Facebook – Friend or Foe? ( Extraclass work 9-B)

Facebook is undoubtedly the best-known social networking website at the moment. Millions of people worldwide regularly use it to meet their friends online. They send messages, upload private pictures and tell their friends what they feel like via mood messages. However, more and more journalists and media experts are warning of the dangers of Facebook. Does Facebook improve our lives or is it the new version of “Big Brother”?

Despite all the criticism, using Facebook certainly has many advantages. Firstly, it is a free website. That means that nobody has to pay for using it and everybody can join it. The terms of use guarantee this free service. Compared to other websites, Facebook is more trustable and safer, because it is one of the most famous social networking website.

Secondly, Facebook enables you to stay in contact with other people. Users can quickly send messages, exchange an unlimited amount of pictures and can easily connect to people they have not seen for a long time. In addition to that, it does not matter if these people live far away or just around the corner. Everybody can be contacted within a few seconds.

Thirdly, everybody can decide individually how much he or she wants to tell about him or herself. By adjusting the privacy settings, users can decide who can read which details about themselves.
These are certainly highly positive sides about Facebook. However, using Facebook also has disadvantages. Firstly, its services are not as free as they seem to be. On the one hand, people don’t have to pay with money, as was stated above. But on the other hand, they pay with their personal data. All data are stored and used by Facebook for advertising. Every user gets to see the most suitable advertisements for him or her, when he or she opens the website. Furthermore, no one knows if the users’ data are really safe. It is not an Austrian or even European website. Consequently, there is no guarantee that personal data are not sold. No one knows who can actually see the information about him or herself.

Secondly, many people get lost in their virtual reality. Instead of meeting their friends in person, they sit in front of their computers. Using websites like Facebook is highly addictive. Thus many users are spending more and more time online and consequently lose their real life contacts. I think it is much better to meet up with your friends outside and talk with them than to chat via the Internet.

Above all, there is no guarantee that someone is the person he or she pretends to be. Everybody can sign up and take up any identity he or she wants to have. Thus it can be a dangerous place especially for younger users who often forget that they should not trust everybody.

All things considered, it has to be said that every Facebook user should be aware of its dangers. Although it has many advantages, such as easy and quick communication, it should be used with care and a certain amount of healthy suspicion. In my opinion it is not as safe as everybody says and unfortunately many people seem to forget that.

1) Write the topic sentence of each paragraph.

2) What are 3 advantages and 3 disadvantages of Facebook?

3) Write 2 paragraphs expressing your opinion about Facebook

Practice for giving directions

Directions

Effects of Smoking

My adventures in Limon

It’s a Carnaval, not Carnival

No, you are not reading it wrong. In Limón, Costa Rica it is spelled “Carnaval”, not Carnival like the famous Brazil Carnival. I had the opportunityto visit Limón, Costa Rica for their annual Carnaval celebration a couple years back. It was a colorfulevent that lasted two weeks long. It is a huge celebration that combines Costa Rican culture with Caribbean culture.

Christopher Columbus landed in Puerto Limón in 1502 during his exploration of the new year. Every year the people of Limón celebrate the arrival of Columbus to their port during their “Día de las Culturas” carnaval. I was also told by the local Ticos (Costa Ricanpeople) that Día de las Culturas is also referred to as “Día de las Raíces”. Día de las Culturas translates to Day of the Cultures, while Día de las raíces translates to day of the races. What both of the phrases implies is that the day Columbus and his men step foot onto Costa Rica via the Puerto Limón (Port of Limón), the Tico race was born, with the combination of cultures.

Limón is a town mainly inhibited by a population whose ancestors were once brought there from Jamaica to pick plantains. You can truly see how the Jamaican culture influenced the little town of Limón. My favorite part of the Caribbean culture so apparent in Limón was their dialect. It was pretty neat to hear a mix of languages and dialects all in one conversation from Spanish to a Jamaican creole. I had spent a couple of months in Costa Rica by that point and heard the most English spoken in Limón than in any other Costa Rican town or city.

I started off my Limón Carnaval adventure by attending the Carnaval Infantil (Children’s Parade). It was an exciting adventure, to say the least. Then I went to....

Try to continue the story. Write at least two paragraphs describing the rest of the story.

I will publish the complete story this coming Tuesday. Good luck!!

The Climate Change

The Earth has warmed about 1ºF in the last 100 years. The eight warmest years on record (since 1850) have all occurred since 1998, with the warmest year being 2005. Periods of increased heat from the sun may have helped make the Earth warmer. But many of the world's leading climatologists think that the greenhouse gases people produce are making the Earth warmer, too.

Melting Glaciers: a glacier is a large sheet of ice that moves very, very slowly. Many glaciers in the world are now melting. For example, glaciers are melting in Montana's Glacier National Park. Some scientists think the glaciers are melting partly because the Earth is getting warmer.
Rising Sea Level: The water goes higher up the beach when a tide comes in. At most shores throughout the world, two high tides and two low tides occur every day. But now the level of the sea is rising, so high tides are higher than they were before. Over the last 100 years, the level of the sea has risen about 6-8 inches worldwide. When the sea level rises, the tide goes farther up the beach. Scientists think the sea has risen partly because of melting glaciers and sea ice. When some glaciers melt, they release water into the sea and make it higher than it was before. Scientists also think that warmer temperatures in the sea make it rise even more. Heat makes water expand. When the ocean expands, it takes up more space.

WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN?

Scientists are not fortune-tellers. They don't know exactly what will happen in the future. But they can use special computer programs to find out how the climate may change in the years ahead. And the computer programs tell us that the Earth may continue to get warmer.

Answer the following questions about the reading

1. What is making the earth warmer?

2. What is a glacier?

3. Why is the sea level rising?

4. How do the scientists know how the climate may change in the future?

5. What might happen to the Earth in the future?

6. What is the main idea of the text?

Importance of English

It is proper to say that English is an international language because it has been used by most of the nations in the world. It is true that if we know English well, we can communicate with foreigners and do business with other countries in the world. This will enable us to increase our international good will and understanding. From the above statement, we can be proud that English plays a significant role in our modern world. As for learning English, first of all we must deeply realize that the most important thing of all in learning everything is to have patience, confidence, and perseverance. Learning English is like learning to swim or learning to play ping-pong. If you want to swim or to play ping-pong well, you must practice it over and over again until you can operate or perform it automatically. There is an old saying that practice makes perfect. According to the linguist Bloomfield, language learning is over-learning; anything else is of no use. To learn to swim merely by reading books about swimming is of no service to learners. The learners must have actual experience in the water. Thus the learners can easily realize what the fundamental action in learning to swim is. All of us know that there are four skills in learning English, namely, listening, speaking, reading and then writing. It is important for us to understand the relationship among these four skills. By setting up listening, speaking, reading and writing in this order, we do not imply that one must be able to understand everything before beginning to speak. However, by emphasizing the primary importance of listening, we clearly indicate that learning to speak is dependent on hearing someone else speak, not upon reading orally on the basis of certain "rules of pronunciation." When we hear words and expressions from a native speaker, we should of course imitate just as closely as possible, so that speaking follows immediately upon listening. In addition, another important thing to remember is that it is not necessary to begin with a lot of reading and writing in learning English. Reading and writing present very special problems which may complicate learning for the beginning learner. All in all, English may be said an indispensable tool of intercourse. If we know English, this will bring us great convenience. This is the reason why there are so many people in our country who learn English

Arts Festival

Colegio Experimental Bilingue de Siquirres perfomed this year the Arts Festival. This is the first time that this event takes place in the institution with a great participation of students, teachers and administrative staff as well. One of the purposes of the Arts Festival was to promote the students the opportunity to demostrate their abilities in different areas such as acting, drawing and singing. One importat aspect to consider withing these activities was the message that students wanted to express. Some students from different levels perform a nice role-play related to deforestation and the important of nature in our lives. It seemed to be enjoyed by the rest of the students and the judges who also were part of this event.

Billy was one of the participants who demonstrated his ability with a great picture that according to him represents many things related to life. Billy is a student who likes to participate in these kinds of events and he is always willing to perform a good job.

PREFIXES

Prefixes

Prefixes

Integrating technology in Education

Nowadays technology is being considered as an essential tool in Education. Some years ago students used to carry heavy books to school or they had to go to libraries when they were assigned a homework or a research project, these tasks were so tiring and time consuming. Fortunately, many things have change regarding this, Techonology has created our educaction an easier and interactive process. students can store a lot digital information in flash drivers rather than books and papers, they can also search information in internet rather than libraries, In fact, tecnology has had a great impact in our educational process that promote students interest and motivation to learn in a different environment.

Technology has many different effects on education, Teacher and students can work more practically and interactevely, in the case of teachers, they can be able to present their classes by using multimedia equipments such as computers, internet, and also they can keep in touch with their students by e-mail and other sources, morever, students are the ones who can have more benefits with the integration of technology in class. students can find any can of information in internet, there is a variety of information in which people can have unlimited access. Aslo they can perform expostions, projects simply by using power point rather than bring printed the information. Furthermore, methods of instruction must change in order to keep up with the ever-changing world and we, as teachers must cease the technological movement. When technology and appropriate teaching methods are combined, technology may increase the academic achievement. There are many factors and activities that can help teachers develop an attitude that is intrepid in the use of technology, encourages them to take risks, and inspires them to involve technology in the classroom environment. Without no doubt, technology stimulates and develops many skills in students specially when they arelearning a second language. Nowaday there are many good softwares that help students learn meaningfully and effectively, besides that, there are many students who have different necessities and disabilities when leanring a language, even though, these problems are no longer a limitation thanks to technology.

What is teaching English as a second language like today?

Many people nowadays are in the necessity to learn English effectevely with a good pronuntiation and accent. Even though, most of the methodologies used by teachers do not promote communicative skills, that is because the activities applied in class are not meaninful and effective. this is a very common problem, if we go to a typical English classroom in public high school we realize that students just focus in grammar exercises like fill in blacks, drills, writing short sentences, etc. Based in my experice, I would say that with these kind of activities teachers no not develop many skills....

Teaching Speaking

Speaking is considered as the most important skill of the learner, most of the time the proficiency of this skill is which judges the knowledge of the learner of the second language. People have to many reasons to improve their ability of the skill such as expressing ideas, creating relationships, exchanging information etc. Even though, the development of this skill is not an easy task for anybody, there are many aspects that have to be taken into account in the learning process, the learner must be active and dynamic practicing and exchanging patterns that are important in the development of the skill, during the process the learner must be expose to a natural environment and natural speeches of the target langauge that enable them to develop their awarness of conversational features and strategies, so the task for the teacher is to incorporate real communication in the classroom promoting interactive and realistic activities in order to help students gain confidence and feel motivated, even though despite its importance, for many years, teaching speaking has been undervalued and English language teachers have continued to teach speaking just as a repetition of drills or memorization of dialogues. Fortunately, today's world requires that the goal of teaching speaking should improve students' communicative skills, because, only in that way, students can express themselves and learn how to follow the social and cultural rules appropriate in each communicative circumstance.

There is no doubt that students learn to speak in the second language by interacting. Today there are many methodologies that can help efficiency for this aim. One of them can be the communicative approach that is based on real-life situations that require communication. By using this method in ESL classes, students will have the opportunity of communicating with each other in the target language. ESL teachers should create a classroom environment where students have real-life communication, authentic activities, and meaningful tasks that promote oral language. This can occur when students collaborate in groups to achieve a goal or to complete a task

It is essensial for the students to practice as much they can in the class and in daily life as well, simple activites such as share ideas about an event, or find solutions in their discussion groups are effective to improve the skill. Before the discussion, it is important that the purpose of the discussion activity is set by the teacher. In this way, the discussion points are relevant to this purpose, so that students do not spend their time chatting with each other about irrelevant things. For example, students can become involved in agree/disagree discussions. In this type of discussions, the teacher can form groups of students, preferably 4 or 5 in each group, and provide topic of interest for them..

Teaching speaking is a very important part of second language learning. The ability to communicate in a second language clearly and efficiently contributes to the success of the learner in school and success later in every phase of life. Therefore, it is essential that language teachers pay great attention to teaching speaking. Rather than leading students to pure memorization, providing a rich environment where meaningful communication takes place is desired. With this aim, various speaking activities such as those listed above can contribute a great deal to students in developing basic interactive skills necessary for life. These activities make students more active in the learning process and at the same time make their learning more meaningful and fun for them.