LEVEL: C1.2
GROUPS: A, B, C
DATE: March
16th / 17th:
CHECKING HOMEWORK:
Today is the deadline to hand in the news article
about something that happened in your town or city recently. Send it in an
attached document to this address: aromeroa@edu.jccm.es It must be a word document. Please respect
the deadline and the number of words (180-190).
You were told to watch a video at home
Then, you should answer several questions. This is the
answer key for the questions suggested:
What examples of circular reporting does
the speaker mention?
- a
pseudoscientific paper published in 1998 arguing that routine vaccination of
children causes autism which inspired an entire anti-vaccination movement
- a joke article in
the reputable British Medical Journal entitled "Energy Expenditure in
Adolescents
Playing New
Generation Computer Games"
How do wikis contribute to circular
reporting?
- As more writers
come to rely on such pages for quick information, an unverified fact in a wiki
page can make its way into a published article that may later be added as a
citation for the very same wiki information, making it much harder to debunk.
What should we do to avoid circular
reporting according to the video?
- Avoiding
sensationalist media, searching for criticisms of suspicious information, and
tracing the original source of a report can help slow down a lie, giving the
truth more time to put on its shoes.
Have you seen people sharing fake news on
social media pages? What types of behaviors did you notice when it happened? Own answer
What impact do you think fake news has had
on you, or on people in your life? Own answer
What impact do you think fake news sites
have on elections? Own answer
ORAL PRESENTATIONS:
Those
of you who were scheduled for today, please record a track (preferably on MP4)
and upload it on www.padlet.com. Remember that you have the
link for your group in my blog.
COLLOCATIONS RELATED TO THE PRESENT
SITUATION:
As Coronavirus
(officially called COVID-19) continues to dominate the news, I thought it might
be useful to look at some of the language we use to talk about it. There are
lots of collocations in this topic, most of which can be applied to other
diseases too.
The first is that
people contract a virus (= get it). When a disease passes very easily from
one person to another, as this one does, we say that it is extremely infectious or highly
contagious. People that have it and may pass it to others are
known as carriers. Some people seem to be more infectious (=
pass on the disease more) than others, and these people are known as super-spreaders.
The first person to
get a new disease is known as patient
zero. When a patient has signs that they are ill, we say that
they show/display
symptoms, in this case a fever (= high
temperature), cough and respiratory difficulty (= problems with breathing). The period between
catching the illness and showing symptoms is the incubation period.
We use the word cases to refer to people
who have a disease, e.g. There
are 9,191 cases of COVID-19 in Spain. When doctors have done tests
and are sure that people have it, we call them confirmed or diagnosed cases. If doctors find that someone has the disease, we say
that they test positive for it. If there is an unusually high number, we say
that there is a spike in cases, whereas if numbers seem to have reached their
highest level and are now falling, with no expectation that they will rise
again, we say that they have peaked.
We often talk about
the mortality rate of a disease to say what proportion of people die
from it. The death toll is the number of people who have died. The start of a
disease is called the outbreak. COVID-19 has been classified as a pandemic (= a disease that has spread all over the world).
Governments have to
decide how to control/contain the spread of the virus. Towns and cities may be put/placed on/in lockdown so that nobody can enter or leave them, countries may
close their borders (= stop letting people from other countries in) and
airlines sometimes suspend flights (= stop flying) to certain places.
People who may have
the disease are often put/placed
in quarantine (= made to stay somewhere away from other people).
Passengers returning from an area with Coronavirus may be asked to self-quarantine (= stay away from other people voluntarily). Despite
the fact that most experts don’t think they are effective, some countries have
seen huge queues for face masks (= covers for your mouth and nose). Meanwhile, scientists are racing to
develop a vaccine (= make medicine that will stop people getting the
virus).
Now, match the
words/expression in A and the word/expression in B to form coherent
collocations in English:
A
|
B
|
1.
contract
|
a)
In cases
|
2.
display
|
b)
In lockdown / in quarantine
|
3.
respiratory
|
c)
masks
|
4.
Incubation
|
d)
A vaccine
|
5.
Confirmed/diagnosed
|
e)
difficulty
|
6.
A spike
|
f)
toll
|
7.
death
|
g)
A virus
|
8.
placed
|
h)
symptoms
|
9.
face
|
i)
cases
|
10. Develop
|
j)
period
|
With this activity, I am not trying to take the
current situation lightly. I just simply want you to understand the
collocations in case you are checking newspapers in English in order to get
informed.
UNIT 6: BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS
According to
our pacing guide, we´re going to be dealing with this topic from today, March
16th/17th to April 1st / 2nd (a
total of 6 classes). I recommend that you follow the activities that I will be
suggesting here.
The aims of
this unit are:
·
Talking about how businesses are doing
·
Discussing how to run a company
·
Dealing with banking, economics and crimes related to money
·
Being able to take part in a professional meeting in English
·
Taking the minutes in a meeting
·
Making small talk
Please start on pages 122-123. Try to guess what’s
going on.
Answer: That photo shows an auction at
Sotheby’s. There are a number of paintings on show. People in the audience are
making bids.
They’re also
asking questions about memorabilia. What’s memorabilia?
Answer:
objects that are collected because they are connected with a person or event that is thought to be very interesting.
Suggestion:
record yourself answering task 2: Would
you invest in these things if you had the money?
On this
website you can write a text and listen to it if you aren’t sure about your
pronunciation and intonation. https://tophonetics.com/
Do the same
thing with the questions in activity 1, page 124.
Possible answer: Good things about running a business
include being your own boss, being able to make your own plans and fulfill your
own dreams, the chance to become rich if you are successful or the sense of
achievement among others.
Finally, do the vocabulary
activity on page 124. You need to decide if the words in Italics have the same
meaning or a different meaning in that context. If it’s different, explain
why. I’ll give you the answer to this as
well as the answer to the matching halves activity about Coronavirus on my next
post.
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