Thanksgiving must-watch videos to practise your listening

Hello there ! Are you here listening to my blog or, rather, are you shopping for bargains on this Black Friday ? Over the last two years, I wrote two posts about Thanksgiving : one about Thanksgiving traditions and another one with Thanksgiving material for you to improve your English.  Today I'm bringing you two hilarious videos related to Thanksgiving that will put your listening comprehension to a test. Each video has different questions that you need to answer and, as usual, you can see the answers under the questions. Are you ready? Here you have the first one. It's the history of Thanksgiving told and dramatised by some innocent children. A must-watch video !

1. How does the first boy describe the pilgrims ?
2. According to the girl, why did the pilgrims go to America ?
3. How did they get to America ? What's the name of the transport they used ?
4. According to the children, how long did they take to cross the ocean ? (3 answers)
5. They were really cold, what did the forget to bring to America ?
6. How do you say corn in American English ?
7. What did the Indians teach the pilgrims ? And according to the children ?
8. What does the the chief of the Indians say ?
9. What did they have in the banquet? 

Here you have the second video. This one is related about the quirks of Thanksgiving.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9NDuxL4WA4

Listen to the video and choose the right answer a), b) c)

1. The First Thanksgiving feast :
a) lasted one day
b) included eating and other activities
c) celebrated the Indian's first successful harvest

2. In the first Thanksgiving menu : 
a) didn't include cranberries
b) included turkey
c) included deer provided by the Indians

3. Thanksgiving :
a) was celebrated every year until 1789
b) wasn't celebrated in subsequent years
c) immediately became a national holiday

4. Some traditional Thanksgiving dishes such as stuffing are due to :
a) a writer's idea
b) an idea established in a diary of a pilgrim
c) to historical reasons : Pilgrims would often cook those dishes

5. Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday :
a) because Franklin Delano Roosevelt did so in 1939
b) as was established by Abraham Lincoln 
c) as a result of different protests

6. One of the quirkiest traditions is :
a) turkey pardoning
b) turkey slaughtering
c) saving turkey farms

Answers to the first video :
1) "The pilgrims was a bunch of people that wore belt buckets on their heads."
2) They came to America because they wanted to go to a church, but the king of England wouldn't let them. 
3) They got to America onboard a ship called the Mayflower. 
4) 8 days / 4 months / 100 days.
5) They forgot to bring blankets.
6) Maize
7) They taught them how to grow crops, how to hunt and how to dance. According to the children they also taught them how to grow stuff like flowers, how to learn race bicycles and how to shop. 
8) he says :" I bet there won't be problems between the Englishmen and the native American ever again."
9) They had turkey, fruit and vegetables, deer and pumpkin pie. 

Answers to the second video : 
1b; 2c; 3b; 4a; 5c; 6a

To finish this post and to connect to the second video, here you have a video of president Trump pardoning first first turkey. Don't miss it !

Let's sing : Price Tag by Jessie J.

All right, back to my writing job yet one more week ! 

I'm teaching my students of Intermedio 1 some lexis related to money and we're discussing the importance of money in today's world. To illustrate this subject, I propose you a catchy song, no other than Price Tag by Jessie J. In this song that everybody was humming not long ago, she points out the over-importance of money in our society and she proposes some other ways of entertaining like music. Her message is quite clear : "forget about the price tag". Money is not the most important thing in our lives. Anyway, if you want to improve your lexis on money, click on the link. 

Now, listen to the song and do the exercises provided. As usual, the answers will be down below. Enjoy it :

1. Listen to the song and fill in the gaps with the appropriate words (choose a), b), c), or d)

2. Then, scan the lyrics to find all the words related to money

Jessi J. (Price Tag)

OK.

Coconut man.

Moonheads and pea.

You ready?

Seems like everybody’s got a price,
I wonder how they sleep at (1) _______.
When the (2) _______ comes first,
And the truth comes second,
Just stop, for a minute and
(3) ________
Why is everybody so serious!
Acting so damn (4) ________
You got your shades on your eyes
And your heel so high
That you can’t even have a good time.
Everybody look to their lefts (yeah)
Everybody look to their rights (ha)
Can you feel that (yeah)
We'll pay them with (5) _______ tonight
It’s not about the money, money, money.
We don’t need your money, money, money.
We just wanna make the world dance,
Forget about the Price tag
Ain’t about the (ha) Cha-Ching Cha-Ching.
Ain't about the (yeah) Ba-Bling Ba-Bling
Wanna make the world dance,
Forget about the Price tag.
We need to take it back in time,
When music made us all (6) _______!
And it wasn’t low blows and video hoes,
Am I the only one getting (7) _______?
Why is everybody so (8)________?
Money can’t buy us happiness
Can we all (9)______down and enjoy right now
guarantee we’ll be feeling
All right.

Everybody look to their lefts (yeah)
Everybody look to their rights (ha)
Can you feel that (yeah)
We'll pay them with _____ tonight.

(CHORUS)
Yeah yeah
Well, keep the price tag
And take the ____ (10) back
Just give me six strings and a half stack.
And you can keep the cars
Leave me the garage
And all I..
Yes all I need are keys and (11) ________
And guess what, in 30 seconds I’m leaving to Mars
Yes we leaving across these undefeatable odds
Its like this man, you can’t put a price on the life
We do this for the love so we fight and sacrifice every night
So we aint gon stumble and fall never
Waiting to see, a sign of defeat uh uh
So we gon keep everyone moving their (12) ______
So bring back the beat and everybody sing
(CHORUS X2)
Yeah yeah
Oo-oooh
Forget about the price tag.

1. a) Fight                   b) Night                      c) High                       d) Right

2. a) Male                   b) Sale                        c) Shake                      d) Whale

3. a) Smile                  b) Mile                        c) Say hello                 d) While

4. a) Serious                b) Genius                    c) Mysterious              d) Malicious

5. a) Hugs                   b) Love                       c) Mob                        d) Cash

6. a) Blight                 b) Nite                        c) Unique                    d) Unite

7. a) Tried                   b) Tied                      c) Tired                       d) Died

8. a) Obsessed          b) Sexed                     c) Oxen                       d) Obsess

9. a) Low                    b) Slow                       c) Lower                     d) Glow

10. a) Mash                 b) Crash                      c) Cash                       d) Crunch

11. a) Mars                 b) Ghettos                  c) Guitars                    d) Taps

12. a) seeds                 b) Teeth                      c) Beet                        d) Feet

Answers :

1b, 2b, 3a, 4c, 5b, 6d, 7c, 8a, 9b, 10c, 11 c, 12d

Words related to money : price, price tag, sale, cash, money, pay.

P.S. If you want to keep practising your English with songs, click on the links below. Jessie J's Price Tag; The Police's Every Breath You Take; U2's I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For; Bruno Mar's Don't Give Up; The Cure's Friday I'm In Love; Smash Mouth's I'm A Believer; Michael Bublé's It's A Beautiful Day; songs related to peace; Cold Play's Paradise; Christmas carols; Christmas carols II; Tracy Chapman's Fast Car; Gotye's Somebody That I Used To Know; Happy Birthday songs.

The Invisible Man by H.W. Wells : a simple, yet entertaining story!

From : https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Man-Dover-Thrift-Editions/dp/0486270718

Back to reading folks.

In an attempt to keep busy and learned, I keep struggling to read books in English and lately I have read one of the English classics, no other than The Invisible Man by H.W. Wells. 

I'm pretty sure you all will have probably heard of it or, at least, you may have watched the famous film based on this well-known story. Can you imagine becoming invisible ? What could you do with the gift of invisibility? I'm sure you can imagine loads of things to do if you were invisible: robbing a bank, spying on your enemy, get what you want for free... Griffin, a scientist and the main character of the story, thought about possible advantages of invisibility and he tried to pursue his dream of becoming an invisible man until he finally reached his goal. Thanks to his studies, he finds a way to make things invisible and he performs the experiment on himself, fulfilling his dream. 

However, things don't quite go as planned. Being invisible has a lot of drawbacks : you need to walk naked and endure the sheer cold and low temperatures and, on top of that, you have to hide from others and prevent them from discovering your secret... However, by far, the most damaging downside of becoming invisible for him, was isolation and loneliness. He ends up wandering the world by himself, alone, with no one to turn to and covering his face. 

From : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gI5m3GCQiQ

In an attempt to reverse his situation, he settles in an inn in a small village to do some research and reverse his condition. However, as soon as his secret is discovered by his landlady, he becomes a wanted criminal and he is forced to run away. Desperate, he becomes crazier and crazier and starts hurting other human beings for the sake of his pleasure. In need of food and shelter, he then decides to rely on an old acquaintance of his. He breaks into his house, and tells him his story, how his father committed suicide when he stole money from him, how people considered him a freak and were frightened of him, and how he ended up lonely and miserable. As his madness grows, he decided to make humankind pay for his current situation and this is when his friends betrays him to the police. Thus will start his chasing and hunting which will have dire consequences on the invisible man. 

The story can be interpreted in two different ways :  one the one hand, it can be considered as the story of a man that after becoming invisible goes mad and wants to kill the rest of humanity, in other words, a man who played God and decided to break the rules of science by making himself invisible and, as a result, was punished for his behaviour. 

On the other hand, this story can be interpreted as a man of unique nature, different from all the other humans and ends up rejected and scorned by the ones of his kind. This is connected to the contemporary world, where people tagged as "different" are rejected by others and it connects with current subjects like 'bullying' or 'racial discrimination'. Griffin's invisibility is a mere metaphor : he is invisible for the rest of the world, he is lonely and has a thirst for being accepted. 

Anyway, although the plot is not exactly riveting I recommend you read the book given that it is an entertaining story that makes you reflect about today's world. In addition, it was way ahead of its time : thinking of invisibility at that time was really creative, don't you think ?

P.S. If you want to see some other book reviews of mine, click on the links : my review on William Golding's The Lord of the Flies, my analysis of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, my post on Dickens's Oliver Twist, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain and my entry about Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea; Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo. 

Conversion -or how English can easily change the lexical category of its words

From : http://www.myshared.ru/slide/1044936/

Now that my honeymoon is completely over and that I have suffered the rough transition back to work I can resume my writing about English quirks. Today, I'm going to speak about a unique quirky characteristic of English, that of conversion. What's that ? It's when you have you change the grammatical category of a word without changing it, without any suffixes or prefixes. Take for example the verb 'help.' You can use it in sentences like 'don't worry. I'll help you.' 'Help' can be transformed into a noun without changing the word as you can see in 'I helped him because he needed some help.' The same happens with the noun drink : 'you can go out for a drink' (noun) or 'drink  some beer.' (verb). 

1) Normally, conversion results in verbification, that is, in the creation of new verbs from other parts of speech. Let's see some examples of this :

- Email is mostly a noun, as in 'send me an email', but thanks to conversion, 'email' became a verb ('he emailed me.')

- Better can be an adjective (as in 'that book is much better') or an adverb ('he speaks better than he used to'). With the passage of time, 'better' has also become a verb, for instance, he is fighting to better his working conditions.

- In the same way, 'best' works frequently as either adjective (the best programme) or adverb (she sings best) but odd though  it may sound you can acceptably use 'best' as a verb : 'Joe bested Mark at videogames'. 

- Salt and pepper are nouns but now you can use them as verbs meaning 'to condiment food with salt and pepper'

- Coat is a piece of clothing for cold weather but conversion has also turned it into a verb meaning 'cover' or 'protect'. This word have even taken some compounds such as 'sugarcoat' (cover something with sugar). 

- Bed frequently refers to the thing you sleep on, but it can also work as a verb meaning 'cover' or 'wrap' (he bedded the china to protect it).

- A house is where people live but, as a verb, it means to welcome people to sleep over (that residence can house up to 1,000 people).

- Phone is something to talk to someone far away, but, as you know, it has become the action (you can phone someone using a phone).

- An eye is a part of the body to see things, but, as a verb, you can eye someone in detail (watch attentively).

- Water is a liquid that all of us need to keep living. Apart from that, it can be used as a verb meaning 'irrigate water to the plants.' You can water the plants. 

From : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg21PmZL1Ao

- Down is usually a preposition or adverb but it can be transformed into a verb (he downed his gun).

2) Sometimes, when conversion takes place in the creation of a verb, a preposition or adverb is needed. In other words, conversion is good at creating phrasal verbs or prepositional verbs. Let's see some examples :

- Butter is a typical ingredient you put on toast, but, as a verb, you can butter up someone (praise and say good things to someone to get something)

- Cheese is a delicious dairy product. However, if something cheeses you off it means it's really annoying. 

3) On other occasions, conversion creates new nouns from verbs.

- You can walk or go for a walk.

- You can swim or have a swim.

- You can run/jog or go for a run/a jog.

- You can go to the cinema or have a go at something (try).

- You must study or studying is a must. 

- There are a lot of things you have to do or you have a lot of do's.

4) Conversion can be used to create new words. 

In the past, Google was just a company, but now you can 'google' something (look for something on the Internet).

In the same way, you can use conversion to invent new words : prepare to be photoed; ketchup the fries (=add ketchup); calendar something (=put it on the calendar). Your creativity has no limits but make sure you get your message across!

Well, conversion is quite interesting, don't you think ? It's part of lexical creativity to create new words and it makes English easier than you can imagine. Can you think of more examples of conversion ? Please, contribute.