THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY

I2s A and B, we are going to read this novel during the year, you will find it really hilarious. Please join in with your comments.

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS

I1s this is the novel we are going to read during the year, please join in with your comments

Changing Places 2

I2s we continue here

Changing Places

I2 A and B are going to read this novel by David Lodge during this academic year. Please post your comments in this section.

JANE EYRE, Charlotte Bronte

Fourths, this course (2012-2013) we have chosen this romantic-gothic novel for you, again a masterpiece, knowing that those who read it before you throughly enjoyed it. We hope that you make use of this blog every day to improve your English.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS, Charles Dickens

Fifths, welcome to this new course (2012/2013) during which we hope, we know, you will greatly improve your English and acquaire great skill in Reading Comprehension and Writing by using our blog, where we will discuss this great novel, this masterpiece.

LITTLE DORRIT cont. (Charles Dickens)

Please, Fifths, post here from chapter 30.

LITTLE DORRIT (Charles Dickens)

According to some Little Dorrit is "one of the most significant works of the 19th Century".

THE THIRTY NINE STEPS (John Buchan)

THE WOMAN IN WHITE (Wilkie Collins)

THE No.1 LADIES´ DETECTIVE AGENCY

The students of Intermediate 1 are going to read this novel during the year 2010-2011. The writer, Alexander McCall Smith´s, tells the story of the delightful Precious Ramotswe, who is drawn to her profession to "help people with problems in their lives". We hope you enjoy reading it and post your comments.

THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATOE PEEL PIE SOCIETY

The I2s are going to read this novel during the year 2010-2011, we hope you will enjoy it. Please post your comments here.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

Dickens is probably the best narrator in English, we hope you enjoy the privilege of reading this great novel during the year 2010-2011.

JANE EYRE

During the year 2010-2011 the A1s are going to read this novel written by Charlotte Brontë. We hope you'll enjoy it, please post your comments on the space provided.

"GREAT EXPECTATIONS", Charles Dickens

Critics say that Dickens is possibly the best narrator in English. He certainly is a master at getting deep inside, and potraying human nature. We hope that the FIFTHS enjoy this new novel.

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS, John Boyne

Books about the Holocaust are never easy to read. Some are terrifying and some make the reader nauseous. However, this book approaches this period in history from a new and interesting angle and tells a memorable and moving story of what might have happened. I hope you enjoy reading it and post your comments.

BRIGHT STAR..,1819 (John Keats)

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art---
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors---
No---yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever---or else swoon in death.
1819

YouTube Channel - fighting for the C1!

Hello, dear colleagues and students! It's your old colleague! :)
I've been fixing your YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/goyaingles in case you decide to do some more video shoots this year.
EOI Getafe has also created a YouTube channel and they've started to post videos by old Avanzado 2 students who wanted to ask for a C1 certificate. All the videos have an audio cover page where they explain what they are asking for: http://www.youtube.com/englisheoigetafe
The Students and Old Students at Jesús Maestro befriended this channel and they're giving this idea of video shoots by Old Av 2 students a thought. A year ago they published on their channel a radio interview on this C1 problem. Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/alumnoseeooii
These 3 YouTube channels are now "friends". This is, we have befriended each other and/or subscribed to each other's channel. Have a look (scroll down in any of them and you'll see the other's avatar). If any of you has an account on YouTube, you can also befriend all of us, and/or subscribe to all of our postings. Hope you are all well! Have a nice course! We'll keep in touch! Big big hug!

"Lift not the painted veil which those who live call life", Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Lift not the painted veil which those who live
Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
And it but mimic all we would believe
With colours idly spread,--behind, lurk Fear
And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave
Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear.
I knew one who had lifted it--he sought,
For his lost heart was tender, things to love,
But found them not, alas! nor was there aught
The world contains, the which he could approve.
Through the unheeding many he did move,
A splendour among shadows, a bright blot
Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove
For truth, and like the Preacher found it not.

EMMA

The groups of level A1 are going to read this novel by Jane Austen during the course. Please join in and post your comments.

"TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED" , Roald Dahl (1916-1990)

One of his reviewers wrote that Dahl’s stories for adults were "bizarre, inventive, clever, imaginative, spinechilling…For kindness and pleasantries, I suggest you look elsewhere.”
This anthology of short stories is perfect if you enjoy stories with a twist, and we hope you will appreciate the uncanny ability Dahl has to take a predictable situation and "twist" it in a disturbing way.

"THE PAINTED VEIL" W. Somerset Maugham(1874-1965)

The title of the novel is borrowed from Shelley’s famous sonnet that begins: "Lift not the painted veil those that live call life". The precise plot and the adequate etching of the characters result in a combination of predictability and suspense, which leaves the reader unable to know what to expect, thus we are faced with a breathtaking story.
We think it is well worth reading if only to discover how human emotions and frailities play out, hope you enjoy it and look forward to reading your posts.

Summer Reading for A1: PERSUASION

To Carmen's students (Course 2008/09)

En la web de Carmen Peredo encontraréis la carta de despedida a sus Dear Daffodils.
Enjoy!

"A TALE OF TWO CITIES", Charles Dickens

As most of you know by now, you have chosen to read this novel during the Summer Term. Please buy it before Easter (I have already spoken with Tana from Pasajes Bookshop, in Genove St. to order copies for you) and start reading it, so that during the first week of the term we can do the two first chapters. I hope that you can arrange it between yourselves and distribute the four first chapters, use your lists to contact each other.

Attention Fifths, End of Term NEW NOVEL

We are finishing "Jane Eyre" this term and today we just thought that we could start a new novel straight away, which could be used to practice our English particularly from the 21th May,when we stop lessons, until the 16th June, when we sit our exams.
Do you have any suggestions? Me I propose:
1. "A Tale of two Cities", Charles Dickens,
2."Pride and Prejudice", "Emma", "Sense and Sensibility", Jane Austen;
3. "Whuthering Heights", Emily Bronte.
4. "The Mayor of Castebridge", "Tess of the Dubervilles", Thomas Hardy
5. "Therapy", David Lodge
6. Any Virginia Wolf? Any others? "Rebecca", Daphne du Maurier?
YOU HAVE A WEEK TO DECIDE...

"ANTHONY and CLEOPATRA" (Act II scene 2) , Shakespeare

ENOBARBUS
I will tell you.
The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description: she did lie
In her pavilion--cloth-of-gold of tissue--
O'er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.

THE WASTE LAND (T.S. Eliot)

I. The Burial of the Dead

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee* [A lake near Munich]
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten*, [A park in Munich]
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.* ['I am not Russian at all,
And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke's, [I am a German from
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled, [Lithuania']
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in winter. .....

II. A Game of Chess

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
Reflecting light upon the table as
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion.
In vials of ivory and colored glass,
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid--troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odors; stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
In which sad light a carved dolphin swam.
Above the antique mantle was displayed
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues, .....

SONNET 18 "Shall I compare thee to a summer´s day?" (Shakespeare)

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest;
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
William Shakepeare
(1564 - 1616)

ROMEO AND JULIET, (Act2, scene2) W.Shakespeare

ROMEO [Coming forward.]:
But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon
Who is already sick and pale with grief
That thou her maid art far more fair than she.
Be not her maid, since she is envious.
Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
And none but fools do wear it. Cast it off.
It is my lady! O, it is my love! O, that she knew she were!
She speaks, yet she says nothing.
What of that? Her eye discourses;
I will answer it. I am too bold; '
tis not to me she speaks.
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
See how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!
JULIET :
Ay me!
ROMEO:
She speaks.
O, speak again, bright angel, for thou art
As glorious to this night, being o'er my head,
As is a winged messenger of heaven
Unto the white-upturned wond'ring eyes
Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him
When he bestrides the lazy puffing clouds
And sails upon the bosom of the air....

NOTE:The scene being too long, please use the photocopies given in class to read it or check out our Website: complete scene

HAMLET (william Shakespeare) Act I Scene III

Check out our webpage to watch the video!

LORD POLONIUS
Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay'd for.
There; my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character.
Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!
LAERTES
Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.
LORD POLONIUS
The time invites you; go; your servants tend.
LAERTES
Farewell, Ophelia; and remember well
What I have said to you.
OPHELIA
'Tis in my memory lock'd,And you yourself shall keep the key of it.

2008 USA Elections - Speeches

This is just to say we have just created a new webpage in our website: 2008 USA Elections, given the fact this is no minor matter in the world.
If you look at our navigation bar on your left, as you enter our site, you'll see a category called "Activities and Links" and in that, a section called "Culture". You'll find information about the Conference we are going to host (see yellow announcement - if you click it, you'll actually get to the aforementioned section) and a webpage with Obama's and McCain's audiovisual speeches, plus the written version of Obama's speech.
Hope this is useful to expand your knowledge of English and also of the world! Best wishes

The Curious Incident...

"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" written by Mark Haddon in 2003 won both The Whitbread Novel of the Year and the Overall Winner in 2004. It is narrated by a fifteen-year old boy with autism, who lives with his father in Swindon, England. We hope the intermediate students will enjoy this innovative novel and post their comments in this section.

Check out the webpage we have for this novel at our Website!

Feedback for Published Compositions

We have started publishing students' compositions on the Dept's Website, Students' Webpage. You can post here your feedback! Remember to mention whose composition you are writing about! Enjoy!

Some Tips and a Proposal - Creating a Lit section under Activities (Website)

Hello all! TAGS: When you create (or edit) a new thread, at the bottom of the box you fill in with your text, it says: "Opciones de entrada" (Etiquetas de esta entrada), on your left, and then on your right it says "Mostrar todo". Well, you need to click on "mostrar todo" and then click on the key words (one or several) which describe the new thread and which will allow people to find that topic. How? By clicking on the TAGS/ETIQUETAS list which is on the right side of our blog (not in the thread you are creating, but on the blog - there is a list of tags, see it?). Tags are a classification system. When you write a message, you can classify it to facilitate people find it. A list of the existing tags is on the blog. This blog has, for instance, the tag "Shakespeare", which means that if you click on it in the list on the right column, you will get all the posts related to shakespeare which have been published here. The threads you created this year, with the novels, have no tags. You could "Edit" them and then in "Mostrar todo" you could click on "Fiction" at least, so that when people use the list of tags to find everything published here on novels and short stories, those threads will also appear. See what I mean?
My proposal this year is that we create a section called Literature on the Dept's Website (Culture would then be just for "other cultural stuff") and that we use it to publish bits like the one on Romans below. Then we could start a thread here, linking to the website, so that the entry doesn't use up all the screen space. Do you see what I mean? Here is an example. Imagine I start here a thread on Jane Eyre. Then we publish the content on the Dept's Website and start a thread here, to comment, including the link to the website. Here is the link to Jane Eyre.

Julius Caesar (Act III,scene I), Shakespeare

Watch the YouTube video

ANTONY
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest--
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men--
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

"THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST" (Oscar Wilde)

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) wrote poetry, plays, stories for children and a novel. He is one of the most quoted writers in English. We sincerely hope you enjoy reading this his best known play, and hope you leave your comments in this section.

"PRIDE AND PREJUDICE" (Jane Austen)

Jane Austen (1775-1817) is one of the greatest English women novelists. This, her most popular novel, features the novelists´favourite heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, and most women´s favourite hero, Mr. Darcy.
We know that all our students will enjoy the novel so please join in with your comments!

"JANE EYRE" (Charlotte Bronte)

Books to read this year!

On our website, in "Curso" we have a section with the information about textbooks and books to read. Check it out and tell us here which threads we should start to comment which books!

http://www.talkingpeople.net/goyaingles/pages/course/textbooks.html

Have a nice day! :)

Escrito al CAM

Una estudiante de quinto 07-08, con el respaldo de sus compañeras/os, presentó en julio un escrito al CAM sobre la cuestión de los niveles en Madrid (la Reforma en Madrid). Nos la ha enviado para su publicación (una vez eliminados datos suyos personales como DNI y dirección) y la podéis encontrar en nuestra web del Departamento, en la sección llamada CURSO, y la subsección NEWS (Noticias). En CURSO también tenéis una tabla de equivalencias y algún comentario sobre el problema de los niveles.
Ir a Página web del Dpto de Inglés