Melbourne Cup Day

Photos taken yesterday somewhere in Sydney. Do you know where?

• Check your emails. You will receive and invitation to a party. Please reply following the structure that we learnt last week (refusing an invitation).
• Today is Melbourne Cup Day. Do you know anything about it? Check the information in the Australian Government Culture and Recreation Portal, Melbourne Cup, and answer the following questions:

1. What is it?
   
2. When does it take place? (time and date)
   
3. What happens to the nation on that day?
   
4. What is a sweep?
   
5. What would you be looking for if you checked the milliners directory on the Racetrack Fashions link?
   
6. How long has the Melbourne Cup been around (existed/taken place)?
   
7. Which is Austalia's most famous racehorse? Why?
   
8. What can you see in the National Museum of Australia?
   
9. Who won the 2006 Melbourne Cup?
   
10. What do you think about all of this?
    
11. Use the answers to these questions to write a short report about the Melbourne Cup, with your opinion about it at the end. You can compare it to other celebrations or festivities in Australia or in your country of origin.

• Last Tuesday Luisa Odelli, one of the college career counsellors, gave a talk about educational & vocational pathways. She showed us two very useful websites with course and work information: TAFE Find a Course and My Future. You should start thinking about your pathway for next year.
  
• Last Tuesday we corrected all the answers of the webquest. Well done everyone and thank you to Marta for helping all of you.... Today you can write a draft of your report. Email it to me or print it and revise it before we can check it together.


• Did you email your questions about Grant Mizens to me?


• Today's ESOLForum question is about drivers. First do this short dictation in Time4English: Advanced 3L, Bad drivers!. Then go to the last entry of our ESOL forum and give your opinion. Don't forget to read everyone else's opinion before you write yours.

Health Expo 2007

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• On Wednesday 16th May the Student Association is holding Health Expo 2007. There will be some fund raising activities, like the lunch prepared by the AMEP students. There will be raffles and good prizes to be won. The money raised will go to the paralympic athletes. It is a very well organised event, please go and visit all the information stalls and talk to them about what they offer. To help you with the vocabulary and content of your surveys and podcasts, check the following activities:

1. Go to Time4English, News Library 7J. Read the article Hot Chips cause Cancer. It's a good idea to read the three levels, it will help you with vocabulary and comprehension.

2. Now read the article 7Y Take-Away Food Dangerous. Read the three levels.
In your blog write a summary of both articles and tell us what you think.

3. Check the following links to help us prepare for Health Day:
Better Health Obesity. Do the worksheet Obesity. (You can print it or do it online This is part of your reading assessment for level 4)
Better Health Skin Cancer, download the worksheet Skin Cancer.(You can print it. This is part of your reading assessment for level 4).
They have a BMI Calculator. You just enter your height and weight and it'll tell you your BMI and if it's healthy or not. (Thanks Marion for the tip!)
Check their health quizzes to get more ideas for yours.

• And talking about health and fashion, did you know that Spain decided to ban models that are too thin?. Read about it in the Sydney Morning Herald and the ABC7news. Write your opinion in our forum.Look for the topic called Thin Models and read everyone's opinion before adding yours.

Answer theses questions and then write an article in your blog, including your opinion:

1. What triggered the ban?
2. What's BMI?
3. What BMI should a model have to be allowed to participate in fashion parades in Spain?
4. What's the average height, weight and BMI of a runway model?
5. What are the arguments for and against?
6. Check the meanings of gaunt, emaciated and wan. You can find many dictionaries on the Internet (just write dictionary into Google). One of them is the Merrian-Webster
7. How can you calculate someone's BMI?

• When you have time, you can listen to last year's student podcasts on the Health Expo 2006. They interviewed many of the doctors and health staff on the day. There are links to all their podcasts here.

To do at home

• Forum: Read all the opinions from last week's forum about fashion. Write an opinion text in which you present the different points of views and at the end you give your personal opinion in a conclusion. Before writing it, look at the explanations and examples in your text book (Unit 18).
• Go to Time4English and in the grammar book, letter a do the two exercises on articles.
• We were talking about noun groups fro the writing of reports and we did an exercise on how to order the adjectives in front of the noun (size-quality-age-colour-place/origin). As it is quite hard to remember, I thought you may like to do extra practice on it. Here are some more exercises: The order of adjectives & Adjective order. If you want to know more about them you can visit this site, Adjectives, where there is a more complete table (they add material and a couple of exercises.

Expresing opinion

• Congratulations, Lei! You were the first one to find out the name of these native flowers. They are known as flannel flowers (Actinotis helianthii is their scientific name). I have seen them amongst eucalyptus trees in Sydney reserves and national parks in sandstone areas. One was never able to enjoy them at home before. As you know, you are not allowed to pick wild flowers from the bush, but now they are growing them commercially and are found in flower shops in spring.
  
  I'm preparing an interview with a young Sydneysider, Nikki, who is involved in many things. As fashion is one of them, I would like you to give your opinion about fashion and other topics related to it in this week's forum.
• If you didn't have time to listen to Vukosava's podcast in Splendid Speaking last week, do it now. We will be working on it later on.
• Listen to another movie review from Time4English. You can start a list of verbs and adjectives used in these reviews. It will help you with your own review writing and it will help you with your spoken activities and radio programs.
• Also in Time4English, in the grammar book, go to the letter i and do the ED / -ING exercise. You will find a list of adjectives useful for your movie review.
• Then go to the letter p, do the exercises for plenty of, a lot of , a little, a few. It will reinforce what we did in class last Tuesday.
• Finally in English Lessons - Upper Intermediate / Advanced do the first Tenses quiz.