The Olympic Games London 2012

BY AMORELA, BRENDA AND NICO S. 

The build up to the 2012 London Olympics provides an excellent hook to engage students all round the world in learning about Britain.

The 2012 Summer Olympic Games will be held in London from 27 July to 12 August 2012. London hosted the Olympic games twice, in 1908 and 1948. The organizers expect that 205 nations will take part in 300 events at the Olympic Games in 2012.

The 26 Olympic sports at London 2012 will be:

* Aquatics

* Archery

* Athletics

* Badminton

* Basketball

* Boxing

* Canoe and Kayak

* Cycling

* Equestrian

* Fencing

* Football

* Gymnastics

* Handball

* Hockey

* Judo

* Modern Pentathlon

* Rowing

* Sailing

* Shooting

* Table Tennis

* Taekwondo

* Tennis

* Triathlon

* Volleyball

* Weightlifting

* Wrestling

The above 26 sports of the London Olympics 2012 will take place in 28 venues. A large majority of the 2012 Olympic will be held in the Old Park in Stratford in East London. Events will also be held in other venues across London and the UK (England, Scotland and Wales).

Symbols

The Rings

The Olympic Rings are five interlocking rings that stand for the five original continents, (Africa, America, Asia, Australia, and Europe) and the athletes from around the world.

The colours of the rings are blue, yellow, black, green, and red. They were chosen because at least one of these colours is found in the flag of every nation.

The Flag

On the Olympic flag, the rings appear on a white background.

At the Olympic Games, the flag is brought into the stadium during the opening ceremony. After its arrival, the flag is hoisted up the flagpole. It must fly in the stadium during the Olympic Games. When the flag is lowered at the closing ceremony, it signals the end of the Games.

Motto

The motto of th Olympic Games is "Swifter, Higher, Stronger". These three words encourage the athlete to give his or her best during competition, and to view this effort as a victory in itself.

The Flame

The Olympic flame is one of the best-known features of the Games.

From the moment the flame is lit to the moment it goes out, a very precise ritual is laid down:

* The lighting: In memory of the Olympic Games’ origins, the flame is lit in Olympia, Greece, some months before the opening of the Games. The Olympic flame can only be lit by the sun’s rays.

* The relay route: The torch is carried by relay from Olympia to the host city of the Games.

* Arrival at the stadium: The day of the opening of the Games, the flame enters the stadium. With the lighting of the cauldron by the last relay runner, the flame is transferred from the torch to the place where it will continue to burn for the entire length of the Games. The flame is extinguished on the final day of the Games at the closing ceremony.

London Calling. Official Song Olympic Games 2012

Solve the following Activity.


Music in the English Classroom!!!!!
by Nicolás C, Emilse and Sofía. 

Folk music in England has been preserved and transmitted orally, through print and later through recordings. English folk music has produced or contributed to several important musical genres, including sea shanties and dance music. It can be seen as having distinct regional and local variations in content and style. Cultural interchange and processes of migration mean that English folk music, has particularly interacted with the music of Scotland, Ireland and Wales. It has also interacted with other musical traditions, particularly classical and rock music, influencing musical styles and producing musical fusions, such as electric folk, folk punk and folk metal. There remains a flourishing sub-culture of English folk music, which continues to influence other genres and occasionally to gain mainstream attention.
Anglo Saxons music
The harp played a regular role in the entertainment of the upper class. For the uneducated lower class, churchyard carol dancing and singing on feast days.
There is some evidence that poets recite heroic ballads and histories while accompanying themselves with a harp or other stringed instrument.
Music occupied a unique position for the Anglo Saxon – it was both an entertainment, and a danger, a tool, and a potential weapon. Musicians were both valued and mistrusted for their skills. Musicians were expected to juggle, sing, play several instruments, and recite poetry, and perhaps display more than one of these skills at a time. The educated were taught the philosophy of music. Through the practice of their science, musicians could cure melancholy, or transport the listener beyond the realm of reason.
English Folk music - The Child Ballads are a collection of 305 ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, collected by Francis James Child in the late nineteenth century. The collection was published as The English and Scottish Popular Ballads between 1882 and 1898. - Street cries are the short lyrical calls of merchants hawking their products and services in open-air markets. Many of these street cries were cataloged in large collections or incorporated into larger musical works, preserving them from oblivion.
British music through the decades
Throughout the decades, Britain has been driven by an unwavering passion for music.
Britain’s contribution to popular music over the years has been phenomenal. The musical styles of each decade have not died, but have inspired the developments in subsequent generations. British music past and present is loved around the world.

60´s The Beatles arrived. With their catchy melodies and strong personalities .The Beatlemania swept into other countries and soon Britain was considered to be the centre of the music world. They continued to dominate the decade, becoming the most influential band of all time. The legendary rock group, The Rolling Stones was also a leading member of the British Invasion. They were a heavier alternative to The Beatles, and by 1966 had become one of the most experimental and trendy rock groups around. As with The Beatles, they had a huge following and many hits.
There was almost a rivalry between these two great bands. The Beatles were seen as a nice, clean-cut bunch whereas the Rolling Stones were “naughty”. (Although no doubt The Beatles weren’t quite as well-behaved as they seemed…)
70´s
Also remembered as “the decade that taste forgot”, the 1970’s brought with it glam, glitter and stadium rock as well as punk, soul and dance music.
In 1971 The Beatles confirmed the hearsay that they were separating.
The first big new sound of the decade was “Glam Rock”, with their platform boots, sequins, nail varnish and colorful hair. Also in this decade, Elton John had his first top ten hit with “Your Song”. The great rock band, Queen emerged in the 1970’s and proceeded to have a number of hits.
Punk-rock exploded across Britain towards the late 70’s. The Punk style of Mohicans, bondage clothes, safety pins, piercings, bovver boots and sneering attitude was a perfect front for their rebellion.
Roxy Music, was a wildly influential and experimental rock group at this time. They were dressed in bizarre, stylish costumes, their art-rock. Lifted the trend and was to influence the start of the 1980’s.
80´s
Musical styles changed fast in this decade. One of the most significant of these was the birth the New Romantics. With bold make-up, sculpted hair, pirate costumes, kilts and leather jackets with scarves, these bands had their own fantasy-driven style.
Electropop was a genre of synthesized pop music which thrived during the early 80’s. Her a robotic, electronic sound with catchy melodies which has continued to influence artists ever since.
Wham! had many hits in the 1980’s, proving hugely popular with the teenage market.
90´s
The 1990’s brought with it the phenomenon of “Britpop”. Crucial to Britpop were the melodies and catchy choruses, all having a distinctly “British” taste.
In stark contrast to the Britpop style came the success in this era of British boy bands. Take That were the most successful boy band of the 1990’s. Girl bands had their moments too, The Spice Girls.
2000´s
The beginning of the 21st Century has so far seen music become more fragmented.
There has been a massive growth in manufactured pop with boy-bands.
Dance conformists argued that rock had been killed for good. However, this has proved to be far from the case, with bands Coldplay.
The world continues to look at the UK for its evolving styles, talent and creativity.

"The Duchess and the jeweller" by Virginia Woolf.

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941): A Short Biography

In 1926 Virginia Woolf contributed an introduction toVictorian Photographs of Famous Men & Fair Women by Julia Margaret Cameron. This publication may be seen as a springboard from which to approach Woolf’s life: Virginia saw herself as descending from a distinctive male and female inheritance; Cameron was the famous Victorian photographer and Woolf’s great-aunt; Woolf’s friend Roger Fry also contributed an introduction and leads us to the Bloomsbury Group; and the book was published by the Hogarth Press which Virginia had started with her husband Leonard in 1917. Adeline Virginia Stephen was born on 25 January 1882 in London. Her father, Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), was a man of letters (and first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography) who came from a family distinguished for public service (part of the ‘intellectual aristocracy' of Victorian England). Her mother, Julia (1846-95), from whom Virginia inherited her looks, was the daughter and niece of the six beautiful Pattle sisters (Julia Margaret Cameron was the seventh: not beautiful but the only one remembered today). Both parents had been married before: her father to the daughter of the novelist, Thackeray, by whom he had a daughter Laura (1870-1945) who was intellectually backward; and her mother to a barrister, Herbert Duckworth (1833-70), by whom she had three children, George (1868-1934), Stella (1869-97), and Gerald (1870-1937). Julia and Leslie Stephen had four children: Vanessa (1879-1961), Thoby (1880-1906), Virginia (1882-1941), and Adrian (1883-1948). All eight children lived with the parents and a number of servants at 22 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington. Long summer holidays were spent at Talland House in St Ives, Cornwall, and St Ives played a large part in Virginia’s imagination. It was the setting for her novel To the Lighthouse, despite its ostensibly being placed on the Isle of Skye. London and/or St Ives provided the principal settings of most of her novels. In 1895 her mother died unexpectedly, and Virginia suffered her first mental breakdown. Her half-sister Stella took over the running of the household as well as coping with Leslie’s demands for sympathy and emotional support. Stella married Jack Hills in 1897, but she too died suddenly on her return from her honeymoon. The household burden then fell upon Vanessa. Virginia was allowed uncensored access to her father’s extensive library, and from an early age determined to be a writer. Her education was sketchy and she never went to school. Vanessa trained to become a painter. Their two brothers were sent to preparatory and public schools, and then to Cambridge. There Thoby made friends with Leonard Woolf, Clive Bell, Saxon Sydney-Turner, Lytton Strachey and Maynard Keynes. This was the nucleus of the Bloomsbury Group. Leslie Stephen died in 1904, and Virginia had a second breakdown. While she was sick, Vanessa arranged for the four siblings to move from 22 Hyde Park Gate to 46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury. At the end of the year Virginia started reviewing with a clerical paper called the Guardian; in 1905 she started reviewing in the Times Literary Supplementand continued writing for that journal for many years. Following a trip to Greece in 1906, Thoby died of typhoid and in 1907 Vanessa married Clive Bell. Thoby had started ‘Thursday evenings' for his friends to visit, and this kind of arrangement was continued after his death by Vanessa and then by Virginia and Adrian when they moved to 29 Fitzroy Square. In 1911 Virginia moved to 38 Brunswick Square. Leonard Woolf had joined the Ceylon Civil Service in 1904 and returned in 1911 on leave. He soon decided that he wanted to marry Virginia, and she eventually agreed. They were married in St Pancras Registry Office on 10 August 1912. They decided to earn money by writing and journalism. Since about 1908 Virginia had been writing her first novelThe Voyage Out (originally to be called Melymbrosia). It was finished by 1913 but, owing to another severe mental breakdown after her marriage, it was not published until 1915 by Duckworth & Co. (Gerald’s publishing house). The novel was fairly conventional in form. She then began writing her second novel Night and Day - if anything even more conventional - which was published in 1919, also by Duckworth. From 1911 Virginia had rented small houses near Lewes in Sussex, most notably Asheham House. Her sister Vanessa rented Charleston Farmhouse nearby from 1916 onwards. In 1919 the Woolfs bought Monks House in the village of Rodmell. This was a small weather-boarded house (now owned by the National Trust) which they used principally for summer holidays until they were bombed out of their flat in Mecklenburgh Square in 1940 when it became their home. In 1917 the Woolfs had bought a small hand printing-press in order to take up printing as a hobby and as therapy for Virginia. By now they were living in Richmond (Surrey) and the Hogarth Press was named after their house. Virginia wrote, printed and published a couple of experimental short stories, 'The Mark on the Wall' and 'Kew Gardens'. The Woolfs continued handprinting until 1932, but in the meantime they increasingly became publishers rather than printers. By about 1922 the Hogarth Press had become a business. From 1921 Virginia always published with the Press, except for a few limited editions. Nineteen-twenty-one saw Virginia’s first collection of short stories Monday or Tuesday, most of which were experimental in nature. In 1922 her first experimental novel, Jacob’s Room, appeared. In 1924 the Woolfs moved back to London, to 52 Tavistock Square. In 1925 Mrs. Dalloway was published, followed by To the Lighthouse in 1927, and The Waves in 1931. These three novels are generally considered to be her greatest claim to fame as a modernist writer. Her involvement with the aristocratic novelist and poet Vita Sackville-West led to Orlando (1928), a roman à clef inspired by Vita’s life and ancestors at Knole in Kent. Two talks to women’s colleges at Cambridge in 1928 led to A Room of One’s Own (1929), a discussion of women’s writing and its historical economic and social underpinning. From:

http://www.virginiawoolfsociety.co.uk/vw_res.biography.htm

Activity:
*Read, translate and share in class.

*Read the short story and analyse:
http://ciudadseva.com/textos/cuentos/ing/woolf/duquesa.htm
Write two paragraphs.
1° about the stream of consciousness technique.
2° animals in the story: elephant, hog, camel, horse.