Buenas tardes, estimados alumnos.
Vamos hoy de lleno a pecho descubierto a luchar contra los verbos modales, que dan mucho dolor de cabeza, inútilmente, más de una vez puesto que son mucho más fáciles de lo que parecen.
¿Qué tal una canción del gran Loquillo para animar el cotarro?
Pincha aquí para descargarte el documento.
Saludos.
 |
| https://www.ejerciciosinglesonline.com/new-exercises/ex1-verbos-modales/ |
Buenas tardes, estimados alumnos.
De nuevo, volvemos a repasar cómo se hacen frases en pasiva en inglés. Ya lo hemos comentado varias veces a lo largo del curso, pero toca ahora meterse de lleno con este apasionante tema.
Recordad:
activa: Mary come patatas con huevos fritos todos los días.
pasiva: Patatas son comidas por Mary todos los días.
Saludos.
Picha aquí para descargarte el documento.
Buenas tardes, estimados alumnos
Para hoy os dejo calentito un breve test de 20 preguntas para elegir la respuesta correcta, que incluye casi todos los puntos gramaticales de vuestro examen así como una selección de vocabulario de vuestro nivel.
Good luck!
Puedes descargarte el texto aquí si lo prefieres.
Buenas tardes, estimados alumnos.
Vamos a leer ahora sobre la generación conocida como 'millenials' y su problemática adaptación al mundo laboral.
 |
| @mmolpor |
Esta actividad está cogida prestada de https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/skills/reading/upper-intermediate-b2/cultural-expectations-and-leadership a quienes les doy las gracias por hacer público su trabajo y ayudarnos tanto.
Actividad previa a la lectura:
 |
| https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/skills/reading/upper-intermediate-b2/millennials-in-the-workplace |
Millennials in the workplace
Millennials (those born between the early 1980s and the early 1990s) make up a huge part of our workforce but they seem to lack loyalty to the companies and the leaders they work for. Multinational companies are noticing larger turnover rates of millennials as employee retention rates fall. This report looks at the findings of two large-scale surveys on the mindset of the millennial generation and explores how organisations can strive to address these needs, increase employee engagement and encourage retention.
In a global survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), more than 40,000 millennial (born between 1983 and 1993) and non-millennial responses were collected on the topics of workplace culture, communication and working styles, pay structure, career development, work–life balance, etc.
In a separate global survey conducted by Deloitte, more than 10,000 millennials participated in a study about their perceptions of the threats and opportunities in the complex world of work.
Organisations and managers wanting to retain millennials should consider:
 |
| https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/skills/reading/upper-intermediate-b2/millennials-in-the-workplace |
Buenas tardes, estimada familia IPEP #inglésipep #ingléspagsypau (en Twitter).
¿Cómo debe ser un buen líder? ¿Qué cualidades debe tener? ¿Cómo debe hacerse respetar? Veamos:
 |
| @mmolpor |
Esta actividad está cogida prestada de https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/skills/reading/upper-intermediate-b2/cultural-expectations-and-leadership a quienes les doy las gracias por hacer público su trabajo y ayudarnos tanto.
Actividad previa a la lectura:
'Gabriela worked for a multinational company as a successful project manager in Brazil and was transferred to manage a team in Sweden. She was excited about her new role but soon realised that managing her new team would be a challenge.
Despite their friendliness, Gabriela didn't feel respected as a leader. Her new staff would question her proposals openly in meetings, and when she gave them instructions on how to carry out a task, they would often go about it in their own way without checking with her. When she announced her decisions on the project, they would continue giving their opinions as if it was still up for discussion.
After weeks of frustration, Gabriela emailed her Swedish manager about the issues she was facing with her team. Her manager simply asked her if she felt her team was still performing, and what she thought would help her better collaborate with her team members. Gabriela found her manager vague and didn't feel as if he was managing the situation satisfactorily.
What Gabriela was experiencing was a cultural clash in expectations. She was used to a more hierarchical framework where the team leader and manager took control and gave specific instructions on how things were to be done. This more directive management style worked well for her and her team in Brazil but did not transfer well to her new team in Sweden, who were more used to a flatter hierarchy where decision making was more democratic. When Gabriela took the issue to her Swedish manager, rather than stepping in with directions about what to do, her manager took on the role of coach and focused on getting her to come up with her own solutions instead.
Dutch social psychologist Geert Hofstede uses the concept of 'power distance' to describe how power is distributed and how hierarchy is perceived in different cultures. In her previous work environment, Gabriela was used to a high power distance culture where power and authority are respected and everyone has their rightful place. In such a culture, leaders make the big decisions and are not often challenged. Her Swedish team, however, were used to working in a low power distance culture where subordinates often work together with their bosses to find solutions and make decisions. Here, leaders act as coaches or mentors who encourage independent thought and expect to be challenged.
When Gabriela became aware of the cultural differences between her and her team, she took the initiative to have an open conversation with them about their feelings about her leadership. Pleased to be asked for their thoughts, Gabriela's team openly expressed that they were not used to being told what to do. They enjoyed having more room for initiative and creative freedom. When she told her team exactly what she needed them to do, they felt that she didn't trust them to do their job well. They realised that Gabriela was taking it personally when they tried to challenge or make changes to her decisions, and were able to explain that it was how they'd always worked.
With a better understanding of the underlying reasons behind each other's behaviour, Gabriela and her team were able to adapt their way of working. Gabriela was then able to make adjustments to her management style so as to better fit the expectations of her team and more effectively motivate her team to achieve their goals.
Saludos.
Actividades de comprensión:
Buenas tardes, estimados alumnos.
Vamos hoy con un texto con el que vamos a pensar un poco sobre cómo está nuestra querida Tierra, a la que debemos tratar un poco mejor, y que nos va a servir también para aprender vocabulario y poner en práctica nuestras destrezas lectoras.
 |
| @mmolpor |
Creo que hoy vamos a comenzar con una tarea de vocabulario para que resulte más fácil hacer la traducción y hacerse una idea de qué trata el texto:
 |
| https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/skills/reading/advanced-c1/the-state-of-the-world |
Vamos al surco:
'If your view of the world comes from watching the news and reading newspapers, you could be forgiven for lying awake at night worrying about the future. Apparently, rising violence and population rates mean humans are both killing each other in ever larger numbers and being born at rates the world's resources can't sustain. To make matters worse, all the wealth is concentrated on a handful of people in the world's richest countries. People in low-income countries live in poverty while the West gets richer. Depressing, isn't it?
But do the statistics support our negative world view or is the world actually improving?
Let's take global population first. It's around 7 billion now, in line with figures predicted by the UN in 1958. By the year 2100, the same experts predict it will be around 11 billion. But did you know that 11 billion is probably as high as that number will get? The rate of increase will slow down in the second half of this century thanks to falling birth rates today.
Falling birth rates? Yes, that's right.
In the last two centuries, improvements in technology and health meant fewer children died young, fuelling rapid population growth. These large families produced even more children who survived into adulthood and had their own children. But with the wider availability of contraception in the 1960s, the global average number of babies per woman has declined from six babies per woman to as low as two.
The biggest factor in child mortality is poverty. And while it's still true that only 20 per cent of the world takes about 74 per cent of the world's income, 60 per cent of the world now falls into a middle-income group, with 11.6 per cent – the smallest amount of people in history – still living in conditions of extreme poverty. If the majority of the world's people have money, international aid could realistically achieve the UN target of eradicating poverty by 2030. As poverty goes down, life expectancy goes up, birth rates go down because parents can expect their existing children to survive, and the global population stabilises.
As for news stories that make us think the world is an increasingly violent place, there is cause for some optimism too. Between the end of World War II and 1990, there were 30 wars that killed more than 100,000 people. Today there are still civil wars, but countries are mostly co-existing more peacefully than in the past. However, terrorism has shot up in the last few years and, since World War II, wars have killed many more civilians than soldiers. Even for civilians, though, the statistics are not all bad. Although deaths are nine times more likely to be a result of violent crime than political conflict, the global murder rate fell slightly, from 8 per 100,000 people in 2000 to about 5.3 in 2015.
Of course, none of this means the world is perfect, and whether you personally are affected by war and poverty is often down to the lottery of where you're born. Also, we still face huge problems of our own making, particularly environmental ones like global warming, and wealth and natural resources need to be distributed more fairly. But not all the news is bad news, whatever the TV and newspapers might say'.
Saludos.
Tareas:
 |
| https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/skills/reading/advanced-c1/the-state-of-the-world |
 |
Buenas tardes, estimados alumnos.
Hemos retomado el curso con fuerza; los mantecados parece que nos han sentado bien. No obstante, en cuanto a las tutorías presenciales, hemos notado que ha disminuido bastante la asistencia, por distintos motivos, pero parece ser que el puñetero covid está haciendo más estragos de la cuenta.
Santa Paciencia.
Allá por el mes de noviembre, en concreto el día 22 -¡qué lejos queda ya!- os envié un mensajillo en el que os recomendaba que, si podíais, intentarais completar las actividades del ejercicio 3.1 de la plataforma, maravillosa ella, ¿verdad?, Moodle.
Algunos sí habéis podido y me habéis enviado la tarea para que os la corrija, pero me gustaría que todos o mientras más, mejor, la hagáis porque es un compendio de 7 ejercicios que resume todos los contenidos básicos del trimestre, a saber: oraciones condicionales del tipo 1 y 2, oraciones de relativo, especificativas -sin comas- y explicativas -con comas y puñeteras-, presente continuo, presente perfecto y adverbios como 'yet, already, still', etc.
Os dejos aquí en este enlace los ejercicios para que los descarguéis y los hagáis y, si podéis, me los enviáis a través de la plataforma. De todas formas, la semana que viene pondré todas las soluciones en otra entrada de este blog.
Os dejo las tareas aquí en el blog también porque lo que no se ve, no se hace. Santo Tomás reina por estos lares.
Saludos y buen final de semana.
Buenas tardes, estimados alumnos.
De nuevo, vuelvo a recurrir a nuestros amigos del British Council, a quienes les doy las gracias por su ayuda, para poner en práctica vuestros 'reading skills' y aprender mucho vocabulario.
 |
| https://www.blablacar.es |
El texto de hoy lleva por título 'The sharing economy' y, de nuevo, es un tema de rabiosa actualidad, pues vivimos en una época en la que, por diversos motivos, vamos de blablacar en blablacar, por ejemplo. Y algún motivo habrá para ello, innit?
Vamos al surco:
'If we look around us at the things we have purchased at some point in our lives, we would no doubt notice that not everything we own is being put to good use: the thick woollen coat which we thought looked trendy despite the fact that we live in a tropical country, the smartphone that got put away when we bought ourselves the newest model, the car that only gets used at the weekends, or even the guest room in our house that somehow got turned into a storeroom.
Those underutilised items may seem useless to some, but could be an asset to others. With the advent of the internet, online communities have figured out a way to generate profit from the sharing of those underused assets. Using websites and social media groups that facilitate the buying and selling of second-hand goods, it is now easier than ever for peer-to-peer sharing activities to take place. And this is known as the sharing economy.
These democratised online platforms are providing a chance for people to make a quick buck or two. To give an example, busy parents previously might not have bothered with setting up a stall at the local market or car boot sale to sell their children's old equipment, but with online marketplaces, parents are now able to sell on those hardly worn baby clothes that their children have outgrown and the expensive pushchairs and baby equipment they have invested in, so as to put some cash back into their pockets.
Businesses have also caught on to the profitability of the sharing economy and are seeking to gain from making use of those underutilised resources. A business model that has rapidly risen in popularity sees companies providing an online platform that puts customers in contact with those who can provide a particular product or service. Companies like Airbnb act as a middleman for people to cash in on their unused rooms and houses and let them out as lucrative accommodation. Another example is Uber, which encourages people to use their own personal cars as taxis to make some extra cash in their free time.
This move towards a sharing economy is not without criticisms. Unlike businesses, unregulated individuals do not have to follow certain regulations and this can lead to poorer and inconsistent quality of goods and services and a higher risk of fraud. Nevertheless, in the consumerist society we live in today, the increased opportunities to sell on our unwanted and underused goods can lead to a lesser impact on our environment.'
Saludos.
Buenas tardes, estimados alumnos.
CÓDIGOS DE COLORES:
AZUL: Traducciones.
ROJO: Aspectos gramaticales.
VERDE: Aspectos culturales.
NARANJA: Estructuras concatenadas
MORADO: Traducción y sinónimos, antónimos, etc.
Amarillo: Palabras con trampa.
Os dejo una plantilla para que, sobre la marcha, podáis ir completando con sinónimos, antónimos, etc -si los sabéis- así como el significado de cada palabra. Espero que os sea de utilidad. Pinchad aquí para descargarla.
A Plastic Ocean is a film to make you think. Think, and then act. We need to take action on our dependence on plastic. We've been producing plastic in huge quantities since the 1940s. Drink bottles, shopping bags, toiletries and even clothes are made with plastic. 1) _____. What happens to all the rest? This is the question the film A Plastic Ocean answers. It is a documentary that looks at the impact that plastic waste has on the environment. Spoiler alert: the impact is devastating.
The film begins as a journey to film the largest animal on the planet, the blue whale. But during the journey the filmmakers (journalist Craig Leeson and environmental activist Tanya Streeter) make the shocking discovery of a huge, thick layer of plastic floating in the middle of the Indian Ocean. 2) _____. In total, they visited 20 locations around the world during the four years it took them to make the film. The documentary premiered in 2016, and is now on streaming services such as Netflix.
It's very clear that a lot of research went into the film. There are beautiful shots of the seas and marine life. 3) _____. We see how marine species are being killed by all the plastic we are dumping in the ocean. The message about our use of plastic is painfully obvious.
Pincha en este enlace para descargarte unos apuntes realmente buenos sobre la voz pasiva, que ya va tocando. Incluye un total de 17 ejercicios que iremos haciendo hasta final de curso. Para hoy, deberás traducir el siguiente cuadro:
 |
| https://inglescarmelitaslb.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/the-passive-voice1.pdf |
4) _____. In the second half, the filmmakers look at what we can do to reverse the tide of plastic flowing around the world. They present short-term and long-term solutions. These include avoiding plastic containers and 'single-use' plastic products as much as possible. Reuse your plastic bags and recycle as much as you can. The filmmakers also stress the need for governments to work more on recycling programmes, and look at how technology is developing that can convert plastic into fuel.
We make a staggering amount of plastic. In terms of plastic bags alone, we use five hundred billion worldwide annually. Over 300 million tons of plastic are produced every year, and at least 8 million of those are dumped into the oceans. 5) _____. Once you've seen A Plastic Ocean, you'll realise the time is now and we all have a role to play.
 |
| https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/skills/reading/upper-intermediate-b2/a-plastic-ocean-a-film-review |
Buenas tardes, estimados alumnos.
Vamos a trabajar en esta entrada el conocido en inglés como 'pasado perfect o past perfect', verbo que usamos para contar que 'habíamos realizado' una acción en un momento concreto, antes de hacer otra tarea, etc.
👉👉👉 Empezaremos con un video muy sencillo, de los que van al grano y se dejan de zarandajas, que os recomiendo que veáis: pincha en este enlace:
Es fácil:
'I had eaten my dinner before you phoned me.' (pasado perfecto simple).
'Yo había cenado antes de que me llamaras.'
'I had been eating my dinner when you phoned me.' (pasado perfecto continuo).
'Yo había estado cenando cuando me llamaste.'
'It had been raining all the evening'.
'Estuvo lloviendo toda la tarde.'
✋✋✋ Todas las personas se van a conjugar de la misma manera. Observa:
I had eaten pasta for dinner when you came with the pizza.
You had eaten pasta...
She had eaten pasta...
It had eaten pasta...
We had eaten pasta...
You had eaten pasta...
They had eaten pasta...
👉👉👉 Para poner ese verbo en negativa, basta con poner la palabra 'not' después de 'had' o bien usar la forma contraída 'hadn't'.
I had not eaten pasta for dinner when you came with the pizza.
You hadn't eaten pasta...
She had not eaten pasta...
👉👉👉 Para hacer una pregunta, basta con poner 'had' delante de la persona.
'Had you eaten pasta for dinner?
'Had she eaten pasta...?
✋✋✋ Pincha en este enlace para ver la diferencia entre la forma simple y la forma continua. Por favor, pincha en el enlace, lee la información y completa el ejercicio online que hay al final del texto y que puedes ver aquí:
 |
| https://www.superprof.es/apuntes/idiomas/ingles/gramatica-inglesa/verb-tense/past-perfect-simple-and-continuous.html#tema_ejercicios-del-pasado-perfecto-continuo-y-del-pasado-perfecto |
El verbo que usamos es muy fácil de conjugar: usamos el verbo auxiliar 'have' en pasado, o sea, 'had' y siempre seguido de un participio, para entendernos, la tercera forma de los verbos irregulares o un verbo acabado en -ed.
'I had already sold my old clothes in Vinted when you asked to buy them'.
'Yo ya había vendido mi ropa vieja en Vinted cuando tú me pediste comprármela'.
'You had payed for the food at the restaurant when I wanted to invite you'.
'Tú habías pagado la comida del restaurante cuando yo quería invitarte'.
✊✊✊✊✊ Past perfect passive: pasado perfecto pasivo, más fácil todavía:
'I had been told to be punctual for the meeting'
'Me dijeron que fuera puntual para la reunión'
'You had been asked to do the entrance exam'.
'Te pidieron que hicieras el examen de acceso'.
'She had been given a new laptop for her new job'
'Le dieron un nuevo portátil en su nuevo trabajo'.
'He had been sold a broken car'.
'Le vendieron un coche averiado.'
'We had been requested to pay more taxes'.
'Nos pidieron que pagáramos más impuestos'.
'You had been ordered to leave your job and look for another one'.
'Se te ordenó dejar tu trabajo y que te buscaras uno nuevo'.
'They had been presented with a new computer for their birthday'.
'Les regalaron un nuevo ordenador por su cumpleaños'.
Y ahora, a practicar estos ejercicios:
Feliz año nuevo.
