Sister Mary Dracula

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October 31st is Halloween. Where does Halloween come from? The Celts lived in Britain, Ireland and parts of France over 2,000 years ago, and October 31st was the end of their year. The Celts believed that ghosts came back to earth on this day. Today many people around the world celebrate this old festival – but today people usually have parties, dress up, and tell spooky stories about witches, skeletons, bats and ghosts.

Sister Mary Dracula was created in the summer of 2001 and was selected for the San Diego Comic Con Independent Film Festival in 2004.

Watch this animation and have some Halloween fun! BOOOOO!!!

The Speech Accent Archive

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We were talking about accents in class. As you know, English is spoken by a large number of people around the world, so accents might be difficult to understand sometimes.

Now you can listen to native people around the globe reading the same text so that you can compare their accents . You can also go to the link to the atlas and click on the flag to listen to different varieties of English. I hope you find it useful.

National Stereotypes : What are the Americans like?

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In Unit 2A we are going to talk about national stereotypes. In the video below, people are asked to give their opinion about the Americans. Write the names of the people interviewed on a piece of paper, watch the first video as many times as necessary and write down the adjectives you hear. When you finish the exercise, watch the second video with subtitles to check your answers.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/v8zUCRBJMMs" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/vR_yYTGBnKU" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Secrets of the Psychics

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Since we are going to deal with this topic, I am posting a very interesting documentary presented by James Randi, a master magician who uncovers the secrets about psychics. After you watch the video, I would like to know your opinion about psychics :

Do you believe they have special powers? Can they be able to move objects at will, read a person’s thoughts, or even cure physical illnesses with the power of the mind? Have you ever been to a psychic? Is psychics power real or fake?

This documentary is divided into 6 parts. This is the first part of the programme but you can watch the following episodes on YouTube if you want to know more about Randi’s investigations.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/dTXmo4_LR4w" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Talking to Alice

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ALICE is an acronym standing for ‘ Artificial Linguistic Computer Entity’. It is a natural language chatbot that relies on artificial intelligence for human interaction and a very useful tool to practise questions in English.

You can try a free version and have a chat with a bot . Click here and find out as much as possible about ALICE.

English Mania

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Hello everybody,

I hope you all had a wonderful summer and are coming back with renewed energy for the new academic year.

I will periodically post items of interest and new activities to help you improve your language skills, so whatever your level of English, I encourage you to keep working and visiting the blog.

More and more people are studying English every year. Is it a virus? Is it a mania? Why do Chinese people study English?

Watch the video and choose the correct answer.
English Mania