Christmas Idioms

Party

Christmas Idiom

Gambling

GAMBLING

·                Do you play the lottery?

·                What kind of lottery do you play?

·                Do you play football pools?

·                Do you play slot machines?

·                How many forms of gambling can you think of?

·                What percentage of people gamble?

·             What do you think is the largest amount of money that people may lose when they gamble?

·                Do you bet? How often? What's the biggest bet you’ve ever placed?

·          Apart from the obvious financial problem what other consequences can occur as a result of excessive gambling?

 ·              Who suffers the most from a gambling problem?

·                Apart from the obvious reason of winning money, why do people gamble?

·                Why is gambling addictive?

·            Do you think it is ok to put money in machines for prizes at amusement arcades?

·                Can you think of any techniques that may help an addicted gambler quit?

·                Should some forms of gambling be banned?

·                Does the national lottery encourage gambling?

Tongue Twister

Playing cards

The four suits of a deck of cards

Cultural history of card suits:

♣ Clubs
♦ Diamonds
♥ Hearts
♠ Spades

If you count up the numerical value of a whole pack of cards – reckoning on 11 for a jack, 12 for a queen and 13 for a king – you reach 364, which with the addition of one for the joker makes 365, the number of days in the year. The four suits can also be read as symbols of society and human energy: clubs representing both the peasantry and achievement through work; diamonds, the merchant class and the excitement of wealth creation; hearts, the clergy and the struggle to achieve inner joy; spades, the warrior class institutionalised into the nobility and the fractious problems of life.
The pack of cards came to Europe sometime in the 14th century, imported by Italian merchants who discovered their use during trading missions to the cosmopolitan cities of Mameluke Egypt. The symbols they imported – swords, batons (or wands), cups, and coins (or rings) – are still used in Spain, Greece, Portugal and Italy. The modern four suits seem to have evolved in France, specifically Paris and Rouen, in the late-15th century and were quickly taken up by the English. The French also added the concept of the Queen, for initially the court cards were based on the sequence of king, cavalier and servant – or, as the original Mameluke Egyptians had it, malik (king), naib malik (viceroy) and thaim naib (deputy). The triumph of the ace was another French innovation, traditionally added after the revolution in honour of the rabble toppling the king.
The Egyptians themselves seem to have developed the pack of cards from China, where numerically printed sheets grouped into four divisions can be traced back to the concubines of the Tang dynasty (618–907).

Source:    The Guardian

Games and toys

Sport Idiom

Rubrics for the certificate test 2019

The multiligualism service, which is part of the Consejeria de eduación, ciencia y deporte, provided us with the  rubrics that were used  to assess the final certificate test last course. These are the documents that we will be using until we are given the updated version:

Written production and coproduction.

Oral production and coproduction.

Written and oral mediation

Sport Collocations

Here, you will find a pdf document with useful collocations related to sports and sporting events.

Click here to download the document.