Discussion Club Meeting 36: CITY LIFE VS QUIET LIFE

Is it worth living in a small town? Would you opt for the quiet life or pursuing the career in a megacity? Do you prefer busy noisy streets or charming cosy places?

We're going to discuss the video and our opinions.

English CEFR Level: B2—C1

Dates and time (Moscow time):

✨Saturday (28.10) 12.00—13.00
✨Monday (30.10) 20.00—21.00
✨Tuesday (31.10) 16.00—17.00

Price for the meeting: 500 roubles. You can pay on Boosty with a Russian or a foreign bank card or write me in private messages @Ad_Lib to pay to a Russian card.

After the payment you will get a Quizlet set based on the video, a vocabulary task and a Zoom link to our meeting. Please feel free to text me @Ad_lib if you have any questions, I’m always here for you 🙃

#discussionclub

➡️ ЧАСТАЯ ОШИБКА ⬅️

По-русски мы говорим “КАК это называется?”, но по-английски не говорят в этом случае how, а говорят what:

What do we call it?..

#mistake

📌 НЕДЕЛЬНЫЙ ДАЙДЖЕСТ

Предпраздничного настроения и интересного чтения:

👻 Неочевидное значение слова said
👻 Грамматики пост
👻 Полезное выражение without futher ado
👻 1-минутное видео о том, что не все замкнутые круги одинаково полезны
👻 Идиомы о городах с нашего разговорного клуба
👻 Слово reunion и моя фоточка с подругами
👻 Использование grow в значении become на примере одной знаменитой песни
👻 О том, почему мы встречаем повсюду только что изученные слова, хотя раньше их не замечали
👻Видео о тихой жизни и 10 слов C1+ уровня
👻 Частая ошибка what do you call it?
👻Информация о группах для уровней B1 — B2 и B2+ — C1
👻 Приглашение на Discussion Club этой недели

С наступающим! 🧙‍♀️

#дайджест

THIS IS HALLOWEEN
(ПОСТ ДЛЯ ПРЕПОДОВ)

Кстати, о празднике. Вот несколько материалов на Halloween-related тематику, которые скопились у меня за последние несколько лет (вдруг вы тоже готовитесь к урокам в последний момент):

Halloween for everyone:

🎃 Peppa Pig Halloween episode

🎃 Casper Halloween episode (more than 70 years old now!)

🎃 The Halloween Tree book by Ray Bradbury

🎃 This is Halloween song from Tim Burton's "The Nightmare Before Christmas"

Halloween for A1 — A2

👻 A video about traditions of the holiday by English Portal (4 minutes)

👻 A video about the history and tranditions by English Portal (3 minutes)

👻 A quiz about history and traditions of the holiday on Wordwall

👻 Halloween vocabulary matching on Wordwall

👻 A word-searching task on Wordwall

Halloween B1 — C1:

🦇 A quiz on Wordwall to recall something about Halloween and warm up

🦇 A short video (2 minutes) about some Halloween history by History. It is quite fast and challenging (for B2+)

🦇 A gap-fill task on Wordwall based on the video below

🦇 An article by History. It can be done as homework, read partially or set as jigsaw reading. Or ignored 🧙‍♀️

🦇 A video by Drunk History about the first Halloween celebrations in the USA and explanation how “traditional” parties appeared (6 minutes)

🦇 A video by Religion for Breakfast about the relationship between Christian church and the pagan holiday (8 minutes)

Samhain B1 — C1

🎃 An introductory quiz about Samhain traditions for those who hears about this holiday for the first time

🎃 My presentation with brief Samhain facts

🎃 An Irish legend about Stingy Jack (The Jack-o-lantern) by Mythology Unleashed

Dia de los Muertos B1 — C1

🕯 An unscrambling task on Wordwall to quickly get aquainted with the main traditions of the holiday

🕯 An overview of the holiday, a 3-minute video by National Geographic

🕯 My presentation about the main facts connected with the holiday

🕯 A very interesting longer video by Religion for Breakfast with many surprising facts (12 minutes), more suitable for C1 level and higher

🕯 An article on History

🕯 An idea for homework: Watch or re-watch Coco!

Dear colleagues, please feel free to share your own ideas for Halloween-related lessons in the comments🧙‍♀️

#lessonplans #holidays #halloween #diadelosmuertos #samhain

P.S. Что-нибудь интересное про праздники для не-преподов будет ближе к делу 🧙‍♀️

➡️ HELP OUT ⬅️

Фразовый глагол help out означает то же самое, что и просто help. Единственное различие — help out может только человек, но не предмет. Также help out — более разговорное, неформальное выражение, чем просто help.

✨Blair helps us out at the store when we’re busy.
✨We can help out by giving money to the Red Cross.
✨Her parents helped (her) out with a £500 loan.
✨Thanks for helping me out with that report - you saved my life!
✨They promised that they would help out.
✨Paul helped his elderly neighbour out by clearing snow from her path.
✨In his closing remarks, the chairman thanked everyone who had helped out.

#vocabulary

В этом месяце мы с группами B1-B2 брали тему Fixed / Growth Midset, а уважаемый коллега и подписчик Сергей Балашов поделился крутым подкастом на эту тему: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQDOU3hPci0&ab_channel=AndrewHuberman

Подкаст, правда, длинный, но я всё-таки его послушала и всем советую 😊

Было сложно выбрать полезную лексику из полуторачасового видео, но вот 10 повторяющихся слов и выражений:

✨performance — how well a person, machine, etc. does a piece of work or an activity (производительность, эффективность):
Growth mindset is the process of distancing your identity from performance and rather attaching your identity, and your efforts, and your sense of motivation to effort itself and to the process of enjoying learning and getting better at learning anything.

✨a lifespan — the length of time for which a person, animal, or thing exists (продолжительность жизни; срок службы):
Brain change can occur throughout the entire lifespan.

✨room for improvement — a possibility or hope that someone or something will improve (возможности для совершествования)

✨to bombard someone with something — to direct so many things at someone, especially to ask them so many questions, that they find it difficult to deal with them (атаковать вопросами, информацией и т. д.):
We are constantly being bombarded with information from the outside world.

✨to enhance — to improve the quality, amount, or strength of something (повысить, усилить, улучшить):
There's a very simple set of tools of narratives that you can tell yourself that can greatly enhance your ability to learn.

✨to implement — to start using a plan or system (реализовать, осуществлять, выполнять):
Just understanding what growth mindset is and a bit of understanding of how to implement it turns out to be necessary but not sufficient.

✨to undermine — to make someone less confident, less powerful, or less likely to succeed, or to make something weaker, often gradually (подрывать, ослаблять):
Labels of intelligence, labels of identity undermine performance.

✨a detrimental effect — causing harm or damage (пагубное влияние, вредное воздействие, негативный эффект):
If we receive those labels of being a high performer, smart,
talented, etc. either before or after a given task, or game, or exam, it still has a detrimental effect in both cases.

✨an endeavour — an attempt to do something (начинание, стремление, попытка, усилие):
If you reward effort after the effort, you also set the mind, the brain of that child or adult up to provide more effort to future endeavors.

✨persistence — the quality to do or continue doing something in a determined way (настойчивость):
The thing that we all really can control it's our level of persistence and our level of effort.

#vocabulary #material

А если эта тема для вас новая, то есть короткое вводное видео (тоже с разбором полезных слов).

Yourself vs by yourself

Yourself означает просто "себя": cut yourself, control yourself.

(All) by yourself имеет значение "самостоятельно" или "в одиночестве" (alone or without help from anyone else):
✨I'm amazed you managed to move those boxes all by yourself.
✨Do you like being by yourself sometimes or do you get lonely?
✨Okay, you're probably not going to get through five bottles of wine by yourself.

#vs

➡️DÍA DE MUERTOS⬅️

Día de (los) Muertos, или Day of the Dead, — это традиционный праздник коренных народов Мексики, потомков племен майя и ацтеки.

Праздник известен большинству из нас по популярному анимационному фильму Coco ("Тайна Коко", 2017), чуть менее популярному фильму Бондианы Spectrum ("Спектр", 2015) и гораздо менее популярному The book of Life ("Книга жизни", 2014), хотя некоторые познакомились с этой индейской традицией еще в 1998 году с выходом игры Grim Fandango.

В 2008 году праздник был внесен в список нематериального наследия ЮНЕСКО, однако широкие празднования не проводились городским населением до того, как на праздник обратил внимание кинематограф. Интересно, что парад в Мехико появился сначала в "Спектре", а потом в реальной жизни.

Дата праздника и некоторые традиции тесно связаны не только с культом богини смерти Миктлансиуатль, но и с празднованием Хэллоуина и Дня всех святых, а также некоторыми испанскими традициями, музыкой и танцами.

Подробности об истории и традициях праздника можно узнать из этого видео, очень рекомендую!

#holidays #diademuertos

➡️SPAN ⬅️

the period of time that something exists or happens:

attention/concentration span:
✨He has a short attention/concentration span.
✨You have an attention span of 15 seconds.
✨The attention span of preschool children is short.

life span (продолжительность жизни, срок службы):
✨No other form of exercise that researchers looked at showed comparable impacts on life span.
✨The life span of the average worker bee is 6 weeks.
✨Before the biblical flood, the average life span of man was over 900 years.
✨The average life span of fuel bladders in harsh conditions is six months to one year.

over a span of (в течение):

✨Over a span of just three years, the new government has transformed the country's economic prospects.
✨The conversation takes place over a span of four days in the year 1507.
✨That's only based on 14 observations made over a span of 5 days.

#vocabulary

What your home says about you?

Really recommend you a video by the School of Life! It presents, I think, quite an original persective on the idea of a home.

Here are 10 advanced words from the video:

✨to engage — to interest someone in something and keep them thinking about it (вовлекать).
One of the most important and meaningful activities we are ever engaged in is the creation of a home.

✨to assemble (furniture) — to put (furniture) together (собирать мебель).
A group of scientists in Singapore built a robot that can put together Ikea furniture.

✨dedication — the willingness to give a lot of time and energy to something because it is important (преданность делу).
Over a number of years, typically with a lot of thought and considerable dedication, we assemble furniture, crockery, pictures, rugs, cushions, vases, sideboards, taps, door handles and so on.

✨sumptuous — impressive in a way that seems expensive (роскошный).
Our homes will not necessarily be the most attractive or sumptuous environments we could spend time in.

✨apt — suitable or right for a particular situation (подходящий, уместный.
It wasn’t a large home, but it was an exceptionally apt and beautiful one.

✨to convey — to express a thought, feeling, or idea so that it is understood by other people (доносить, передавать).
Creating a home is frequently such a demanding process because it requires us to find our way to objects that can correctly convey our identities.

✨eloquent — giving a clear, strong message (выразительный, красноречивый).

We get fussy because objects are, in their own way, all hugely eloquent.

✨consoling — making or intended to make someone feel better when they are sad or disappointed (утешающий, успокаивающий)
The smallest things in our homes whisper in our ears, they offer us encouragement, reminders, consoling thoughts, warnings or correctives, as we go about making breakfast or do the accounts in the evening.

✨tangible — real and not imaginary; able to be shown, touched, or experienced (ощутимый, материальный, реальный, осязаемый).
✨to pin down (something) — to discover the exact details about something (определить, установить).
We need something more tangible, material and sensuous to pin down the diverse and intermittent aspects of our identities.

#vocabulary #material

Приходите на встречу разговорного клуба! Пообщаемся в дружеской и комфортной атмосфере, поделимся мыслями и послушаем разные мнения, выучим новые слова и идиомы. У нас всегда весело 🙃

Hа этой неделе обсуждаем, что для нас значит дом.

Discussion Club Meeting 37: HOME

Do you care a lot about your home or are you a nomad? Do you prefer minimalism or a plenty of nice things? What can your home tell about your personality?

We're going to discuss the video and our opinions.

English CEFR Level: B2—C1

Dates and time (Moscow time):

✨Saturday (04.10) 12.00—13.00
✨Monday (06.10) 20.00—21.00
✨Tuesday (07.10) 16.00—17.00

Price for the meeting: 500 roubles. You can pay on Boosty with a Russian or a foreign bank card or write me in private messages @Ad_Lib to pay to a Russian card.

After the payment you will get a Quizlet set based on the video, a vocabulary task and a Zoom link to our meeting. Please feel free to text me @Ad_lib if you have any questions, I’m always here for you 🙃

#discussionclub