RAMI MALEK, BECOMING FREDDIE MERCURY

After Mr Robot, Rami Malek takes on his biggest role yet as Freddie Mercury in Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody. 
Did you know he is Egyptian and an Arab? In this interview he talks with Patrick Abboud about his struggle to become a successful actor in Hollywood.
Worksheet

HOW TO USE ... SHOULD, OUGHT TO, HAD BETTER TO, SUPPOSED TO

Exercise 1 Exercise 2 Excercise 3

Interactive worksheet

ROMEO & JULIET - THE PROLOGUE

CHOOSE KIND - VIDEO + LESSON PLAN

13th November is Kindness Day! 

Here's a Lesson Plan - B1/B2 from Film English. 

"When given the choice between being right and being kind, choose kind." 

(R. J.Palacio, Wonder)

FLATMATES - BEGINNERS 1-6

Watch the video, take notes in your notebook correcting the spelling mistakes you notice in the subtitles, translate the new words and new expressions,  work on pronunciation and memorize the new  vocabulary.

WHY DO WE STUDY LITERATURE? MR KEATING'S ANSWER

Why should we study literature in Mr Keating's opinion?

Take notes of the main points in his speech and then try to explain what he says in your own words.

THE HARD TASK OF GROWING UP - THE BELL JAR: ESTHER GREENWOOD AND SYLVIA PLATH

Esther Greenwood and Sylvia Plath

The story of The Bell Jar is a first person account of Esther Greenwood,  Sylvia Plath herself, her story at 19. Esther, like Sylvia, is a girl who has almost everything she could ask for. She’s an individual with a mind that is above average , extremely sensitive, intellingent and talented . With all of that provided for her, Esther is also struggling with the perennial problems of morality, behavior and identity crisis. The stress and the pressure of being an achiever burns her mind out ; the tension of sexual relations and the double standards on women’s virginity, the ups and downs of family relationships increase her sense of derangement. Esther compares her life to that of an existence in a bell jar, where the air is stiff, heavy and unchanging. She feels as if she is watching her own life and everything that happened to her from within the jar.

Perhaps the best thing about the book is the fact that the life of Esther is synonymous with what the author, Sylvia Plath, had experienced. Like Esther, Plath had gone through a struggling ordeal in finding the real meaning of life and its hidden uncertainties and her eventual fall into the pit of madness.

The book has some similarities with J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye: both Esther and Holden are troubled young souls searching for the true meaning of life. Both escapes the reality they can’t accept. Both are considered crazy because of their atypicality and fragility.

“For the first time in my life, sitting there in the sound-proof heart of the UN building between Constantin who could play tennis as well as simultaneously interpret and the Russian girl who knew so many idioms I felt dreadfully inadequate. The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn’t thought about it.

The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end. felt like a racehorse in a world without race-tracks...” (The Bell Jar, chapter 7, pp. 72-73)

THE HARD TASK OF GROWING UP - INTERACTING WITH ADULTS

Watch the two videos below and compare the adults you see interact with teenagers to the adult figures we found in Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye and Saroyan's The Human Comedy. 

THE HUMAN COMEDY BY WILLIAM SAROYAN - THE HARD TASK OF GROWING UP

It’s a story built on very simple facts, very ordinary people, very simple words which aims at transforming history and reality into unheroic epic mythology. That of everyday battles and sufferings. It is a story set in California in the time of WWII but it is actually a story beyond space and time. Homer
the 16-year-old protagonist, Ulysses, his little brother,  and Marcus, his elder brother at war. They live in Ithaca, San Joaquin Valley, California. They’ve got a sister and a mother. But there are no heroes. The Macauleys’ struggles and dreams reflect those of America’s second generation immigrants but-  and especially- also  those of any human being at any time in any place. No , they are not heroic epic figures but real life protagonists of  THE HUMAN COMEDY (1943).

Homer  is the protagonist, in his teen, determined to become the fastest telegraph messenger in the West, happy to be the man of the family in a difficult moment. Happy to ride his bycicle in the wind. But it’s wartime. Time to grow – up for him. Childhood ends when we realize suffering and death exist and they are there, inescapable,  for all of us. Homer becomes aware of that little by little: he is a messenger of death. A mother opens the door, he gives her a telegram and …

“It wasn’t  Homer fault. His work was to deliver telegrams. Even so, he felt awkward and almost as if he alone were responsible for what had happened (… )He was on his bycicle suddenly, riding swiftly down the dark street, tears coming out of his eyes, his mouth whispering crazy young curses. When he got back to the telegraph office the tears had stopped, but everything else had started and he knew there would be no stopping them” (pp.26/28)

WILL ENGLISH ALWAYS BE THE GLOBAL LANGUAGE? VIDEO + WORKSHEET

WORKSHEET 
    What is the future of English? by researcher David Graddol
(free downloadable version)

INTERNET SAFETY - THE ADVENTURES OF KARA & THE SMART CREW

In the UK, the organisation Childnet has produced a series of five videos to introduce different aspects of internet safety to 7-11 year olds. These cartoons illustrate 5 e-safety SMART rules and include a real life SMART Crew of young people, who guide the cartoon characters in their quest, and help them make safe online decisions.

Let's start with a quiz to discover how smart we are online.

TAKE THE QUIZ

THE PERFECT DAY: PRE-INTERMEDIATE GRAMMAR REVISION (PRESENT-PAST-FUTURE)

WORKSHEET

Grammar Excercises

Present Simple 1 - Present Simple 2 - Present Simple 3

Present continuous 1 - Present continuous 2 

Past tense 1 - Past tense 2 - Past tense 3

Future with Will 1 - Future with Will 2 

FRANKENSTEIN AT 200 - 5 VERY IMPORTANT THINGS TO KNOW + VIDEO & WORKSHEET

Elle Fanning as Mary Shelley (2018)

1.  THE OVERREACHER 

Victor Frankenstein is defined "The Modern Prometheus" in the subtitle of the novel. As Prometheus defied Zeus stealing the fire from him to bring it back to Mankind, the Swiss scientist protagonist of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel defies any natural law and God himself for his great ambition: to create, not to generate, life. To give life to an inanimate body.

Both Prometheus and Dr. Frankenstein are OVERREACHERS, special  types of rebels who

 - try to go beyond the limits imposed to Mankind by God or Nature
-  are moved by great ambition
 - are usually punished with death (not Prometheus, since he was a Titan, a semi-god)

SHAWN MENDES ON ANXIETY, SUCCESS AND MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD (B2 ACTIVITIES)

Shawn Mendes is a global phenomenon. He began his meteoric rise to fame as a teen posting song covers on Vine and YouTube, then as a young artist on Island Records. He is only 19 and earlier this year was named one of Time's most influential people in the world.

A PICTURE OF HEALTH - VIDEO + WORKSHEET (A2 - B1 ACTIVITIES)

WORKSHEET

KAZUO ISHIGURO, THE REMAINS OF THE DAY - READING, LISTENING, WRITING ACTIVITIES (B2 - C1)

Kazuo Ishiguro won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature . Ishiguro has met incredible acclaim for his seven novels, which include Never Let Me Go and The Buried Giant. Probably Ishiguro's most beloved book is The Remains of the Day  (Man Booker Prize,  1989) which was adapted into a film starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson in 1993. The movie is one of the Merchant-Ivory classics with A Room with a View and Howards End. 

The story is told from a first person point of view. The narrator, Stevens, a butler, recalls his life in the form of a diary while the action progresses through to the present. Much of the novel is concerned with Stevens' professional and, above all, personal relationship with a former colleague, the housekeeper Miss Kenton.

SCHOOL'S OUT FOR SUMMER! (PROGRAMMI FINALI)

PROGRAMMI FINALI:

1sc - 1 Liceo Scientifico 

2sc - 2 Liceo Scientifico

3sc - 3 Liceo Scientifico

4scA - 4 Liceo Scientifico sez. A

4scB - 4 Liceo Scientifico sez. B

5sc - 5 Liceo Scientifico 

ELLIOT'S VIDEOS - COMMON BRITISH EXPRESSIONS

Watch the video and complete the tasks in the

WORKSHEET

LET'S WORK ON THE NEWS: EMMA GONZALES & THE MARCH FOR OUR LIVES MOVEMENT

Since the mass shooting on Valentine’s Day at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, in which a former student of the school killed seventeen students and staff with a legally acquired semiautomatic rifle, several of the survivors have become veteran public speakers. Among them 17-year-old Emma Gonzales who, during the March for Our Lives rally in Washington D.C., galvanized the crowd  with her words and, especially, with her silence.

ROMEO & JULIET - CHARACTERS, PLOT & ACTIVITIES

8 worksheets, 5 videos to work on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. 

NOTES - FROM THE TUDORS TO THE STUARTS

When Queen Elizabeth I died with no heir in 1603, James VI of Scotland became King of England. It was the beginning of the Stuart Dynasty.

James I Stuart 1603-1625

• James was the son of Mary Stuart who had been condemned to death by Elizabeth I in 1587
• As James the VI of Scotland he united the two kingdoms of England and Scotland under one crown with the name of James I
• He was a protestant, unlike his mother
• Like the Tudors, he worked with a small council of ministers
• He only summoned Parliament to ask for money
• He surrounded himself with Scottish favourites and his court was disreputable, corrupt
• That caused a pessimistic view of human nature we can recognize in the works of two famous playwrights of the time, Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare (especially in his last works: Henry VIII , Othello, Macbeth, The Tempest)