Revista 25 aniversario - eoi de salamanca - Junta de Castilla y León

have quite a lot of students in my class with a laptop,
even before I had the data projection. And now, as far
as I understand, my mobile phone is obsolete, it’s an
antique. It doesn’t take photographs, but, for example,
in a modern mobile phone, every student, would have
lots and lots of visuals, lots and lots of photographs
that they could show. The only thing about the latest
generation of mobile phoning, as far as I can see, is
that they will be, they already are, if you have a
modern one, connected directly to the Internet so they
can actually look up the stuff directly on the Internet by
wireless on the mobile. In fact, the technology is
supporting the Dogme theory very nicely, I think.
Q Finally, I would like to ask you about your
feeling of Salamanca, these days here, the food, the
groups you’ve been teaching. …
PD I deliberately came a couple of days earlier,
which I don’t normally have time to do that, but I did,
and I really appreciate it. I met a friend here and we
did what the Basque call “chiquiteo”. I don’t know
the word in Spanish, in English we say “pub-crawl”,
so that was really a nice weekend. And the centre was
great, the students were brilliant and I think the course
went really really well. I actually saw the assessments
this morning, the feedback, which was really good, and
so my impression is very, very positive. Now these are
the teachers who come to the courses, so I assume they
are the more motivated ones and their level of English
is excellent and the camaraderie... Earlier in the
session, we talked about humanism. Well, humanism
is a kind of big word. It sounds a bit psychological but,
in fact, it seems to me that the teachers had a very
good relationship with each other in the group and
that’s humanism, it’s about the camaraderie or a
feeling, and like in England, everybody is overworked,
everybody is underpaid, but when you go into teaching
you take a vow of poverty. The only other thing I’d say
is that the one good thing about teaching is the
European Union now, where you can get a grant and
come to England, and that’s really great, for a couple
of weeks. So there is training available. And the other
thing is that I think, historically, you were educating
the already educated, you know, the people who were
motivated. And they were motivated to learn English.
Now we need to educate everybody in the foreign
language. If you are going to be a waiter, if you are
going to be a postman, whatever, you know, you’ll need
English to get a good job, so English is vital. So, going
back to humanism, we can’t rely as teachers on our
academic approach. We have to try a practical
approach for people who aren’t academic to learn
English well.
Q Thank you for letting me take a lot of your
time. Thank you very much.
PD Thank you and thanks for the coffee.
José Vidal
My Favourite Word
LOLLYPOP
One of the English words I like most is LOLLYPOP
because it sounds very enthusiastic, very funny.
It reminds me of when I was younger because my
grandfather used to buy one for me every day when
we went to the park.
I don´t have a sweet tooth but strawberry, cherry
and orange lollypops were my favourite sweets.
Another reason to like this word is that nowadays
there is a song with LOLLYPOP as a title, which
makes me feel happy and relaxed. It makes me smile,
and I think it is one of the most important things we
must do every day – smile.
Alicia Hernández 1ºA NA
SMILE
It is an amazing topic, isn´t it?
Languages are composed by thousands of words.
Some words are nice by nature, others just sound well
to people´s ears.
However, you can easily find some other words that
apparently are impossible to pronounce or those ones
that are actually awful.
In fact, it is really difficult to decide whether a word
is nice or awful and why… and it is almost impossible
to say which one is your favourite word, to say the least.
However, I think I have made my choice. As I see it,
I think the most beautiful word is “smile”. Not just
because of its meaning or because it seems to be related
to happiness, but it sounds very good to me and I think
that word makes people feel better… isn´t this nice?
Raquel Sagrado 1ºA NA Inglés
SCIENTIST
I love the word scientist because it sounds very
strange, very foreign and very English!! When you
pronounce it, it seems, you know a lot about the
language.
Although it is more difficult, I prefer the plural,
scientists, which sounds strong. I think I like it too
because I study Chemistry and I´d like to become one
of them.
Raquel Pérez del Valle 1ºA NA Inglés
FUTURE
I think my favourite English word is “FUTURE”.
I like it for two reasons:
- First of all, because of its sound. When a person
pronounces it, the word sounds in a special way.
- Secondly, because of the meaning. I think it is a
positive word, and I think people can have very
beautiful dreams thinking about this word.
Carmen Riesco Martín 1ºA NA Inglés