of us, had the opportunity to make up the class by attending the Café Britt tour.
• The rest of the people that we couldn`t go the tour, had to make an essay with a very interesting topic: Railroads development in Costa Rica. Focus on Immigrants arrivals.

Week 8

• From the book we reviewed writing using Figurative Language:

vSmile: a way of describing something through a comparison using like or as. This comparison is with something not connected with the subject.

vMetaphor: a way to describe though a comparison but using is. The subject and the complement are the same.

vPersonification: gives human qualities to animals or objects.

vOxymoron: two words used together, which mean two different or opposite things, such as 'bitter-sweet' or 'smart casual‘. 

• If scientists created a pill that allowed you to live twice as long while remaining free of infirmities,  would you take it? Why or why not?

vI would not take the pill because I don’t want to live more than I should. We don’t know what is going to happen in 50 years. People don’t know how to live properly nowadays.

• From unit 6, “Give and Learn”, we remark the concept philanthropy: a way to show concern for people by giving money or volunteering to help people in need or organizations which help people in need.
• We spoke about Oprah Winfrey, Mother Teresa, Angelina Jolie and Bill Gates. This VIP were seriously committed to the needy  all around the world and they have made an impact on their lives.

Week 7

• From the book we read “DEATH DO US PART” by Robert Silverberg, on unit 5. it is a story related to longevity.
• We discussed our points of view about the topic of living hundreds of years.
• Also from the book we made a comparison between the main character views and the ones from our time, like marriage, family structure/relationships, careers, longevity.
• We reviewed the contrast between simple past, present perfect and Present Perfect continuous and made the practice related with the text.

vSimple past: things that happened  in the past and were completed. Using expressions like last, ago, in, on, at, yesterday, when…

vPresent perfect: actions completed at an indefinite time in the past. Use it for repeated actions, completed in the past but may happen again in the future. With expressions like for or since.

vPresent perfect continuous: actions that began in the past but were not completed, and have continued up to the present and may continue towards the future. Use for and since optional, giving additional information about the action

Week 6

• For writing skills we had to create a sentence following the stem that the professor gave us:

¤I have never had a broken bone because I never had an accident or something like that.

¤I’d like to visit Egypt and Jerusalem because in my personal opinion, those are places worth visiting and learn from their culture and history.

¤Some day I’m going to finish my major and have my own business and have more time in order to spend it with my family and friends.

¤I’m happiest when I accomplish something that I’ve been working on so hard and with devotion.

¤I like people who can behave in front of others and don’t mess up other people´s lives.

¤I’d like to be more patient with my family and myself as well.
¤I’d like to be less annoying and perfectionist because these features  usually carry  trouble.

• From the book we studied the Past Unreal Conditionals (hypothetical).
• Past unreal conditional talk about a past unreal, untrue or imagined conditions and their results. Also used to express regret about what really happened

vIf clauses  suggest the condition: if + subject + past perfect

vResult clause gives the result: subject + would (not) have + past part.

vThe sentence can begin with the if clause or the result clause, the meaning is the same.  

vIf the sentence begins with the if clause, this one needs to be followed by a comma. 

Week 5

• In this week we had shared the class with the internship Indian students. We divided the group in couples or singles in order to speak with each of them, to get to know a little bit of their culture and their personalities, it was somewhat complicated since some of they barely spoke English and just a few words in Spanish. All together, it was a good challenge.

Week 4

• On class we spoke about people who could accomplished their goals in spite of their disabilities. As well people who stay in the memory of the entire humanity for their stories, like Anne Frank, Walt Disney, Amelia Earhart.
• From the book we reviewed the parts of a biographical paragraph:

vParagraph: group of sentences related and support a controlling idea.
vBP: describes persons life and sometimes focuses on one particular aspect.
vTopic sentence: introduces de main idea and the controlling idea (my opinion of the controlling idea)
vSupporting sentence: second part and gives details to develop the idea. Is the longest part.
vConcluding sentence: last part, can summarize the paragraph, offers a solution to a problem or offer an opinion.

• We studied the poly-semantic verbs (connected with the meaning of language)

Week 3

• At the begin of the lesson, we saw a video of how the radio is one of the media ways to be tune on the road and be updated with the breaking news.
• Then another video of people with disabilities who had run a marathon.
• From the book we review the infinitives and gerunds.
• Gerund: use it as a object (after certain verbs), subject and after a preposition .

vBase form+ ing

• Infinitive: use it after certain verbs, after certain adjectives and after cerain nouns.
• To+ base form
• For in class activity, in groups, we had to solve a mystery about a murder from Alec Cabtree.
• We had to create a short report about breaking news.

Week 2

• For our first assignment, we had to bring a chosen picture, from LIFE magazine or Nat Geo, and report about that picture, what could be our opinion and make the comment. 
• My picture was from LIFE 
• We made a discussion on almost each photograph and talked about humanity issues nowadays. The professor showed us an unreleased picture, it was taken this year, by a professional photographer near Africa. The picture was taken outside of a burned Catholic church, there were more than 50 people corps burned. The genocide was by Muslims hands. It was a shocking picture. 
• We sang a song from Suzanne Vega. ..\..\..\..\Videos\Tom's Diner Suzanne Vega.wmv
• We also had learned from the book the passive and active voice, during writing. Which means that the sentence have a distinct structure but the same meaning voiced differently. 

1. Active voice: Focus on the person who perform the action 

v subject + verb (+object): The flood covered the house.

1. Passive voice: Focus on the person or thing that receives or is the result of an action. 

v be + past participle: My house has been covered by the flood.

• We also studied how useful can be a brainstorming. 
• We could distinguish between the a topic sentence and the controlling idea on a paragraph. 
• Topic sentence: is an essential part of all well-written paragraph. 
• Controlling idea: is the idea you want to explain, illustrate or describe the paragraph.

Week 1

• On this week, we coughed up with the professor about our kills and what he had learned during last quarter.
• Also we start by making comments about media, and how this affects peoples lives. On the first unit of the book “Untruth and Consequences” (English, A. and Monahon, L.. 2009) we learned new concepts of how media works, the differences between journalist and reporters, and how they sensationalize the news, to make the audience interested or to have more coverage. 
• When we describe or comment about some news, we have to be very careful about what and how we are going to report, the story needs to have an impact and has to be reliable.
• In order to have a good writing skills, the professor gave us a tip to find synonyms of different words. One example was  to describe what can we do with or eyes: blink, cry, watch, look, etc. as well with other parts of our body.
• On the last part of the class we had to create a short report of a random news, real or invented, and give it to the professor as a writing test.