Ode To Billy Joe

The weird video doesn't do justice to the beautiful beautiful song, but at least you get the chance to listen again...



The first thing we did in class was listen to the song, note down key phrases and categorise them under the following headings:

- Family Meal
- Life & Geography of the Area
- Farm Life
- Other details

Now listen again and fill the gaps:

It was the ______________, another sleepy, dusty Delta day. I was out ______________ and my brother was baling hay. And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to ______________. And Mama hollered out the back door "y'all remember to ______________," And then she said "I got ______________ this morning from Choctaw Ridge," "Today, Billy Joe MacAllister ______________ the Tallahatchie Bridge." And Papa said to Mama as he passed around the ______________: "Well, Billy Joe never had a lick of sense; pass ______________." "There's ______________ in the lower forty I've got to plow." And Mama said it was a ____________________________, anyhow. Seems like nothing ever comes to no good up ______________. And now Billy Joe MacAllister's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge. And brother said he recollected when he and Tom and Billie Joe, Had put _________________________ at the Carroll County picture show. And wasn't I talking to him after ____________________________? "I'll have another _______________________; you know it don't seem right. "I saw him at the sawmill ______________ on Choctaw Ridge, "And now you tell me Billie Joe's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge." And Mama said to me: "Child, what's happened to ______________? "I've been cooking all morning and you haven't _______________________. "That nice young preacher, ______________, dropped by today. "Said he'd be pleased to have dinner on Sunday, oh, ______________. "He said he saw a girl that looked ________________ up on Choctaw Ridge. "And she and Billy Joe was ______________ off the Tallahatchie Bridge." A year has come and gone since we ____________________________, And brother married Becky Thompson, they _________________________. There was a virus going 'round, Papa caught it and ____________________. And now Mama doesn't seem to wanna ____________________________. And me, I spend a lot of time picking ____________________________. And drop them into the muddy water ____________________________.

If you just want to check the original lyrics you can find them here and there are some interesting "facts" about the song here.

Writing A Report

There's a complete lesson on writing a report here. I'm in the process of trying to make it more interactive and I'll post downloadable handouts soon...

Questions Questions Questions

In total, you wrote 22 perfect questions for me to answer. Click here for my 22 answers!



Vlad, Lurance, Beida

What is your favourite football team and why?

Are you married?

Do you have a car and, if so, which model?

Do you like movies and, if so, what is your favourite?

Do you have a dog or a cat?

What do you do for a living?

Are you happy with your job?




Kenny, Aneliya, Seonwoong

Do you like your job?

Do you have a reason for liking the number 7?

How many people do you know?

Where do you like to go at weekends?

What kind of girl do you like?

Where do you live in London?

How long have you been working at Internexus?




Elif and Feng

I can’t memorise words. What do you suggest?

What was your favourite lesson when you were a student?

Can you swim very well?

Have you been to Turkey or China?

What is your dream job?

If we gave you one wish, what would you wish for?

How old were you when you came to Internexus?

I want to be alone when I feel bad. What do you prefer – being alone or with other people?

Travel Tips

Lots of students ask me to recommend places to go in London so I thought I'd start a list. In case you want more than my biased views, The Guardian website has a really good travel section in which readers submit their own recommendations and the section on London is huge and here. You could also try looking at my former student Ana's blog and at the cool website, Gridskipper.





My top tips for the capital are as follows:




1. Hampstead Heath - walk around the Heath for hours (or days) and make sure you enjoy the views from Parliament Hill. If you're lucky you might see crazy people swimming in the lakes. At the opposite end of the Heath to Parliament Hill, it's worth stopping briefly in Kenwood House (even just the cafe). You might recognise the building from the end of Notting Hill (Julia Roberts films a period drama there).

2. Hampstead High Street - nothing amazing but some beautiful houses and pubs around the back streets. You should try...

3. crepes from the street vendor

4. watching a film in The Hampstead Everyman Cinema. There are “love seats” for couples to sit in…or you can pay extra to sit in a VIP area with comfy sofas and a bar.

5. Primrose Hill - a lovely quiet pocket of green hills and famous people...if you walk down Primrose Hill high street you'll see some lovely little shops and you might even bump into Jude Law.

6. Highgate Cemetery - sounds a bit morbid, but there are quite a few important dead people there. Famous as the home of Karl Marx's grave.

7.Take a boat trip down the Thames. You can get a commentary to point out the most important buildings. The London Eye is worth going on too, but it’s a good idea to book in advance to avoid the queues. Personally, I like just walking near the river – from Big Ben to The Tate Modern takes a long time but on a nice day it’s a glorious walk and you get some lovely views. At the Tate Modern there a re some nice cafes with great views. If you don’t mind spending a little extra you can eat good food on the 7th Floor Restaurant, which in my opinion, is one of the coolest locations in London.

English Politeness : A Pronunciation Exercise

This is story is supposed to be an amusing example of how polite the English are. You can have read it and go through some simple sound-chunking pronunciation tasks here, or you can download the handout here.

If you think you know about British manners, try finishing the following sentences:

1. The British think that they are…
2. It is well-known that British people like…
3. In Britain, queues are…
4. It’s very important for the average English person not to…
5. The English are terrified by…
6. If you try to kiss a typical English person, they will…

As a language exercise, you can try to re-write your sentences using the following opening phrases:

1. The British love to think of themselves as…
2. Everyone knows how fond they are of...
3. Another sign of our good breeding is…
4. The average English person would rather die than…
5. The English find touching and other shows of friendship...
6. Try kissing the average English person and they will…

I'd be very happy to read any suggestions, and you can also adapt these sentences to talk about manners in your own culture. Some lovely examples can be found here.

Writing Complex Sentences

There's a short exercise in using relative clauses to creat complex sentences if you click here. Alternatively you can download the class handout here. A simplified option is this:

Hopefully, none of these statements should be true for you:

- I hate people
- I never eat food
- I can’t stand films
- I never go to places

So, can you extend the sentences to make them true for you.


Did you use any of these devices?

I hate people who…
I never eat food which…
I can’t stand films in which…
I never go to places where…


For more practice, try to extend each expression using all the alternative devices listed below:


I hate people who…with whom…because…

I never eat food with…when…from…containing…made…

I can’t stand films starring…made…featuring…

I never go to places which…in which…from which…

Suck It And See : Lexical Sets

The point of this exercise it to recognise that any vocabulary you find in any article belongs to a lexical set (a vocabulary topic). If you know which lexical sets you can find in an article, you should be able to guess the general meaning of unknown vocabulary more easily. Paying attention to lexical sets should also help you to use vocabulary more accurately.

Here, I've divided a newspaper article into different lexical sets. All you have to do is decide what each lexical set is. The class handout can be downloaded here.

CV Writing : Step One

Today we looked at some language for making yourself sound dynamic on a CV.

First we considered a list skills and qualities featured in a textbook called Business Builder. The first task was for students to identify which skills and qualities they have and then to prove it by referring to examples of achievements in their work experience, education, and personal life.

We then looked at the language they used to express them and worked on ways of making it more dynamic. We also used this vocabulary exercise to identify accurate and effective collocations to talk about work experience. A Word file can be downloaded here.

Textual Awareness

We started by reading this short biographical text about Brad Pitt (download the Word file here), by the far the best actor in the world when it comes to playing characters who look like Brad Pitt. Anyway, the tasks were simple...

First, having read the text, guess - without looking at it - the number of paragraphs (very easy I know), sentences (more difficult), and words. The point is just to think about structures of English sentences and paragraphs.

Secondly, with the text covered, we used the simple prompts to re-write the whole biography. Comparing the reconstruction with the original text allowed us to look for areas of English writing we needed to spend more time thinking about.

New Writing Course

The course starts with a NEEDS ANALYSIS session. We discussed how well we all write a variety of different text types in our first languages. There seemed to be a class consensus that the texts we write well tend to be the ones that we have read a lot of, and which we have practice of having written. The philosophy of this course, therefore, is to improve our writing skills by focussing on text types, analysing the way they work, and then trying to produce and improve upon our own written texts. The students all wrote down which text types they would most like to be able to write well in English. A list of the types of text we discussed are listed here.

Football and Violence!

Look at the headline and first two paragraphs of this BBC news report about last night's trouble between Man Utd and Roma fans. You'll notice that I've changed the font for certain words and phrases. Can you see a pattern developing? What do the various fonts represent?


Fans clash with police at Man Utd

Police and football fans were involved in a series of scuffles before the Champions League match between Manchester United and Roma on Tuesday.

Greater Manchester Police officers made 21 arrests after confrontations around Old Trafford prior to kick-off. The worst incident involved several dozen mainly Roma fans but it was soon brought under control by officers with batons and police horses and dogs. Manchester United won the match 7-1 to reach the Champions League semi-finals. Hundreds of supporters were caught up in ugly scenes outside Old Trafford before the game. Eyewitnesses said a firework was fired by Italian fans at Manchester United supporters as bottles were hurled between rival groups.

You may have realised by now that the fonts correspond to the different lexical sets (vocabulary themes) used in the text. The sets are as follows:

a. football
b. law
c. violence

Read on and try to classify the phrases in bold according to these three categories. Notice that the only other vocabulary theme that arises in the whole article is related to travelling (I've highlighted this vocabulary by putting it into itallics).

Police said 14 of those arrested were English and seven were Italian.

Eight Manchester United fans, including one juvenile, were arrested on suspicion of committing public order offences, one was detained for allegedly possessing a bladed article, two were held on suspicion of causing affray, one for suspected criminal damage and one was arrested for a suspected breach of the peace.
Two Italian supporters were held on suspicion of public order offences, another for allegedly possessing an offensive weapon, and a fourth for allegedly possessing an offensive weapon and committing a public order offence.


Three others were arrested on suspicion of shoplifting, believed to be from the Manchester United Megastore.

Roma supporters began trailing out of the ground at about 2215 BST and were led without incident to a facing car park where a fleet of coaches will take them back to the airport.
There were no reports of any injuries.

BBC production staff witnessed Manchester United fans throwing cans and glass bottles while police with dogs tried to separate the two sets of supporters.

Police dog units and mounted officers became involved with a series of scuffles with supporters close to the club shop on Sir Matt Busby Way at about 1750 BST.

Police sources told the BBC that the "isolated" trouble - which involved fans of both teams - was contained within five minutes.

A statement released by Greater Manchester Police said: "Officers patrolling at Old Trafford ahead of the Manchester United versus Roma match have been required to deal with a number of small and isolated incidents.

"The incidents are being dealt with as they happen and are being resolved quickly.

"Some arrests were made in order to maintain the peace at the ground."

BBC radio reporter James Alexander said extra security was very much in evidence outside the stadium.

"There were lots of security personnel and extra police cars and vans around the stadium," he said.

"It was classified as a Category C match which is the highest alert there is for a match at Old Trafford. It is on a par with a home match against Liverpool."

Minister for Sport Richard Caborn said: "It's unfortunate that there have been some scuffles outside Old Trafford. "This was always going to be a highly charged game following the incident last week. Greater Manchester Police have used proportionate force in a potentially difficult situation and have handled it well."

The visiting fans were in the second tier of the East Stand and there were no reports of trouble inside the stadium.

Roma's managing director Rosella Sensi earlier insisted their fans would behave impeccably.

Uefa is to investigate the trouble from the first leg, which could lead to disciplinary action for both United and Roma.

Hopefully that was all straightforward, but did you notice that disciplinary action combines the themes of football AND law - it's about the rules and laws that govern European football - UEFA are the organisation that could punish the two teams, just like the British legal system will punish the arrested fans.

Something for the Ladies : Sense and Sensibility

Just in case anyone cares, here's that wonderful opening paragraph from Jane Austen's Sense and Senisbility again... If you lack the motivation to read it, why not scroll down and watch a trailer for the most recent film adaptation...

The family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex. Their estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the centre of their property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so respectable a manner as to engage the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance. The late owner of this estate was a single man, who lived to a very advanced age, and who for many years of his life, had a constant companion and housekeeper in his sister. But her death, which happened ten years before his own, produced a great alteration in his home; for to supply her loss, he invited and received into his house the family of his nephew Mr. Henry Dashwood, the legal inheritor of the Norland estate, and the person to whom he intended to bequeath it. In the society of his nephew and niece, and their children, the old Gentleman's days were comfortably spent. His attachment to them all increased. The constant attention of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Dashwood to his wishes, which proceeded not merely from interest, but from goodness of heart, gave him every degree of solid comfort which his age could receive; and the cheerfulness of the children added a relish to his existence.

Coherence

A few little exercises to explore the importance of coherence for you. First read through this text in 30 seconds or less:

Belgium's rubbish solution

Councils in England could soon be allowed to charge residents for the amount of rubbish they throw away. When I visited the Flanders town of Lokeren - half-way between Antwerp and Ghent - I was following in the footsteps of environment minister Ben Bradshaw. He went with a team of officials last year to see how this part of Belgium recycles more than 70% of its household waste. In Lokeren itself, the rate is nearly 80% - more than three times that in England as a whole. So how do the Flemish do it? But what effect have "pay as you throw" systems had in other countries?

In Lokeren, it's set at 80 euros (£56). Not long ago the cost of rubbish collection and disposal was "hidden" in the main local tax - as it is in Britain. But a few years ago the Flemish moved to a system where people pay a separate annual waste fee. On top of that, they pay variable charges based on the weight and volume of waste they leave for collection.



By skim reading the text without worrying too much about 100% comprehension, you should note that, like all texts, it's made up of several vocabulary themese (lexical sets) which come together to create the story. In the case of this story, it should be easy to spot that the main lexical sets are BELGIUM, RECYCLING, and OFFICIALDOM / POLITICS. When you've realised that, you can help yourself to get the meaning of any new vocabulary (e.g. Flanders and Flemish must be related to Belgium, household waste to recycling, and envioronment minister to officialdom).

If you got the gist of this article through it's key vocabulary, great, but look again and you'll find that it's not completely COHERENT. That's because I've moved one sentence from each paragraph to a position which it doesn't belong in. Look carefully and then go the BBC website to check the original article here.

Now here's a story including the lexical sets of MEDICINE, LAW, and RELATIONSHIPS. Try to classify any new vocabulary within one of these categories:

Woman's embryo appeal verdict due

She turned to the European courts after exhausting the UK legal process. A woman left infertile after cancer therapy is due to learn a court's final judgement on her plea to use frozen embryos fertilised by an ex-partner. Ms Evans, 35, says her appeal to the Grand Chamber of the European Court is her last chance to have a baby. Natallie Evans, from Trowbridge, Wilts, and Howard Johnston began IVF treatment in 2001 but he withdrew consent for the embryos to be used after they split up.

This time I've mixed the article up completely. Put the sentences in the correct order and then check your thoughts against the original article below. Notice how each sentence contains words and expressions that relate to other sentences. With attention to these, you should be able to see logic to the writer's choice of structure. Again, this is COHERENCE, and attention to this textual feature should help you read and write in English effectively.


Woman's embryo appeal verdict due

A woman left infertile after cancer therapy is due to learn a court's final judgement on her plea to use frozen embryos fertilised by an ex-partner. Natallie Evans, from Trowbridge, Wilts, and Howard Johnston began IVF treatment in 2001 but he withdrew consent for the embryos to be used after they split up. She turned to the European courts after exhausting the UK legal process. Ms Evans, 35, says her appeal to the Grand Chamber of the European Court is her last chance to have a baby.

By the time we looked at this in class, a verdict had actually been reached, which you can read about here.

If you're approaching this the right way, you should be getting used to the style of these articles. Look at the first six sentences of one final article and try to put them into a coherent order:

China slams US piracy complaint

1. By doing so, the US has ignored the Chinese government's immense efforts and great achievements in strengthening intellectual property rights protection and tightening enforcement of its copyright laws," the commissioner added.
2. China "expressed great regret and strong dissatisfaction at the decision", the state news agency said.
3. China has criticised the US over its decision to file a formal complaint with the World Trade Organization over copyright piracy and counterfeiting. The US also argues that China makes it hard for legitimate firms to operate.
4. The Xinhua news agency quoted Intellectual Property Office commissioner Tian Lipu as saying that it was "not a sensible move for the US government to file such a complaint" at the World Trade Organization (WTO).
5. The US says that China's failure to enforce copyright laws is costing software, music and book publishers billions of dollars in lost sales.

Still awake? Check your thoughts against the original text here or go to the BBC website and search the words "China slams" to see how strangely often this lexical combination occurs in the news.

Academic Word List

I mentioned this in class - the Academic Word List, which is a useful tool for anyone interested in taking part in academic study which involves the English language. This website not only contains an explanation of what the Academic Word List is, it also allows you to paste text and see words from the AWL highlighted.

Language for Presentations

If you're interested, you can look at this collocations exercise related to presentations. Cover the verbs and then try to remember whether each phrase needs MAKE, DO, GIVE, or TAKE to complete it. There is also a handout with useful phrases for opening a presentation here.

A Marketing Project

Four products with potential image problems. We considered their strengths and weaknesses and then came up with a strategy for marketing them through this task. Feedback from the resulting presentations is here.

Advertising Campaigns

We looked at these advertising campaigns and discussed the feasibility of each one. One the same handout we did a branding task courtesy of Lexicon Naming via In Company. Finally we looked at advertising slogans. If you have some free time, why not try this stupid but entertaining random advert generator.

Memos and e-mails

Writing short but effective messages is a true art form. An analysis of these examples followed by some practice will help you take the first steps to perfecting this art form!

Negotiations

The idea was to use some of this useful language for negotiations in a negotiation roleplay about buying and selling digital cameras. A breakdown of the class results is here.

Writing a CV

The class handout for improving on your CV is here.