Sunday 27 February 2011

COMMUNICATION TODAY ESSAY

In the last decades the ways people use to communicate between them are changing quickly. In only one century we have changed from letters and telegraph to mobile phones and social networks. It’s true that the communication nowadays is faster than before. We know whatever thing that happens in wherever place immediately. Nowadays we have more technology than never before to improve our communication, but it’s true too that this doesn’t mean necessarily that now we communicate better than before. I’m going to explain some examples.
Today it’s difficult to find somebody that doesn’t use mobile phone. This little gadget allows us to speak with everybody when we want and from wherever place. It isn’t only used to speak, but also, to send photos, messages or e-mails, to look for on the Internet or even to watch TV programmes. It helps us in difficult situations but to tell the truth we have paid a price for that. We have lost a piece of our freedom. Now we have the obligation to be located for our boss, family ... all the time. There is a big alarm if you don’t answer or return the call immediately.
In the same way the Internet has invaded our lives to make communication easier and cheaper. We can chat and swap information with people around the world. It’s a fact that we live in the global village. However it isn’t less true that we spend a lot of time chatting in the networks with people we will never meet and we don’t talk with people that are in the same place while we wait for the doctor, for the bus or we are in a queue. We are too much busy with our mobiles phones.
Other consequence about the near relation between communication and technology is that we are forced to be learning constantly about the new technologies. And that takes a lot of our free time. Besides, to young people (and not so young too), it is necessary to belong to a network like Facebook or Twitter. These days if you don’t are in some of them, you don’t exist. And moreover now it is in fashion to have a blog that you must update frequently. All that things are fantastic and really interesting but the problem is that they take our time off.
In my opinion, people are so interested in communicating using the new technologies that we are losing our social abilities for the communication face to face. I think we should include the new technologies in our lives but don’t let them replace the satisfaction to connect with the emotions and other feelings that you can see when you talk face to face.
What do you think about?

By Alicia

EATING HABITS ESSAY

Nowadays we live fast. We always go running to everywhere. We are really busy, we work, we have children, we do housework, we study and we have an intense social life.
We don´t have enough time for us and finally we have bad eating habits because it is faster to cook a hamburger than to cook a good stew. It is faster to eat a sandwich than to eat a big salad.
A lot of times we need to eat out and fast food is cheaper or we often go out with friends and we eat too much and we drink alcohol.
Also, in these days, there are all kinds of food in the supermarkets, food with a lot of fat like pizzas, chocolates, ice-creams, cakes, buns or chips. Fifty years ago in Spain it was difficult to find this type of food, but now it´s easy and not very expensive. Young people like this type of food very much. But they are consuming a lot of calories in a few grams. And they can become overweight.
On the other hand, at present we have more information about what´s better to eat or what´s worse to eat. There are advertising campaigns about eating five (fruits and vegetables), fish, low calories food, etc. And the last campaigns in the schools about eating clementine oranges.
In conclusion, eating habits are really important for our health. We decide to have bad or healthy eating habits.

By Mª Dolores

Friday 25 February 2011

COMMUNICATION TODAY

10th TOPIC: COMMUNICATION TODAY
- Message
- To send
- Listening
- Network (social network)
- Request
- Mobile phone
- Users
- Speak
- Keyboard
- Graphic designers
- Media
- Sources
- Channels
- Technological revolution
- Computer
- Society of knowledge
- Blog

RENEWABLE ENERGY

9th TOPIC: RENEWABLE ENERGY

- environment
- inexhaustible
- clean
- wind farm
- windmill
- wind power
- solar power
- wave power
- solar cell
- hydro-electric power
- no pollution
- The fossil fuel is exhausting
- air power
- cheaper
- alternative energy
- ecology
- future energy
- environmental impact

Tuesday 22 February 2011

RENEWABLE ENERGY ESSAY

The International Energy Agency explains: Renewable energy is energy which comes from natural resources such as sunlight, wind, water and geothermal heat, which are renewable (naturally refilled). Taking into account its origin we can distinguish between:
-Solar energy: is the energy derived from the sun through the form of solar radiation. We usually use solar cells.
-Wind power: Areas where winds are stronger and more constant are preferred locations for wind farms.
-Hydropower: energy in water can also be used (oceans, dams, etc).
-Biomass: it comes from plant materials.
-Biofuel: it is usually either bioalcohol such as bioethanol or oil such as biodiesel.
-Geothermal energy: it is obtained from the heat of the earth.
Renewable energy replaces conventional fuels in four distinct areas:
1.Power generation: renewable energy provides 18% of total electricity generation worldwide. Renewable power generators are spread across many countries and wind power alone already provides a significant share of electricity in some areas. In fact, some countries get most of their power from renewable energies.
2.solar hot water heating systems: Most of these systems are installed on multi-family apartment buildings. Worldwide, total installed solar water heating systems meet a portion of the water heating needs of over 70 million households. The use of biomass for heating continues to grow as well. Direct geothermal for heating is also growing rapidly.
3.Transport fuels: Renewable biofuels have contributed to a significant decline in oil consumption in the USA since 2006. The 93 billion litres of biofuels produced worldwide in 2009 displaced the equivalent of an estimated 68 billion litres of gasoline, equal to about 5% of world gasoline production.
4.Rural energy services.

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT SPAIN
Renewable energies in Spain represented 12% of total energy generation in 2009. Spain has set the target of generating 20% of its energy needs from renewable energy sources by 2020. Some autonomous regions in Spain lead Europe in the use of renewable energy generation in a few years.
Spain is the third biggest producer of wind power, after the USA and Germany, with an installed capacity of 16,740 megawatts at the end of 2008. More than the 11% of Spain’s electricity came from wind power in 2008. The largest producer of wind energy in Spain is Iberdrola.
In 2005 Spain became the first country in the world to require the installation of photovoltaic electricity generation in new buildings, and the second in the world to require the installation of solar hot water heating systems. Spain was also the first country to ever have a commercial solar energy power tower (it is located near Sevilla).
What use do you do of energy? Do you use renewable energies?

By Hermi

Monday 14 February 2011

SPORTS AND LEISURE ESSAY

In this society we live very quickly due to our hard work. So we want to take advantage of leisure. But, what is the meaning of this word? Leisure is the time that people spend with themselves without producing anything.
Nowadays our leisure is very important for us. For this reason there are several websites about activities to do in our free time, town councils have leisure programmes, there are Leisure animation courses... These resources are a way to organize the free time. I think these activities are sometimes good when you don’t know what to do.
On the other hand leisure is closely related to sport. In fact a lot of people spend their free time playing sports because they can’t play sports daily. I think this is a good option. Experts say to do sports is very good because when we do sport we forget about these thoughts that concern us (our worries) and our whole body is relaxed. Maybe this is the best way to separate our work from our life because we stop thinking about the daily work tasks. I think sharing our free time with our friends and family is also important because we can’t spend a lot of time with them.
For these reasons our leisure and the sports need to be supplemented in order to enjoy them. We can do many sports like: going for a walk, running, riding a bike, playing chess... In addition we can share the free time and fun with our friends and family.
In my opinion to do something in our leisure is important. There are a lot of options: going to the cinema, shopping, listening to music, reading a book, doing exercise... but the most important thing is not to waste our free time because it is a treasure.
No doubt, in our leisure time we can do what we like. For me, relaxing during my free time, doing sports or reading a book are the best options.
If you had free time what would you do?

By Bea

Sunday 13 February 2011

MEANS OF TRANSPORT ESSAY

Along History, people have had the necessity and the curiosity of moving and changing from some places to others, and in this sense means of transport have played an important role.
Nowadays, there is a great variety of means of transport and all of them have advantages and disadvantages.
When we have to choose a mean of transport we usually take into account distance, speed, comfort and cost.
But I would like to focus the discussion on transport in our cities and the question is: What do you think is better: to use public or private transport?
Regarding private transport, I think that the car is the king. Cars provide autonomy and they are seen as being more convenient and reliable. They also provide access to more destinations than public transport. Besides, in another way, cars are seen to confer prestige and other socially desirable attributes.
But, on the contrary cars are expensive to support. Owing a car means spending a lot of money in a garage, an insurance, fuel (petrol) and tax. In addition, the main problem is that cars pollute very much and this is a problem which affects us all, car owners and non-car owners.
In opposite of this, I think that nowadays we can find very modern public transports as the tube, the tram, High Speed Train which are more ecological; they use less energy and make easier the traffic through the cities, among other advantages.
Besides, in modern cities, bicycles are being introduced as a public transport because they are more efficient than some public transports in some conditions, as speed, flexibility and energy saving.
But I wonder, is public transport really cheaper and more efficient? Is it promoted enough by governments?
We should think about this, because it seems a contradiction.
If you have seen the last news in Madrid, Barcelona and other big cities, the governments are asking people to use public transport because the level of pollution is very high. But, on the other hand, governments promote the sale of cars because they consider it is necessary to help car industry because of the economical crisis.
So what do you think?

By Sebastián

Thursday 10 February 2011

EATING HABITS

8th TOPIC: EATING HABITS
- Fast food
- Microwave
- Cooking at home
- Eating out
- ‘Tapas’
- Overeat
- Overweight
- Diets (to be/go on a diet)
- Unhealthy and healthy eating habits
- Take away meals
- Fruits
- Vegetables
- Bread
- Grocery
- Regular meals
- Vitamins
- Fats
- Vegetarian
- Variety
- Calories
- Cookbook

EDUCATION ESSAY

I’m going to talk about education. What is education? Answering this question is not easy because everybody has a different point of view of what education is.
Education is a process through which humans assimilate and learn knowledge, rules and ways of being that govern our society. There are three types of education: formal, non formal and unofficial. Formal education refers to the education provided by a school, a high school or a university; non-formal education refers to the education that is achieved in academies, courses… and unofficial education refers to the education that is acquired thanks to the experiences in life.
I think that education nowadays is suffering horrible changes. Few years ago, parents supported teachers’ decisions, but now, teachers have no authority because parents believe their son’s version and not the teacher’s version when there are academic problems.
Education is a right, so I think that it is very important to prepare the human beings to be able to face the obstacles in life, and it makes them able to transmit to the world the knowledge that they have acquired along their life.
In conclusion, education is an art consisted of science, love and lots of patience.

By Iván

Thursday 3 February 2011

SPORTS AND LEISURE

7th TOPIC: SPORTS AND LEISURE
- to go for a walk
- to go running
- to go trekking
- to climb mountains
- to go to the gym
- to ride a bike
- to play chess
- to play five-a-side football
- to play an instrument
- to read a book
- to listen to music
- to watch television
- to go to the cinema
- to go out with friends
- to go shopping
- in my free time

THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR


As we were talking about animals last Wednesday, I thought you would enjoy this famous story by Eric Carle. video

CONDITIONAL

Check your knowlegde about conditionals here.Exercise

FASHION ESSAY

In the following essay, I’m going to talk about fashion.

It’s really difficult to give a definition about the word “Fashion”; the dictionary explains it as the passing use that regulates, depending on the likes of that moment, the way we dress up, live, etc…

I definitely agree with this, even though I think fashion is more than just that; people express themselves by means of fashion. The way someone dresses, lives or acts, can tell you a lot about them and I’m sure that’s the main reason why we normally judge people at first, only by their appearance and most of the time this causes us to have a wrong opinion about someone.

Clothes can be casual, smart, stylish, comfortable, sophisticated or uncool, old-fashioned, colourful…

Fashion world can be complicated.

Clothes can sometimes provoke a strong reaction. For example, baggy clothes are associated to criminals and designer clothes (Armani, Tommy, Calvin…) are associated to rich people.

Nowadays, it’s fashionable to have a personal shopper who can buy the latest model or exclusive designs for you if you don’t have time to go shopping.

But I enjoy shopping my own clothes.

By Reyes