Category Archives: Reading Project

About Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby is a British writer, novelist, screenwriter, and essayist. He is also a music and literary critic as well as songwriter. As a philanthropist he set up a kids literacy project called “Ministry of Stories” aimed at helping children and young adults develop writing skills and to help teachers inspire their students to write.

PRE-WATCHING – Check the meaning of these words.

tentpole / treatment / ministry / debt / charity / background / to grant / literacy / dystopian

I. You’re going to listen to Nick Hornby talk about different topics. In this first clip he talks about tips to come up with ideas for writing. Listen and answer the questions.

  1. Does Nick Hornby plan his stories? ___________________________________________________________
  2. What do Nick Hornby and Woody Allen share about how to get ideas for writing? ____________________________________________________
  1. When he starts to write, what does he take as a starting point? ________________________ or ________________________________
  2. What is the structure he has when he starts writing a novel? A _____________,a ___________________ in the middle and a kind of _______________.
  3. Why can’t his brother-in-law, Robert Harris, use the same strategy when plotting?____________________________________________________
  4. As a screenwriter, why did he think he was not a professional writer? ___________________________________________________________
  5. Why doesn’t he like treatments?__________________________________________________
  6. Does he revise his texts a lot? __________ How many drafts does he write? ____________________________________

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Jane Austen’s World & Literature

Watch the following video about Jane Austen and answer the questions. You can stop and watch the video as many times as you need.

  1. What period is described in Jane Austen’s novels?

2. What did she want to achieve through her novels?

3. What was her father’s job? Were they rich?

4. Did she get married?

5. How many novels did she write? Which ones do you know?

6. Why are Elizabeth and Darcy in Pride and Prejudice good for one another? 

7. What are the lenses Jane Austen tries to exchange in Mansfield Park?

8. Does Jane Austen talk about money in her novels? What are the two important aspects of money she deals with?

9. What is Emma’s flaw in Jane Austen’s novel? 

10. What is the characteristic in Jane Austen’s novels that makes it unique and has disappeared from current literature?

 

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Reader: “The stranger”

This is the book you have to read for February 14th.

I hope you enjoy it!

INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE DOSSIER

(it must be handwritten in WHITE PAPER and STAPLED on the top left corner)

FRONT PAGE: title, author, date & your complete name

SECTION A: VOCABULARY

  1. Write all the new words for you with the translation in Catalan and the sentence where they appear in the text.
  2. Classify the words according to the chapters, so write the 15 titles of the chapters to introduce the lists of words.

SECTION B: POINTS FOR UNDERSTANDING (pages 57-62)

  1. Copy questions.
  2. Write complete answers to the questions. Remember to use the same verb tenses.

SECTION C: EXERCISES (pages 63-68)

  1. Do the exercises about the story. 
  2. Only write the answers.

SECTION D: PERSONAL OPINION

Write a paragraph (50 words) giving your opinion about the book. Give solid arguments.

[Thanks to Montse Sanz]
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Three short stories about escape (Step 1)

Permission to leave and other stories is a book by Steve Buckledee. Do you know who he is?

I. Look on the Internet for information about him and answer these questions:

  • Where is he from?
  • Where does he live? 
  • What is his job?

II. Permission to leave and other stories is a book with three stories about escape. Read the title of the stories and discuss what they can be about.

STORY 1. “Permission to leave”

STORY 2. “Can Helen escape?”

STORY 3. “Raimundo Sánchez – Superstar”

III. We are going to divide the class in groups of 3. Each group is going to read a story and is going to fill in My story report.

GROUP 1. Permission to leave.

GROUP 2. Can Helen escape?

GROUP 3. Raimundo Sánchez – Superstar.

 

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The Inuit People

Read the following text and do the quiz below: 

The Inuit people live in the far northern areas of Alaska, Canada, Siberia, and Greenland. They originally made their home along the Alaskan coast, but migrated to other areas. Everything about the lives of the Inuit is influenced by the cold tundra climate in which they live.

An Inuit family outside their home
An Inuit family

What kind of homes did they live in?

The typical materials for making homes such as wood and mud are hard to find in the frozen tundra of the Arctic. The Inuit learned to make warm homes out of snow and ice for the winter. During the summer they would make homes from animal skin stretched over a frame made from driftwood or whalebones. The Inuit word for home is “igloo”.

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The mystery of Tutankhamun’s death

Watch the following video about the mystery of Tut’s death and do the exercises:

Write true or false:

(until 1:42)
T/F
  1. Tut was an icon of the Egyptian power.
 2. Until the discovery of his tomb Tut was well known in Egypt.
 3. The walls of his tomb were full of information about his life.
 4. Nobody knows why he died.
 5. There are two possible reasons to explain his death.
 6. One reason can be that he was hurt during a combat.
 7. He fractured his leg while doing some sport.
 8. He was murdered with a gun shot.

Choose the correct option:

(from 1:42 til the end)
1. The scanner generates more than________ images.
  1. 500
  2. 1.500
  3. 50.000
2. The hole in the head means that maybe he was ________.
  1. killed
  2. ill when he was little
  3. hit on the head accidentally
3. The Egyptians think that the hole in the head was made by __________
  1. his family
  2. the embalmers
  3. the gravedigger
4. When they keep on analysing Tut’s body they see a fracture in __________
  1. his foot
  2. his leg
  3. his knee
5. The mystery of Tut’s death is solved after __________.
  1. 13.000 years
  2. 3.000 years
  3. 1.000 years

Worksheet to print

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Shakespeare’s biography

Source: de.wikipedia.org

Read the following TEXT and answer the questions:

1. When and where was William Shakespeare born?

2. How many brothers and sisters had he got? Did he go to school?

3. How old was he when he married Ann Hathaway?

4. What did he do at the theatre?

5. Why did the company he was playing at change its name?

6. Did he have a good life?

 

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