Aeschylus

Oops...it was Aeschylus who died when an eagle dropped a turtle on his head. Read more about him and his comical death on Wikipedia (click here).

As legend has it, an eagle, mistaking the playwright's bald crown for a stone, dropped a tortoise on his head (though some accounts differ, claiming it was a stone dropped by an eagle or vulture that mistook his bald head for the egg of a flightless bird). This incident may not be as unlikely as it seems, as the Lammergeier is native to the Mediterranean region – a large eagle-like vulture known to drop bones and tortoises on rocks to break them open.

Crush!

Hye Jin's question about "crush" brought back some memories for me - and not just about my economics teacher. Whenever I think of "crush", I immediately think of this terrible song from 1986, and it got me thinking that songs are a really good way of learning vocabulary. If you listen to this song twice (it might be hard, but try) I don't think you'll ever forget that the correct use of this word is HAVE + A CRUSH + ON + someone. I found this awful video on Youtube, and you can find just about any song there...if you're not sure how to use a word and you want to remember it forever, just go to youtube, search for that word, and start listening. Or dancing. Or singing...whatever it takes to make you learn.

Compare and Contrast

What can you say to compare and contrast the following images:

























As you may be able to guess, one of these Brads and one of the Angelinas are fake. They are professional lookalikes who work for the UK agency Fake Faces. Useful language for comparing and contrasting these pictures came up in class...

SIMILARITIES

• Both Brads look stylish.
• They're both tall.
• They're wearing similar dresses.

DIFFERENCES

• The fake Angelina has fatter arms.
• The real Brad is more musclar.
• The real Brad has a nice smile, whereas fake Brad can't open his mouth.
• The real Angelina collects children, while the fake Angelina doesn't.

Wiki

I've set up a wiki for class materials. I would be really happy to have some collaboration from students old and new, so please have a play with it and let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.

I'm still learning how to use pbwiki but at the moment I think that if you want to contribute to my wiki, you'll need to be registered. If you send me your e-mail address I can do it for you. Just mail me at markgh@gmail.com.

Essential Reading

Anyone interested in developing their reading skills should look very carefully at these two links:

Tony Mowbray looks to entertain Football League - Times Online

The Championship League Table

Slang

Especially for Hye-Jin, here's a link to a dictionary of British slang. Please feel free to try out anything you learn on me...