English City Writing Contest

One of our students Energizer Aboma came to me a few days ago with a great idea – a writing contest. This is a great way to improve your writing and get critical feedback that can help you improve.

Many of you have been writing great articles for The English City News with help from Lane Jarman and other students have really enjoyed your work !

Ok so here are the rules:

• Below there is a list of 50 words, you must look up their meanings.
• Students must write a fictional story, news style report or discursive essay using at least thirty words in the list.
• Points will be given for originality, style, grammar and structure.
• The winner’s profile will be featured on the new Languagelab website and also displayed all over English City.
• Everyone who enters will be given detailed feedback and those who choose to share their feedback with the group will be posted on the blog for all students to benefit from.

The words:

1. advice
2. benefit
3. liaise
4. compete
5. effect
6. relate
7. budget
8. discreet
9. regard
10. respond
11. comply
12. procure
13. paradigm
14. defy
15. assess
16. criterion
17. appreciate
18. jingoism
19. analyse
20. retain
21. affect
22. enhance
23. podcasting
24. acquire
25. oblige
26. information
27. use
28. intend
29. ecopolitics
30. endeavour
31. continue
32. provide
33. allege
34. emphasize
35. aesthetic
36. empathy
37. request
38. pragmatic
39. despite
40. ubiquitous
41. sceptic
42. propose
43. assume
44. ambiguous
45. competence
46. irony
47. subtle
48. implement
49. concur
50. general
    

The deadline is 9th March and all submissions should be made on the English City News Blog or to jessie@languagelab.com

Good Luck !

Internet makes people hard to forget their loves in history.

It seems females are not so easy to omit their loves in the past that they usually update their boyfriends through Google or public connection on Yahoo360, Facebook…

The company, Yasni in England surveyed 1700 people and found that 57% of them was curious and 21% evied.

62% of the females stated that they were still having liaison with their old boyfriends while only 46% of the males were taking care of their old partners’ life at present.

“Curiosity is a natural personality. It makes people desire to know all information about the person whom they don’t like or their private relationship they used to have in the past.” Professor Steffen Ruehl , Yasni company explained.

The result of this survey has got in sympathy with people who use internet. They also affirm this rate must be higher.” I often type my old girlfriend’s name or her nickname on the internet and sometimes wish her life now is worster than mine. Moreover, I am able to get information about the girl whom I am going to hang out with through Google.”, the member Rane of InventorSpot web said.

Who should take responsibility for climate change?

Liuyin:

In my opinion, climate change causes a lot of problems in our life, we have the responsibility to make changes. We can make some suggestions to the govements, or we can raise public awareness of having good habits to reduce pollution throught the TV or INTERNET.

Amanda:

I believe that climate change is a major problem.Both the government and people should cooparate to solve this problem. People should be aware of what is happening to thier environment because of thier improper use of their resources and the huge amount of waste products originating from this. The government should participate as well by giving directions and aids to the peaple and make sure that everyone is doing thier job.

TR:

In order to solve the problem of current climate change we have to reduce the consumption of energy at individual levels. I know it would be extremely difficult without governmental intervention. Therefore regulations by governments are essential. We all have to work together to reduce consumption of energy to contribute to solving the problem.

Jane:

Governments cannot solve the problem of climate change. We must make changes ourselves. What are your views?

Why can not governments solve the problem of climate change? How unreasonable it is! Basically, The climate change affects humans a lot such as: our enviroment; our health ...In my opinion, we must work together to solve this big world problem. Not only the governments but also people all over the world should work together to find the best solution. Please gather in a group and do discuss about it quickly!

Energiser:

Governments cannot solve the problem of climate change. We must make changes ourselves. What are your views?

I firmly believe that changes regarding the climate crisis should originate from us. increasing the green areas around our homes will help us provide our children with fresh clean air. planting more trees will filter the air and make it possible to control the climatic changes. For instance, there should be campaigns by children and adults to work together in order to achieve that.

Jacob:

In my opinion, the methods we could use to solve the problem of climate chage is that, first of all, it is essenital for the government to punblish regulations and laws to limit and change citizens daily activities which will have negaive impacts on climate. In the second place, for the indivitual, it is worth for us to pay more attention to the weather change, and take more of our behaviors. Moreover, we could use mass media to make more people know the real condition of our climate now, and promote methods we can use to solve the climate changing problem. Lastly, for most of the social groups, they could hold more events to let more people gain the methods of solving the issue of climate change.

Aioria

In my opinion, there is some truth in the statement "Governments cannot solve the problem of climate change. We must make the changes". This is, that as individuals we have to play a more active role in terms of climate issues by changing our daily behaviour of our daily life. However, I also think governments are equally responsible for acting on climate issues.

The event of Jensen,Today

today we were talking about the methods we could use to solve the problems of world pollution.
And this was one topic of the content:
Governments cannot solve the problem of climate change. We must make changes ourselves. What are your views?

In my opinion, the methods we could use to solve the problem of climate chage are that, first of all, it is essenital for the government to punblish regulations and laws to limit and change citizens daily activities which will have negaive impacts on climate. In the second place, for the indivitual, it is worth for us to pay more attention to the weather change, and take more of our behaviors. Moreover, we could use mass media to make more people know the real condition of our climate now, and promote methods we can use to solve the climate changing problem. Lastly, for most of the social groups, they could hold more events to let more people gain the methods of solving the issue of climate change.

Have you seen this woman? Her cousin, Jensen, is very worried about her. If you see her, please send an email to jensen@llcitypeople.com.

Fran, I know we have had our ups and downs but please contact me, just to tell me you are OK.

Love,
Jensen

Politics talk

Last week we had an interesting discussion with Finn Kranfel.we were discussing different goverment systems and how they affect people.
The goverment system defines the culture of any population and shapes the attitude of people towardes thier future and thier past .Goverment can be a good tool to develop a socity or can be a strong weapon to destroy it.
we discussed different types of goverment systems .we talked about democratic goverment ,we learned that the word "democracy" came from the anchient Greece where the democratic system was originated.the democratic system is simply based on the freedom of the people to express themselves and thier needs,and that usually done through elected parliamant to represent the people.
we talked about Dictatorshipe as well and how it has become almost extent ,Finn demonstrated two examples of that kind of goverment which are Cuba and North Koria .
In dectatorshipe goerment ,no oppsing form of goverment is allowed to exist and it is usually military packed goverment and it involves monoarchy.
Although me and Energizer are not into politics ,we got absorbed by this discussion and we started to look up some idiology of goverment systems ,and that what Finn kranfel was aiming for.She wanted us to be aware of what is happening around the world and she wanted ,and i qout,to"broaden our horizon".

http://www.dunfordwood.co.uk/

Hugh Dunford art exhibition in English city

We were honored to have Hugh dunford as a guest in English city .Hugh dunford wood is a very well-known portrait painter.he was a founder of many honorable art schools and studios ,for example the UK's first studios scheme in oxfordshir in 1984.
Wood contributed to many art exhibitions and he had alot of solo shows all over the world .wood mentioned that he is inspired by nature ,he painted alot of landescaping paintings ,his woodlands paintings show the contrast between the wildness of the natural world and the culture that we have constructed .these paintigs made me realize that we have been neglecting the bueaty of the wild nature for so long and we were busy making an artificial bueaty which is nothing compared to the true ,real thing "Nature".
wood mentioned that he is inspired by other artists work as well and he likes to copy their work somtimes because it is challanging and he likes to be challanged.
Hugh said that when he paint a portrait for a person he likes it to be so alive and he use alittle trick for that, he puts a mirorr behind his back so his model can watch the painting and not becomes bored .
Hugh wood stated that he tried all kind of paints ,he uses acrylic and water paints because they dry quickly.and he preferes oil paint because of its texture and viscosity .
HUgh wood is a talanted artist .we were happy to have him and we are looking forward to his next visit.

Guardian Article

On the Guardian article http://llcitypeople.com/media/The_Guardian_Feb15.pdf . Energizer Abama wrote:

The article is about Hilary clinton's visit to the asian most polluting countries to discuss the global warming issue..
she started her tour with Japan .. and as the trip goes ,she is going to visit the asian tigers and she will end her trip in China.
This trip comes in clinton's continous efforts to seize the global warming issue.
The journalist finally states that both the united states in addition to china make contributions toalmost 40 percent of the devastating universal problem.

Asia and America. The importance of getting even closer

Now more than ever it is of huge importance to the world that their two biggest economies (America and China) find agreements to work together against the current economic climate and global warming.
Opposite to the previous American U.S. administration, Barack Obama’s one has global warming high scored in their agenda; reason why Hillary Clinton is currently in a tour around Asia to address those issues.
Because these two countries account for more than 40% of the world’s green house gas emissions, I think it is their responsibility to start contributing solving the problem. Also if cooperation between these two occurred, it will be easier for other countries to take a more active role. However it is worth mentioning that other countries, which produced fewer emissions, have better strategies against global warming.

New TOEFL preparation classes

A lot of students in English city have been attending classes for TOEFL prepartion conducted by Salsita Almendros. Although these classes started a few weeks ago they have became very popular. The classes focus on the speaking section of the TOEFL test which is, in my opinion, the most challenging section in the exam.

Sally has been doing such a wonderful job. Although she has not taught any TOEFL preparation courses before , she managed to do a lot of research about the test and now she is able to spot our points of weakness and help us to improve our performance so we can get high scores in the test.

I believe that she has put a lot of effort into this task. She gives us a lot of tips and examples which are very helpful and we get to practice these examples in class then she gives us feedback about our answers and she let us listen to some sample answers and discuss them with us as well.

I think that is the best way to improve our performance in the test and I think everybody agrees with me on that. I really appreciate what sally is doing for us and i want to tell her to keep up the good work.