Tuesday, February 21, 2012

BBC News video: How did this man learn 11 languages?

How do you become fluent in 11 languages?


BBC News UK, 21 February 2012 (Click on the image to watch the video)

Twenty-year-old Alex Rawlings has won a national competition to find the UK's most multi-lingual student. 
The Oxford University undergraduate can currently speak 11 languages - English, Greek, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Afrikaans, French, Hebrew, Catalan and Italian. (Read more...)

Read a relevant article on BBC News Magazine: The Cult of the Hyperpolyglot

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Reuters video: Robot sings, dances and helps with homework

The upgraded NAO (pronounced: 'Now') robot, created by French company Aldebaran Robotics, can sing, dance, take photographs and communicate in nine languages, making it one of the smartest personal automatons around. The company's business plan is based on the belief that in years to come there will be a robot in every home. Jim Drury reports.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Young Greeks and the Debt Crisis

I´ve used this worksheet as the basis for a class discussion about my students´ growing concerns regarding their prospects for employment after school or university. The worksheet contains four tasks. As a pre-reading activity the students discuss a few questions about unemployment. Then they scan the article and fill in the missing information in a table. After reading the article in more detail they answer some comprehension questions. Finally, they solve a crossword puzzle to practice some vocabulary from the text.


Download: http://www.scribd.com/doc/80239211/Young-Greeks-and-the-Debt-Crisis