INTRINSIC VS EXTRINSIC GOALS

Are You Pursuing the WRONG Goals? 

Unless you’re some enlightened human being, it’s fair to say that you are trying to achieve certain goals in your future.

Maybe you’re trying to get a promotion at your job or you’re looking to get a better job altogether. Maybe you’d like to start your own business. Maybe you want to lose weight or gain muscle mass. Maybe you want to travel to the Himalayas and maybe you want to just be happy.

Whatever the case, you are going after some goals – that’s human nature, we are teleological, aka goal-oriented beings.

But what if you’re going after the WRONG kinds of goals? What if you are unknowingly chasing goals that lower your performance, make you mentally unstable, cause anxiety, lead to depression, and even hinder you from ever being truly happy? Go on reading the article at https://www.njlifehacks.com/intrinsic-goals-vs-extrinsic-goals/

MARTIN EDEN

Image from the Italian movie Martin Eden (2019)

Martin Eden is a 1909 novel by American author Jack London about a young proletarian autodidact struggling to become a writer. It was first serialized in The Pacific Monthly magazine from September 1908 to September 1909 and published in book form by Macmillan in September 1909. 
The Plot
Martin Eden is an impoverished sailor who pursues, obsessively and aggressively, dreams of education and literary fame.
He educates himself feverishly and becomes a writer, hoping to acquire the respectability sought by his society-girl sweetheart. She spurns him, however, when his writing is rejected by several magazines and even more so when he is falsely accused of being a socialist. After he achieves fame, she tries to win him back but Martin realizes her love is false. Financially successful and robbed of connection to his own class, aware that his quest for bourgeois respectability was hollow, Eden travels to the Pacific as a sailor again.

TEENAGE ACTIVISTS THAT PROVE GRETA THUNBERG IS NOT ALONE

Known for being hormonal, moody and apathetic, teenagers don’t always get the best reputation.

But the recent rise to prominence of 16-year-old environmental activist Greta Thunberg has smashed all such stereotypes and made people of all ages take notice of what she has to say.

But she is far from the first teenager to prove that young people can make huge changes to the world.

Malala Yousafzai was only 14 when she was shot for speaking out about the lack of education for girls in Pakistan, where she grew up.

Nine months after the attack she gave a speech at the UN, and she continued to campaign tirelessly for fair education for girls.

Aged 17, she became in the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.

Young people like Thunberg and Yousafzai are inspirational for everything they’ve accomplished at by such a young age, but they’re not alone.

More and more teenagers are standing up for their beliefs and trying to create a fairer world that aligns with their beliefs. Here are a few of the most influential.

It seems like the future generation may be able to solve the world after all.

WHAT DID OLD ENGLISH SOUND LIKE?

RECONSTRUCTIONS OF BEOWULF, THE BIBLE AND CASUAL CONVERSATION

What is the English language? Is it Anglo-Saxon? It is tempting to think so, in part because the definition simplifies a linguistic history that defies linear summary. Over the course of 1000 years, the language came together from extensive contact with Anglo-Norman, a dialect of French; then became heavily Latinized and full of Greek roots and endings; then absorbed words from Arabic, Spanish, and dozens of other languages, and with them, arguably, absorbed concepts and pictures of the world that cannot be separated from the language itself.

GO ON READING 

SUMMERTIME ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE YOUR ENGLISH

Summer can be the perfect occasion to improve your English! You have more free time and you can use some of it to practise and  improve your English.

Practice makes perfect!

What could you do to make the most of your summer holidays? Here are some fun activities!

1. Watch videos on Youtube with subtitles

You can choose videos about topics, people, events, subjects, arts, sports you are interested in.

2. Watch movies or TV series  with subtitles

You can find them on satellite TV channels or online ( Amazon, Netflix or Youtube)

SCHOOL IS OUT FOR SUMMER! (PROGRAMMI FINALI 2019)

1 Liceo Scientifico B

2 Liceo Scientifico

3 Liceo Scientifico

4 Liceo Scientifico

5 Liceo Scientifico A - B

GRETA THUNBERG: A VERY SPECIAL TEEN

Greta Thunberg, the Swedish schoolgirl who has inspired an international movement to fight climate change, has been nominated as a candidate to receive this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

She was nominated by three Norwegian MPs. If she were to win, she would be the youngest recipient since Pakistan's Malala Yousafzai, who was 17 when she received the prize. Ms Thunberg tweeted she was "honoured" to receive the nomination ... Go on reading HERE

TOM HIDDLESTON ON COMPASSION

What is compassion to you? Let's reflect on what compassion means with Tom Hiddleston, who's come to Hollywood fame as Loki, Thor's evil brother in The Avengers. 

Tom Hiddleston is a British actor, he was born in London in 1981.

Do you know that he screen tested for the title role in Thor (2011), maintaining a strict diet and gaining 20 pounds in muscle?However, Kenneth Branagh, the director,  decided he was more suitable for the role of Loki.

Below you find 2 videos  to work with. As usual   I have also prepared a worksheet that you can use and download.

You'll find the worksheet HERE or in the SHARING BOX ON THE RIGHT. The worksheet includes listening and reading comprehension activities, writing tasks .   

GUERNSEY HAS A GREAT STORY TO TELL

“This island, what they had to endure here...

It's unimaginable. And no one knows.

These people had to actually live with the enemy...”

Invaded in June 1940, the Channel Islands were the only British territory to be occupied by the Germans during the Second World War. Guernsey provided inspiration for the international best - seller "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society", which shines a spotlight on one of the darkest  periods in the island's history.

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

NORTHANGER ABBEY - JANE AUSTEN AND THE PARODY OF THE GOTHIC VOGUE

Gothic novels were extremely popular at the end of the 18th century and that taste or vogue involved all social classes. Most of those novels followed the same pattern with few alterations: great importance given to terror and horror – as two different ingredients, since the first was characterised by obscurity and uncertainty and the latter by evil and atrocity; ancient settings like isolated castles, dungeons, secret rooms, mysterious abbeys or convents; supernatural beings like vampires, ghosts, witches, monsters; a triad of main characters including an oversensitive persecuted heroine, a terrifying/satanic male villain and a sensitive honourable hero. 

After Walpole’s “The Castle of Otranto” , very popular Gothic tales were Ann Radcliffe’s “The Mysteries of Udolpho” (1794) and “The Monk” by Matthew Lewis (1796) .

In the same years Miss Jane Austen dreamt of “living on 
her pen”, writing her first novels “of manners”. Between 1795-96 she had finished Elinore and Marianne, later on published as Sense and Sensibility, as well as First impressions then published as Pride and Prejudice. Was she interested in Gothic novels or did she attempt to write one? Since irony and satire were her favourite literary “weapons”, she preferred writing a parody of such sentimental, fashionable genre. 
In 1798 she wrote Northanger Abbey, never published during her life for reasons left unknown, which is in fact an open mocking of the genre.

Young Catherine Morland’s story develops some of  Jane Austen’s favourite themes, the initiation of a young woman into the complexities of adult social life and the danger of imagination uncontrolled by reason and common sense. Catherine’s mistake is that she imposes the melodramatic values of the gothic novels she reads (i.e. “The mysteries of Udolpho” by A. Radcliffe) on the reality around her, making the boundaries between the real and the imaginary quite uncertain.

CHECK ALSO 

A HEROINE, HER ANCESTOR AND HER HEIRESS

HENRY TILNEY - THE HERO OF NORTHANGER ABBEY

LISTEN TO

 NORTHANGER ABBEY AUDIOBOOK (UNABRIDGED)


LISTEN TO A SIMPLIFIED VERSION WITH SUBTITLES

LEARN ENGLISH THROUGH A STORY


WORKSHEET 

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