Dialogue: a profession that's dying out

A dialogue between Anna and a family friend, Mr. Adams.

- Hello Mr. Adams! How are you doing?
- Hello Anna! I'm fine, thank you. What's the matter?
- Errr.. There's something I've been wanting to ask you for.. for quite a long time now...
- So, what is it?
- Ummm.. There aren't many shepherds like you left here.. I mean in Spain, are they?
- That's right. Many things have changed that made us shepherds, like, less necessary: at least not so many of us are needed now.
- Really? And what has changed exactly?
- Some years ago, shepherds were nomades. They wandered with their lifestock.. I mean their cows, sheep and such.. So they wandered up a mountain during spring and then had to stay up there all summer long. In autumn, they got there herds back down. They always went were the grass was the freshest.
- But.. you don't wander around with your cows.
- (laughs) No. Nowadays we keep our lifestock in stables and feed them hay and industrial food. Now it's a lot easier and less time-comsuming to have big herds.
- Ummm... So now a single shepherd can produce more milk, meat or such and... that's why this profession is slowly dying out?
- Exactly. Also there are new machines to help us do our job.
- (laughs) Yeah, I've seen them. So.. thank you very much, Mr. Adams.
- You're welcome. But now I have to get back to work. If you have more questions, feel free to ask!
- Thank you again. See you!
- Bye!

Formal letter - World Nuclear Association

Fountain street 3
50397 Traverse Town

12th May 2011

World Nuclear Association
...
...
To the director general, John Ritch

Dear Mr. Ritch,
I am writing this letter in order to give my opinion about the nuclear accident in Japan after the tsunami a month ago and to give possible solutions for the future.

First of all, I think the problem would not have been so terrible if the emergency generators had not been in the cellar of the building. I think it was a big mistake while planning how to build the nuclear plant, thinking of the high risk of tsunamis in countries like Japan.

Furthermore, it is said that the nuclear plant of Fukushima was already obsolete and should have been shut down years ago. If that is true, I think other older nuclear facilities should be shut down and tested, at least.

Of course there can not be done anything about the Fukushima disaster now, but I think you should learn from it and try to prevent other nuclear accident like Japan's.

I am looking forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely,
Kairi Johnsson

The self-evaluation of my oral presentation

In the oral presentation of my research project, I used a Powerpoint, almost the same as the one for my catalan presentation of the project. It was like a summary of the most important things and it helped me to not get lost. So of course it supported the presentation. The timing of my presentation was okay.
I looked at the audience and didn't read from notes (as I actually didn't have any), but from the Powerpoint. Ididn't get lost, because I had done that presentation before in catalan. Gestures and eye contact definitely got better than last year.
I believe I introduced new information to my audience, referring to my project and tree species. Some of my information was complicated (the different species), but I think I managed to explain it in an easy-to-understand way. The only source for my presentation was, of course, my research project.
The grammar was correct, I think I got confused once or twice and just repeated the sentence. Vocabulary was also okay, I tried to use scientific words, but easy to understand. I also used sentence linkers. My pronunciation was also allright, I think. I checked the pronunciation for words I didn't know, so I was prepared.
For my next presentation, I should work again on body language and eye contact. I would give myself a 7 or an 8.

My text was this one:

"Hello everyone. I want to present you my research project, which has the title 'botanical route through Castelló d'Empúries". I chose that topic because I got the interest in plants from my mother, she loves looking after her flowers in the garden. First, I'll explain what my objectives were. The first one was learn to classify different species of trees. then, I wanted to design a botanical route in a zone I chose first. Finally, i had the objective of checking the route by doing it with 1st ESO students. To accomplish that objectives, I followed the following methodology: First, search theoric information of the different trees I could find. Then, I had to search for books and maps of the zone I wanted to study, the 'Passeig de les Oques'. The practical part was aking photos of the trees in the zone, make dichotomous keys and design the route. The last would have been to check the route. I decided to divide the zone to study into two subzones. So, the first subzone would be between the 'Pont Vell' and the bridge of the Sant Clara street and the second one from that same bridge to the Castelló Nou bridge. I went to the zone and took photos of the different trees I found there, then I made an inventory. As you can see, each page of that inventory contained the scientific and popular names of the species, a short description and photos. The last parts of the research project were the ones I liked the most: designing the route, making the exercices and drawings and the dichotomous keys. Dichotomous keys are like questions where you have to choose from two or three possible answers and then continue with the question you are told, until they give you the name of the species you are looking for. After doing this, I also designed some exercises, which were basically to help the children to see what they had to focus on. They had some drawings to help them understand some words that could be difficult. After doing all the research project, I had the following conclusions: firstly, there are 11 different species which are typical river-side trees, although the 'Passeig de les Oques' is a zone that is influenced by humans. secondly, most of the species are represented by only one tree, but there are 3 that are very common: Platanus x hispanica, the banana tree, at zone one, and Populus alba and Populus nigra, which are called 'pollancres' in catalan, in zone 2. Due to a lack of time I couldn't check the route with 1st of ESO students, although I would have liked to do it. In general, I'm satisfied with my research project, but I would have liked to have the route ready earlier to be able to do it with the children. And that's the end of my presentation. Do you have any questions?"

Botanical route through castelló d‘empúries

View more presentations from the_two_memories.

Podcast - Description of a friend

(It finally works!!! -.-)

Oral presentation: The Powerpoint

Humour – American sitcoms

Podcast - Joke

I hope you liked it when I told it in class. :)

Discussion essay

Computers have made the world a better place. Discuss.

Computers have brought a big revolution to our world. But was it really good for us?

The first thing many people, specially parents, think about when talking about computers are game-addicted teenagers and children.

However, computers give us a whole lot of tools to make working and studying easier, such as writing programmes, video and photo editors... One of the key points of digital working is thatyou can edit your work over and over again, as long as you like. But the real revolution came with the internet. It opens the door to an enormous amount of information and knowledge, so it makes our life even easier. On the internet you can find everything from the latest news to cooking recipes.

In conclusion, I think that computers and internet have made our world a better and easier place to live. they make working and communication easier, but we must be careful not to let them control us and isolate us from our friends.

My oral presentation

The transcription:

Good morning everybody, today Adrià and me will explain you about the topic of humour, more concrete, American sitcoms. So, does anybody know what sitcoms are? No? Don't worry, I'll explain you. (Question: What does sitcom mean?) That's what I'm going to explain now.
So, sitcom means situation comedy. It features characters in common environments like their home, working place, sometimes cafés or something like that. It's normally in TV series and the different episodes have an ongoing storyline, so they are linked together. Also the end of each episodes tends to put the characters in the same situation they were at the beginning, so normally there are conflicts during an episode but they are solved and so it's like a circle. It always ends where it started. There are many jokes, of course as they are humour series, and there are usually called running gags, jokes that are started sometimes at the start of the series and are repeated afterwards more times. Now were are going to explain you some different kinds, but before I want to ask you a question: So, now that you know what they are, do you know any sitcoms? In fact, they have already explained one of the series we are going to explain now. So we're going to start with one of the four we are going to explain, Adrià will start with How I met your mother.

(Adrià)

So, going on, we have The King of Queens. I don't know if it's very well known here, but I knew it when I was small and I liked it very much, so I decided to explain it. It is about a, well, not so typical American pair, Dough and Carrie. They share their home with Carries father Arthur. Dough works as a delivery driver and Carrie as a secretary. Arthur is a bit difficult so they usually get in some difficult situations, until a point when the couple decides to hire a dog walker to go for a walk with the dogs and with her father. It's also funny sometimes because Dough is very clumsy sometimes, as you will see in the video.

(Adrià)

And, finally, we have Scrubs. This series focusses on the point of view of it's main character, Dr. John Michael Dorian, also called JD, the short form, and his friends working at Sacred Heart Hospital after their university studies. In every episode, JD introduces the story and then it's told through the point of view of the other characters. And there are also many running gags, for example the Janitor, you're going to see in the video. JD is also, like the guy from King of Queens, a bit clumsy. And there are also sometimes unexpected situations or dialogues you don't expect at all. Ok, you're going to see some funny moments in the video, like a little best of.

(Video)

Allright, that was our little presentation about American sitcoms. I hope you liked the presentation and the videos. And I don't know if there are any questions? No? Then that's it.

-----

Here's my self-evaluation:

In Adrià's and my oral presentation, we used a Powerpoint with videos and some images. The powerpoint was very visual and rellevant to the topic because It shows examples of sitcoms, the topic we explained. It supported the presentation because it distracted people a bit and so I was a little bit less nervous. The timing of our presentation was also ok, about 10 minutes.

I tried to look at thie audience most of the time, but I ended up looking at the Powerpoint or Sònia sometimes. I read occasionally from my notes, when I get lost. Afortunately, is wasn't too many times, I think. I do some gestures, but they could have been more creative. But in general, I think in these points I got better than last year. I organised our ideas from general to particular things, so I started by explaining sitcoms in general and then we explained 4 examples of them. I think I used some discourse markers, but it could have been more.

I think I introduced some new information to our audience, explaining them sitcoms in general, because I think there are series they watch and they didn't know they were actually sitcoms. Our information was clear, but I don't really know if it could have been more detailed when we explained every sitcom. The general information about sitcoms is from the internet, but the information about every series is our own, only helped sometimes by a source (also internet). We watch the series, so we know what they are about.

My grammar was generally correct, I just messed up one or two times when I got confused. I could have used some synonyms more, for example for 'clumsy'. But despite that, my vocabulary was also OK, I think. I used sentence linkers like so (I actually use it a lot), as well as pause fillers: well, yeah, ok..

I generally knew how to pronounce the words I said (I always try to avoid using words I can't pronounce), I just got confused with the name of the main character from The King of Queens, Dough. I didn't check the pronunciation because I didn't use words I didn't know before. I tried to change my tone of voice sometimes to keep the attention, but in the video it doesn't come out much, so I don't know if I succeeded in that point. I had some breaks in my presentation, but I think they weren't so bad so people had time to think about what I had said before.

For my next presentation, I think I should improve again my body language and eye contact with the audience. And again, I should try to get more synonyms and control my nerves. But in general, I think our presentation was quite good, so I think a 8 would be my mark.

the welcome Mail

My dreams and goals

Everyone around me seems to have very special dreams and goals for life, but I’m not really the same. I’m not sure what I want to do with my life yet. But let’s explain first my short-time goals. I want to finish batxillerat with good marks and I want to get better in Maths again. To achieve that goals I’ll work hard, do my homework and focus on my studies.

After batxillerat and if I can, I want to take a year off. I’m saving money to travel around, specially to visit some friends in Germany and Holland. After that, I always wanted to go to university, though I don’t know yet what to study. Maybe I’ll become an architect. I’m working hard in my technical drawing lessons at high school, so maybe I can do it. My only problem with becoming an architect is that I haven’t studiet Physics in batxillerat, so maybe it can get a problem. But maybe I can do something about it in my gap year.

Another way I would like to go is languages and tourism. As a German living in Catalonia I already speak 4 languages (German, English, Spanish and Catalan, though my English is still improvable) and I’d love to learn one or two more. A special wish of mine is to learn a eastern language like Chinese or Japanese, but that’s very difficult! Maybe I can do it if I work hard, but not now. I’d like to learn dutch, too, which would most likely be a lot easier by now. I’ll see what I do.

Maybe I’ll got to Germany to study, because I think I need a change and I want to see what life on my own is. If I work hard to get good marks and talk to friends for a cheap place to say, maybe I can do it. I’m quite optimistic about it because I’ve already talked to some of them and their parents would let me stay there. I’m excited about my further life!