Sharing time!

After watching Brazil Vs Ivory Coast and cursing each Ivorian player I decided to surf on the Internet and check my Twitter.

As I'm a good CPE student, I've been following some English Written Newspapers and then I came across with the following Twit headline: "@cnni China 'steals U.S. thunder' ahead of G20 http://bit.ly/drGc6C"

This isn't the sort of news that would call my attention, but that idiom "Steal one's thunder", that was something special. Something that I could not left behind. Something that made me wade through this article. I remember I've already seen this idiom before, for sure it was one of Friends' Series episodes and shamefully I've forgotten to look this up.

As a matter of honor and pride, I decide to google it and them stumbled across this amazing website:

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/index.html

This website is a corpus linguistic bank of idioms. It gives you the meaning and the origin of what you are looking up.

eg. http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/steal-ones-thunder.html

To my mind, showing the origin of the idiom is one of this website special features as I always questioned myself and others when the idiom didn't make sense. At last, Higor will nevermore be interrupted by my annoying questions. LOL

There is also this website I would like to share about Language corpora:

http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/

It helps you to check the use of a word in context and also gives you the frequency rate it's used (like google).

Well, my goal here is to propose our classmates, future classmates and fellow teachers to share whatever is useful for our learning.

Danilo Antonietti Bertoni - CPE 2

Sorry, but I had to share...

It was 1998 and I was resting from my first end of semester rush at college. My mom called:

- A Husky puppy has followed me on the street. I think I'm bringing him home.
- But what about the cat? - I asked, worried about MY pet.
- I can't help, she said. It followed me to my friend's houses' door and it waited for me 'till I left! I'm bringing it home.

Ok, it was her choice. More than one hour later, mom came home. There wasn't any puppy with her. It was as big as a German Shepard and it was brought by the third taxi driver. None of the previous agreed on putting such a big dog in their cars.
- Ok, it's just a Husky, mom. Call him Lobo, as any other Husky, I said poshly

He was tired and weak from having spent such a long time on the streets and he couldn't even stand. We called the vet and made an appointment for the following day. At night I went up to him and try to stroke his head. He growled at me. I was scared and a thick wall was built between us.

I kind of liked him but I was a little afraid. Then I realized my cat didn't like him so I started to side with her. In addition, I felt a little jelous because my mother loved him so deeply but she only liked my pet.
Time went on. My cat died of cancer - poor thing. So difficult to put her to sleep...
Anyway, the days passed by and I still couldn't feel comfortable with that dog. He was big, bold, roomy and lazy.

In 2000 my mother travelled for 2 months. My sister had left home to live by herself some months earlier, thus it was just me and him. For 2 long months. "I'll just feed him and give him fresh water. That's all.", I thought, forever bearing that first night growl in mind. And along came what I now name as "our second first night".

I had just left my mother at the airport and the house was mine. I had the brilliant idea of watching The Shinning. Alone. At home. In my BIG house. I was scared to death! I went up to my bedroom, resigning myself to a sleepless night. To my surprise, that dog, that big bold roomy and lazy dog climbed the stairs behind me and tucked himself in right beside my bed. That night I could sleep. Soundly. Like an angel.

After that I was free to love that brown furry big fellow as I'd always wanted, but had been too pride to allow myself to.
Many years went on, with him bothering me so many times to walk him, embarassing me so often by pooping in front of my neighbours' doors, annoying me by barking at every single dog that would pass by my house at 2 in the morning. On weekends, at the crack of dawn he would open my bedroom door, wake me up to walk him. Extremelly angry, I would turn the other side and come back to sleep only to wake up later and find my books all peed.
I remember bathing him on hot summer days as an excuse to have an outdoors shower myself. More than once he would escape from the leash to seek asylum under my mom's legs - completely wet and covered with soap.

Last week Lobo was gone. Gone for good, after having escaped so many times to chase cute little lady dogs.
He is asleep forever, after so many nights sleeping by my side. Cancer has won again and has taken another pet away from me - this time the pet I would never forget. The big, bold, roomy and lazy lovely dog.

R.I.P., Lobo. May dog's heaven be full of books for you to pee on, comfy sofas for you to sleep on and cute little lady dog for you to chase. I'll deeply miss you.

Ilá -CPE 2

Books Suggestions

Lately I’ve surrendered to the work of two current female writers whose best-selling books are absolutely worth reading. Due to university influences, I was so used to reading classic literature that I’d despise any kind of trendy-fashion-everybody’s reading kind of book. However, such extreme decision has gradually changed.
Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love has sold million copies worldwide and has been translated for more than 36 languages. After hearing Higor and Débora commenting on it (thanks guys!) and searching for it on the Internet, I decided to read it and for my surprise it definitely enchanted me. It’s about the author’s personal memories and search for peace, well-being and God during her trips to Italy, India and Indonesia, after years of a troubled marriage and a devastating divorce. It’s a smooth, funny and involving kind of narrative which makes you keep on reading as much as possible. What I most admire about it is the way it leads you to think your life over through Gilbert’s experiences. You might not have traveled to the places she visited or you might not have been married yet, but you can entirely sympathize with her pain, findings, urges and wishes since they can be found within each human being’s life journey.
Helen Fielding’s Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination is the book I’m reading now and I recommend it. It tells the story of a British journalist whose overactive imagination makes her suspect she’s just met a member of Al-Qaeda disguised as a French playboy. Even though, she’s in love with him, she cannot trust him since her life seems to be at stake. As a matter of fact, she doesn’t even know if he’s a dangerous person or if her imagination is playing with her. It’ll certainly attract anyone who’s interested in adrenaline and laughter all packed up in a comic adventure narrative. Fielding is famous for Bridget Jones’s Diary and Bridget Jones: The Edge of the Reason, her two best-sellers which confirm her talent and irreverence when creating comic real modern heroines.
Hence, these are my two reading suggestions. Besides all the fuzz around the millions of copies they’ve sold, the fame achieved by their authors and the fact that they deal with the ‘female world’, they are really must read books for everyone, especially for the ones who are willing to have an interesting and fun reading time.

Hope you enjoy them!
Ana Paula Biazon Rocha – CPE 2 – Mornings

Life on Mars – BBC from January 2006 to April 2007.

If you need only one reason to watch the two seasons of Life on Mars, I will quadruple it. It’s great fun, astonishing production, stunning location and breathtaking soundtrack.
It all begins when DCI (Detective Chief Inspector) Sam Tyler from the Manchester and Sanford Police is hit by a car and wakes up in 1973, working at the same station but a step lower at the police hierarchy. Sam then finds himself having to work for an extremely violent and degenerate police force which is under the command of Gene Hunt – the Gene Genie, a violent alcoholic sexist but efficient DCI.
For those who like a well weaved detective story, Life on Mars is a must see. If you belong to the geeks-who-love-time-travel-and-sci-fi group, it’s needless to say your Star Trek days won’t be missed. And, beyond the musical reference for rock and roll lovers, there’s also the historical reference of the British police violence and the seventies background.
Featuring flawless performances, Life on Mars fits all needs. It has aroused so much interest of such a different audience that it was awarded with an American version and a sequel – Ashes to Ashes. And ultimately, if none of the above suits your taste, you can merely lay back and enjoy the picturesque sights of the secluded 1970s Manchester framed by its gloomy always grey sky.

Ilá Coimbra - CPE 2 - mornings

Shutter Island

Hi there, it's Mariana from the evening group, how are you?
Yesterday me and my boyfriend went to the movies to see The Shutter Island. In my opinion, it's one of the best movies I've ever seen! I highly recommend everyone to see it!
And today, after spending about 3 days with no reading (sorry Higor :P ), I just continued reading You've Been Warned, by James Patterson, and I'm loving every second of it. It's the first time in my life that I honestly say that would like to have more spare hours to read! It's amazing for me to say that because I've always been the type of girl who would read just the necessary and nothing more, and would rather watch the movie than read the book. I'm starting to think that books in English are contagious!
Hope you enjoyed my tips.
Cheers.

The Husband, by Dean Koontz

Dean Koontz is one of the most successful writers of thrillers in America nowadays, and I have read a few of his books, having thoroughly enjoyed most of them. I highly recommend Odd Thomas, Life Expectancy and Velocity.

When I say I enjoyed most but not all of the books I've read of his, it's because he has a knack for solving his mysteries in a supernatural/spiritual fashion, and I'm both afraid of and uninterested in such stories. Cold Fire, for example, is a fascinating story up to the very end, where he decides it is OK to explain everything by way of extraterrestrial communication and the like.

Due to all that, I now only buy a Dean Koontz if the blurb pretty much guarantees that nothing is going to be explained with E.T.'s, spirits, possession, reincarnation or anything like that. That seems to be the case of The Husband, and I promise that, should he disappoint me again, this will be the last book of his I'll ever read.

It's a most gripping story! A 27-year-old gardener -the husband of the title- is going about his business on one of those boiling Californian summer days when his phone goes off. On the other end of the call is his wife, saying she loves him no matter what and that he should remember that forever. A man then takes over and says he has 60 hours to come up with 2 million dollars if he ever wants to see his wife again. Mitch, the gardener/husband, desperately tries to explain to the stranger that there must be a mistake, since he's merely a gardener and has, at best, 11 thousand dollars to his name in the bank, to which the man answers "I know.".

Before hanging up, the kidnapper asks Mitch to look to the other side of the street at a man who's leisurely walking his dog. The moment Mitch looks, he hears a single shot and sees the man's head exploding from it. The kidnapper finally says, "so that you don't think we're kidding", and hangs up.

I started the book yesterday morning, and read over 100 pages in a day. It's one of those page-turners you just can't put down, and so far I'd say it might be one of Koontz's best. Let's see if it'll stay that way or if he'll manage to squeeze in otherworldly elements in the story.

CPE 1 and 2 Writing of the Week

Dear all,

I know I should've put this up last Friday but I just couldn't. Anyways, here are the suggested writing topics of the week:

1) (mandatory for CPE 1) A radio programme is running a competition to find the 'Personality of the Decade'. Listeners wishing to nominate a personality are asked to write letters to the radio station giving details of the individual they have chosen and why they think this person should win the title. The person should be well-known and should have made a significant contribution in their field during the past ten years.

Write your letter.

2) (mandatory for CPE 2) Your college has been given funding to improve its leisure and sports facilities for students. The college principal has asked people to send in proposals on how the money can be best spent. In your proposal comment on the present facilities, and make recommendations for improving and extending them.

Write your proposal.

The assignments are due Friday, March 12th.