Wishing you all the best as the countdown begins for the holidays. If you are feeling curious and want some fun topics for the dinner table, check out this video on the History of Christmas
And if you are in the singing mood and want to impress your family with some Christmas Carols, take a look here
Finally, 20 bizarre Christmas traditions from around the world and 29 Heavenly Christmas foods from around the world.
Happy Holidays to all of you and may you be surrounded by your loved ones!
Before we dive into the full holiday season and gather (get together) around the table for wonderful holiday food, I thought I would share a few random (unusual/unexpected) links to help you deal with (get a handle on) dining etiquette around the world. Check out this great info-graphic here: http://visual.ly/business-etiquette-western-europe
And check out this dining etiquette info-graphic
How about 10 different ways to respond to Thank you? Did you know all of these?
Finally, I thought I would give you a bonus. Here is a cheat sheet (reference card) on those IT symbols we have such a hard time remembering:
Have a great week and remember to take it easy, it’s just another holiday season and…
The holidays are upon us and to help you get into the spirit, we thought we would share our holiday traditions with you. There is nothing better than learning a little something new on how the holidays are celebrated elsewhere (somewhere else) and taking a peek into your teacher’s life…
Madeleine’s Traditions:
When I was a child, I would always enjoy singing traditional carols (songs) with my family at Christmas. One I always remember was ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ which dates back to 1780. It’s a cumulative song, so it starts with one line and gradually different lines are added to make twelve. For example, “On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me “. Then, the generous gifts get more and more complex, such as “ten ladies dancing” and “twelve drummers drumming,” which after a lot of repetition and a loss of memory gets very confused and funny. Especially after a few tipples! *small alcoholic drinks
(We don’t do this anymore, but I always find myself humming the tune this time of year). You can find out more about the history of the carol here: Twelve days of Christmas
Claire’s Traditions:
A tradition that goes back on my Father’s side of the family is to eat pork pie for breakfast. But it can’t be just any pork pie…it has to be from Melton Mowbray, a small English town in the Midlands – an area in the middle of Britain. For those who are unfamiliar with pork pie, it is a traditional British meat pie. It consists of roughly chopped pork and pork jelly sealed in a hot water crust pastry. It is normally eaten as a snack or as part of a meal.
Another more recent tradition that seems to have caught on in my family is serving the Christmas Day gravy (sauce that is poured over meat) from a tea pot!!!! This funny tradition simply arose from a lack of available jugs in my house…..so a tea pot had to do! 🙂
Tim’s Traditions
My best Christmas tradition I no longer partake in but sincerely miss consisted of “Christmas Tree Day”. My ex-wife and I had a very big allotment (land) with lots of vegetable plots, fruit trees, chickens, and my beehives; but we also planted and grew Christmas trees to sell and raise money for charity. Every year in January, I would plant about 70 baby Christmas trees. I would mow the grass (which grows very thick and fast in Devon, England) to stop it from killing the trees and in the Spring I would prune (cut away the unwanted parts or branches) the trees with my fingers (no shears required) and then finally two Sunday’s before Christmas Day we would let friends, neighbors and the people in our village know it was Christmas Tree Day.
We would have a bonfire to keep people warm, serve warm mulled wine and hot mince pies to everyone who came (because it’s Christmas) and invite them to choose their tree and then dig it up – roots and all. We would then ask them to contribute to our charity (we set one up in a rural village in The Gambia, West Africa to provide education, health and economic development). They could give as much or as little as they wanted.
Some families have been coming every year since 1987! It takes about 5 to 7 years for a fir tree to be big enough to sell, and after that they speed up in their growth and are too big for a house, so we sell the very big ones to schools and churches.
I loved this day because we would reconnect with our friends, neighbors and wider community in a spirit of friendship and giving. It was a long day full of hard work as many people could not dig their own trees and we had to do it for them. We would have this day even if it was storming with rain, hailing or covered in snow and ice.
Heidi’s Traditions
As many of you know, I come from a family of immigrants and traditions are not necessarily 100% North American, but nonetheless they are fun and quirky (peculiar or unexpected traits or aspects).
My mother is from Guatemala and so we would gather at my aunt’s house on the 24th of December with all of the family (over 20 people) and eat homemade tamales that my aunt would prepare. Tamales come from the Maya Cuisine and take days to prepare but are delicious. There is also something so magical about eating a dish on the night before Christmas that has been prepared since 4500 BP (or 45,000 years before present). In a way, unwrapping the tamale was like opening a Christmas present on the night before.
My mom’s family has the tradition of opening their gifts when the clock strikes midnight. Our family though, would wait till the next morning. We adopted both the Latin American tradition of waiting until midnight on Christmas Eve, setting up baby Jesus in the nativity, and the more USA tradition of hanging up our stockings handmade by mom on the mantle (fireplace) and waiting for Santa Claus to make his arrival as we slept. Do not ask me why a house in Los Angeles has a fireplace. As a child, I imagined it was only so Santa Claus could come on Christmas day.
But to be honest, my favorite part as a child was going with my parents and brothers to look for our Christmas tree! My birthday is a week before Christmas, so I always got the honor of choosing the tree and then we would drive home excitedly to trim the tree and sing carols.
I hope you enjoyed our stories and we want to wish everyone of you readers a wonderful holiday season, no matter how you celebrate it!
From the team at Heidi Schmidt Business English Specialists, Happy Holidays!
More than once, I have been told by some of you that you just do not get the use of certain acronyms.
Have you ever found yourselves in a meeting and the chair keeps repeating things like TBC, HQ, HR and ASAP all in one sentence? Maybe it sounded like this guy speaking…
Well, we have the post for you this week. We have gathered some interesting links for you to start studying and use at your next meeting. Just click on the bold for the website:
Business Abbreviations you need to know under titles
A list of 40 acronyms if you are in a rush
And 123 acronyms to get you feeling like a pro
We also thought it might be a good idea to get you started on learning 1 new word a day. Recommended by one of our students, if you sign up to word reference’s word of the day app you can learn and quiz yourself on a new word. Vocabulary is another one of your weak points, right? So let us give you a helping hand!
Stay tuned for a pop quiz!
Photo source Planet of the Apes 1967
In this profession, we are fortunate to work with many different students who come from all sectors and professions. Why are we fortunate? Because we get the opportunity to learn so much about everything you do!
This week, we applaud all of you for working hard and doing the best you can. Now, let’s take a look at how we can compare jobs and watch 5 different videos on professions around the world.
First of all, do you know the difference between an adjective and a comparative? It’s easy!
An adjective describes HOW something IS (emphasis on the noun): Messi is a good player.
An adverb describes HOW something IS DONE (emphasis on the verb): Messi plays well.
Here are the rules on comparing with adjectives: Use the (-ER) at the end of the adjective: Colder or Use (more) More famous, but never use -er and more together!!
If you are using an adjective of one syllable you add –er: Old → older Tall →taller Short → Shorter Wide → Wider
If the adjective ends in a vowel sandwich (consonant-vowel-consonant) double the final consonant:
hot → hotter thin →thinner big → bigger
If you have an adjective with two syllables and it ends in –y, you must change the –y to an –i and add –er: Happy → happier Sunny →sunnier Easy → Easier
With adjectives of two or more syllables you must add More before the adjective: Modern →more modern Important → more important Beautiful → more beautiful
There are irregular adjectives that do not follow the rules above and you change the word: Good → Better Bad → Worse Far → Further Many/Much → More Little → Less Ill → Worse
Now, let’s watch these videos and see if you can compare the jobs. How do you compare your job to the ones mentioned? http://www.thebookoflife.org/a-working-day/
Okay, so, I have to be honest and confess that I am not a big fan of series. I don’t really watch any at all and Game of Thrones is not something that screams out to me: “Watch Me!”. But, after speaking with a few of my students, I realized how many of my students are hooked (addicted).
I am serious, so many of you cannot stop telling me about it. You also love it so much you are watching it in English!! As you know, anything you do in English makes me happy, so I thought I would share some interesting topics in your honor and since the last episode of Season 5 was aired last week and had everyone talking. Don’t worry, there are no spoilers (when someone shares something you prefer to find out on your own) in this post…
So, for all those Game of Throne Lovers, here you go:
One of my favorite Instagramers posted this today which has inspired this post
Then, a student sent me a video on Game of Thrones and requested I share this with everyone…think Musical + Coldplay (subtitles included)
An entire library archive on The Guardian
Game of Thrones Trivia
Activities all about Game of Thrones in English!
A homemade spoof (funny or mocking imitation) on the opening song
The most beloved character of all being impersonated (Advanced Video)
Speaking of beloved, Jon Snow gets invited to a dinner party in New York (advanced video)
Why NPR thinks Game of Thrones is so popular in Spain. Do you agree??
The days are getting longer, summer is right around the corner and more than one of you has holiday destination on your mind. But before you pack your bags, let’s take a close look at conditionals and talk about the sun.
Here’s a sneak peak at how/when to use conditionals:
|
Zero Conditional |
First Conditional | Second Conditional | Third Conditional |
|
Possible at any time, but mostly in the present or a fact (x=y or cause and effect) |
Possible in the future (thewarning/offer/possibility) |
Impossible in the present…possible but improbable in the future (hypothetical) | Impossible in the past (too late) |
| If + present & present | If + present & will (future —be going to, may, can, should)+ infinitive | If + past & would (could, might)+infinitive | if+ past perfect (past perfect continuous, might have, could have) & would have + past participle |
| If you press this key, the game starts | I’ll call the hotel, if you don’t have time.
If you don’t leave, I’ll call the police! |
If I knew the answer I would tell you
If I were you, I would do it (advice)
|
I wouldn’t have got wet if I had taken an umbrella. If you had been driving more slowly, you could have stopped in time.
|
Think of the Zero conditional as a FACT (Present Simple), The 1st Conditional refers to A HYPOTHETICAL FUTURE, the 2nd conditional is referring to the present or HYPOTHETICAL PRESENT and the 3rd conditional is the PAST or too late.
Now watch this video on how the sun sees you and see if you can create some sentences using conditionals. And most importantly, start wearing sunscreen. Madeleine recommended it to me and I cannot stop sharing it with all our students.
Key words to keep in mind:
Freckles (a small patch of light brown colour on the skin, often becoming more pronounced through exposure to the sun)
Sunspots (a spot or patch that appears from time to time on the sun’s surface, appearing dark by contrast with its surroundings)
Sunbathing (sit or lie in the sun, especially to tan the skin)
Sunscreen (a cream or lotion rubbed on to the skin to protect it from the sun)
Still confused with conditionals? Try this link: http://www.perfect-english-grammar.com/conditional-exercises.html
Happy sunbathing!
Recently, I was talking to some students about Transitional Words and Linkers and the question on punctuation came up. When do I use a comma? Should I use a comma? Period (Full-Stop)? Help!
So I thought I would dedicate this post to the question on punctuation, especially in today’s instant messaging world:
6 Punctuation Mistakes that drive us crazy!!!!! Helpful video included…
Your Punctuation says it all In this article, the author describes how your punctuation defines you as a person.
Punctuation that doesn’t make you look very good 16 examples of mistakes that do not make you look very professional
Finally, what can happen when you get punctuation wrong…Grammar and punctuation ARE important
It’s a new year and it is time for a new challenge. Once a month, we want to give you an objective to help you enjoy the art of English. We thought we would propose some ideas and give you as many resources as possible to help you achieve it! What do you think?
It is chilly (cold) outside and there is nothing better than curling up (to sit or lie in a position with your arms and legs close to your body) on the sofa with a good book, magazine, blog and reading the hours away.
So, for January, we want you to read more! Here are our suggestions on how to start motivating yourselves to pick something up in English and read!
Claire Suggests:
if you want a real magazine to read then The Economist or Newsweek are both good as they give a summary of world events for the week. They can also be accessed online of course, but for a fee.
Madeleine Suggests:
Brain Pickings http://www.brainpickings.org — A fantastic blog which never fails to deliver something great and life inspiring!
Guardian’s Architecture and Design Critic Blog – Oliver Wainright http://www.theguardian.com/
It’s Not Luck, Eliyahu M. Goldratt (Book) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/
Written more like a novel, this is a business book with a difference. The story takes you on a journey of a man as he tries to juggle (balance) life and work, (with some key business methods and theories within the text.)
* Great for extending business (Economics/ Marketing/ Production/ Manufacturing) and general vocabulary
Tim Suggests:
I prefer real books and magazines! But stumbleupon.com is a favorite of mine for finding amazing stuff…Kind of like a search engine that brings you not just anything at all, but wacky different sites relating to what you are looking for. Downside you can waste entire lifetimes stumbling from site to site!!!
Heidi Suggests:
If the above ideas have not got the best of your curiosity, try reading short stories. My favorite writer to use in class is John Cheever
For newspapers from all over the world, try Kisoko.net
My all time favorite magazine: The New Yorker
Visit your local bookstore for some suggestions as well! In Barcelona, you can try Come In or Bcn Books
Here are some Famous Authors sharing their opinion on reading to help inspire you.
And if that isn’t enough, how about giving yourself a reading challenge checklist? Check it out HERE
HAVE FUN READING AND EXPLORING!!
Photo Source: http://browndresswithwhitedots.tumblr.com/post/100170763514
What if you were the last person to speak your language?
Did you know that over 7,000 languages are endangered (in danger of extinction) and at least one language dies every two weeks! Read this article for some interesting facts
This woman is the last woman to speak Wukchumni, a Native American Language. She is the LAST one! Watch her fascinating story HERE (advanced video)
And check out this interactive map on the languages that are disappearing.
The 25 most endangered languages in the world…
Finally, fascinating maps of languages
So, what’s your opinion? How does this affect us? What would you do to save a dying a language? Do you or anyone you know speaks an endangered or at risk language?
Photo Source: http://unescoeducation.blogspot.com.es/2009/03/unesco-courier-endangered-languages.html
