The Gift of Pain

Mark´s photo

"In 1946, while working in a leprosing sanatorium, the physician Paul Brand discovered that the deformities of leprosy were not an intrinsic part of the disease, but rather a consequence of the progressive devastation of infection and injury, which occurred because the patient was unable to feel pain. In 1972, he wrote: "if I had one gift which I could give to people with leprosy, it would be the gift of pain." Matt suffered from a kind of psychological leprosy; unable to feel his emotional pain, he was forever in danger of permanently, maybe fatally, damaging himself.

After Matt left my office and before writing up my notes, I did what I sometimes do after a knotty, affecting consultation. I walked round the corner to buy a takeaway coffee and then returned to my consulting room to zone out by reading who knows what on the Internet. The truth of the matter is this: there is a bit of Matt in each of us. At one time or another we all try to silence painful emotions. But when we succeed in feeling nothing we lose the only means we have of knowing what hurts us, and why."

(Extract from the book "The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves" by Stephen Grosz)

a) Some grammar about the text:

• Find in the text the antecedent of the relative which in bold and say its function in the sentence.
• Look at the verbs in bold -working, to feel, give, be, damaging, writing up, to buy, reading, feeling, knowing -and give reasons for their forms in each case.
• Find a Conditional Sentence and say which type of conditional it is.
• Make a list of the verbs which are followed by a specific preposition and learn them.
• Find a prefix which means "the opposite"
• Look at the expression "affecting consultation". Why is affecting written with the ending -ing? Could it be written in a different way in a different context? If so, give an example.

b) Guessing the story behind the text:
Think of questions to ask in class to find out about Matt´s story and the person who has written that passage.

c) And finally, the writing:
After asking your questions in class and listening to the answers of your classmates about Matt, try to reconstruct his story.

Rock Cakes

ROCK CAKES

Ingredients:

225 g. Self raising flour

100 g. Butter

75 g. Sugar

100 g. Mixed dried fruit (or small pieces of chocolate)

1 Egg, beaten

10-20 ml. Milk

Procedure:

1.- Put flour into a bowl

2.- Put butter with the flour and mix it with your hands. (the mixture must resemble breadcrumbs)

3.- Add sugar and dried fruit and mix

4. Add the beaten egg and milk and mix with a spoon. The mixture must be very thick.

5.- Grease the oven tray and place 10 spoonfuls of the mixture. (allow room between each one)

6.- Bake at 200º C for 15-20 minutes. (Don´t open the oven till after 15 minutes).

The Holstee Manifesto

Present Continuous

Present Continuous.

Activity 1

Describe what the people in the pictures are doing.

Activity 2

Today we are talking about New York.
-Do you like New York?
-Name two famous buildings you can see there.

  1.  Read the text.

 Sarah Miller is in New York. She is writing a letter to her best friend.

Dear Sophia,

How are you? How is London? I am having a very good time in New York.
It’s Sunday and it’s sunny and warm. Now it’s ten in the morning and we are in Central Park. I am sitting under a tree, I am listening to my radio… and I am writing to you, of course.
My Canadian cousin, Rosemary, is here with us. She is reading a comic. She’s very pretty. She’s tall and slim and she has got long wavy brown hair. Her parents are in Toronto.
 My father is reading The New York Times, an American newspaper. My mother is playing with my little brother Jimmy on the grass and they are eating popcorn.

There are many people in the park. Some men are jogging, two girls are walking their dogs, and an old man is skating! And he can do that quiet well.

We often come to this fantastic park, in this wonderful city because we relax here. But sometimes we visit other interesting places: museums, shops… New York is great! There are many fantastic skycrapers and there are people everywhere!                                                                                                                    
                        

 Love, Sarah
 
 2.- Now answer these questions.

1. What is Sarah’s surname?
 ________________________________________________
2. Where is Sarah?
 ________________________________________________
3. What is she doing?
 ________________________________________________
4. What is the weather like there?
 ________________________________________________
5. Who is Sarah writing to?
 ________________________________________________
10. What is Sarah’s father doing?
_________________________________________________
13. Is Sarah’s brother eating a hamburger?
_________________________________________________
14. How many girls are walking their dogs in the park?
 ________________________________________________
15. Are men playing tennis?
________________________________________________

Wonderful World

Handcolored etching and Photogravure Satchmo by Adi Holzer 2002

 I´d like to start by introducing myself. My name is Ángeles and I work as a teacher of English in a Secondary School near Madrid. I started this blog some time ago  but the point is that I haven´t used it at all except for some practice in the design of the blog itself. Maybe the time has come for a new era in my teaching and this post is the first of a never ending sequence of many others resulting from a new approach in the way I deal with teenagers and their learning of the English language.

As I like music so much and students always find learning through music really motivating I´d like to start this blog with a song by Louis Armstrong (New Orleans1901-New York 1971) which I usually use when teaching the Simple Present Tense: What a Wonderful World. It´s easy, it can be easily followed and it is a chant to living when Spring is not around and the sun is not shining. Besides, it´s jazz and it´s just for all of you.

What a Wonderful World

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom, for me and you
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world.

The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands, saying how do you do
They're really saying I love you.

I hear babies crying, I watch them grow
They'll learn much more than I'll never know
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world.

Yes, I think to myself
What a wonderful world.