Thursday 23 July 2015

Farewell to High-Intermediate

I just wanted to say that it has been my pleasure to help all of my high-intermediate students perfect their English skills. You have left me with really awesome memories! I had a lot of fun working with all of you (I learned a lot from your comments and presentations) and I wish you the best of luck with any new teachers and any new experiences you will have in the future.

Of course, I'll still be at the school, teaching the intermediate class and the grammar class, so feel free to stop by and say hello!

I'll see you around!

Matthew

Tuesday 21 July 2015

Thursday July 30 2015 Blog

Can't Buy Love: Materialism Kills Marriages
  Focusing too heavily on the "for richer" part of the nuptial vows could spell disaster for a marriage, according to research published today by Brigham Young University and William Paterson University.
  In a survey of 1,700 married couples, researchers found that couples in which one or both partners placed a high priority on getting or spending money were much less likely to have satisfying and stable marriages.
  "Our study found that materialism was associated with spouses having lower levels of responsiveness and less emotional maturity. Materialism was also linked to less effective communication, higher levels of negative conflict, lower relationship satisfaction, and less marriage stability," said Jason Carroll, a BYU professor of family life in Provo, Utah, and lead author of the study.
  Researchers gauged materialism using self-report surveys that asked questions such as to what extent do you agree with these statements? "I like to own things to impress people" or "money can buy happiness." Spouses were then surveyed on aspects of their marriage.
  For one out of every five couples in the study, both partners admitted a strong love of money. These couples were worse off in terms of marriage stability, marriage satisfaction, communications skills and other metrics of healthy matrimony that researchers studied.
  The one out of seven couples that reported low-levels of materialism in both partners scored 10 to 15 percent higher in all metrics of marital quality and satisfaction. Interestingly, the correlation between materialism and marital difficulties remained stable regardless of the actual wealth of the couple.
The Things That Money Just Can't Buy
  Study authors and marriage experts noted that the findings probably have to do with the personality traits that go along with materialism. They will be published today in the Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy.
  "The finding does not necessarily mean that it is the materialism itself that damages their relationships. ... A materialistic orientation may be associated with other unidentified factors, such as childhood deprivation or neglect, which might play a more pivotal role in adult marital satisfaction," said Don Catherall, professor of clinical psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University in Chicago. "Of course, it may also simply mean that people who are more focused on making money have less energy and interest left to invest in their marriages."
  Other studies have shown that materialism is correlated with a host of personality traits and interpersonal skills that might hinder a marriage.
  "People who are materialistic tend to be narcissistic and concerned with impressing people," said Susan Heitler, a Denver-based clinical psychologist and creator of marriage resource site Poweroftwomarriage.com. "They have a tendency to be anxious, depressed, have relatively poor relationship skills and have low self-esteem. These qualities in turn can cause marital problems."
  Heitler recalls one patient who said that whenever she felt empty in her relationship, she would "fill up the hole" by buying lots of things and this would make her feel better. Her husband, who didn't share this love of buying, would then "kindly return all of it because they couldn't afford what she had bought," Heitler recounted, "and the wife was grateful that he would return it because she didn't really want the stuff in the end, but she got satisfaction from the purchasing."
By COURTNEY HUTCHISON, ABC News Medical Unit, Oct. 13, 2011

Full length article + Video from ABC News

Song: Money                           The Beatles     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k5ooaufrLM
Song: Can’t buy me love        The Beatles     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=524BS0thExg
Discussion Questions

With your partner, discuss the following questions. Feel free to ask any follow-on questions you like.

1.      How materialistic are you?  How important is money in your life?  How focused are you on making money?  Do you worry about it a lot?


2.      Is materialism such a bad thing?  What are some good points of being a materialistic person?
Is materialistic behaviour good or bad for society at large? 


3.      Can money buy happiness?  How much money is enough?


4.      Could you date or marry someone who had no interest in money or material possessions?

 
5.      Do you care what other people think about you?  Do you like to show off expensive possessions and dress to impress?  Are you narcissistic? Who do you try to impress? 


6.      How easy is it to maintain a happy and stable marriage?  What are the main obstacles that married couples face?


7.      Are you an impulsive buyer?  Do you often regret your purchases later?


8.      Do you think you are a well balanced person?


9.      How would you try to get people to get people to be less materialistic?


10.  Do you have any advice for your classmates on how to maintain a happy marriage/relationship?


Keeping up with the Joneses

Role play: Two students will play a married couple who argue a lot about how to spend their money.

Student A: 
You are ultra-materialistic. You desperately want to buy some expensive item. You want to impress all your neighbours show them that you can afford better stuff than them. Try to convince your partner to give you the money to buy it.

Student B: 

You control the money because your partner has a tendency to make rash and very expensive purchases on a whim. You don’t like spending large amounts of money on stuff you don’t need. You would rather spend the money on something more practical. 


I hope all is going well! Discuss well!
Matthew 

Tue July 28 2015 Blog Topic


Minister tells parents not to tell their daughters they’re beautiful

Parents should stop telling their children they are beautiful as this places too much emphasis on appearance, women’s minister Jo Swinson has said. The minister said parents could be storing up problems for later in their children’s lives by sending a message that looks are the most important thing needed to succeed.
Ms Swinson, 33, who is childless, said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph praising children for skills such ‘doing a jigsaw’ or ‘curiosity in asking questions’ was more appropriate. The Liberal Democrat minister was speaking ahead of the government’s ‘body confidence’ campaign. This aims to raise awareness of the positive and negative portrayals of bodies in the media and find ways of building self-esteem among young people.
According to statistics quoted by the minister, one in four children aged 10 to 15 is unhappy about their appearance. And 72 per cent of girls feel that too much attention is paid to the way female celebrities look.
Earlier this year Ms Swinson urged editors of women’s magazines ‘to shed the fad diets and fitness myths’. She said: ‘I know as an aunt, you fall into the trap of turning to your niece and saying, “you look beautiful” — because of course all children do look beautiful — but if the message they get is that is what’s important and that is what gets praise, then that’s not necessarily the most positive message you want them to hear.’ Praising someone for their appearance wasn’t ‘bad in itself – we don’t say you can’t like someone else’s dress’. But she urged parents to put comments about looks in their ‘appropriate place’.
‘Research shows that when children have no body confidence at school they’re less likely to put their hand up in class and ask a question.
‘In extreme cases you’ll have people suffering from body dysmorphia, a psychiatric disorder, where people might not feel happy to go to school and you get truancy as a result of this.’
The minister said appearance was important in certain circumstances, such as a job interview, but ‘it’s just the level to which this becomes the ultimate focus of everything’. It can become an obsession ‘where you have people who won’t go to school unless they’ve put their make-up on, or won’t leave the house unless they’ve spent two hours getting ready’.
She also said fathers have a role in ensuring their daughters don’t develop a problem with body image.
‘Perhaps they can consider what they say about women in front of their daughters, how they’re being judged and whether they’re saying any inappropriate comments suggesting that women’s value is in how they look.’
Ms Swinson said the new campaign was about raising awareness but argued it would be difficult given the some industries ‘make money out of people feeling bad about themselves’. She claimed young boys were also under pressure to look buff and muscular or to be skinny like the singer Pete Doherty.
Article from Metro.uk - Tuesday 28 May 2013

Related articles:





Discussion Questions


With your partner, discuss the following questions. Feel free to ask any follow-on questions you like.


1.     What do you think about Ms Swinton’s comments?  Does she have a point?   


2.     Do you compliment your kids/nephews/nieces etc on their appearance?
Will this article make you think twice about doing so in future?


3.     Do you worry about your appearance?  Do you feel pressure to look good?

 
4.     How long do you spend getting ready before you leave the house? Why? Is it really necessary?


5.     Do you think other people really care what you look like?  Do you judge other people on their appearances?  Do you often comment on other people’s appearance?  Why?


6.     In what situations is your appearance important and when is it not important?


7.     How do you feel about the way that magazines and other media talk about beauty and body image?  Is it irresponsible?  Is it harmful?  Should it be regulated?


8.     We could all use a little positive reinforcement. Pay everyone in your group a compliment that is not related to their physical appearance so they can leave the class feeling good about themselves.




Thursday July 23 2015 Blog Topic

Please read the article and make sure you understand the main idea and the vocabulary. I have posted the questions below to help you prepare.
Have a great class!
Matthew

Test-Tube Burger Served Up For First Time
The world's first test-tube burger, costing a whopping £250,000 to produce, has been unveiled in London.
The 5oz patty - made from lab-grown "cultured beef" - was dished up by its creator, Professor Mark Post, before journalists in Hammersmith, in the west of the capital. The scientist-turned-chef made the most expensive beefburger in history from 20,000 tiny strips of meat grown from cow stem cells over a three-month period. The billionaire co-founder of Google, Sergey Brin, put £215,000 of his own money towards the research, saying he was doing it because it could be "transformative for the world".
Chef Richard McGeown fried the burger in sunflower oil and a knob of butter before it was sampled by Josh Schonwald, author of The Taste of Tomorrow, and food scientist Hanni Rutzler. Ms Rutzler said it was "close to meat" but she was expecting the texture to be softer and it wasn't very juicy. Mr Schonwald said the "absence is the fat ... it's a leanness to it but the bite feels like a conventional hamburger". "This is kind of an unnatural experience in that I can't tell you over the past 20 years how many times I have had a burger without ketchup or onions or jalapenos or bacon."
Prof Post believes his artificial meat - known by the rather unappetising title "in-vitro meat" - could herald a food revolution and appear in supermarkets within the next 10 to 20 years. After trying his own creation for the first time, he said: "I think it's a very good start, it proved that we can do this, that we can make it and to provide a start to build upon - I am very pleased with it." He said he was not worried about the verdict on the taste and added that in a couple of months they should be able to add fat into the product.
The burger could help save the planet by cutting the billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases currently released by livestock, and may also be deemed ethically acceptable by vegetarians because it would dramatically reduce the need to slaughter animals. But its success or failure will ultimately depend on how much it resembles the taste, texture and price of real meat.
The demonstration was originally planned for October last year, with celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal cooking the burger for a mystery guest. There was pressure from journalists in the audience who wanted to try the burger but they were told there was not enough to go around. Up until now, the only outsider known to have eaten the synthetic meat was a Russian reporter who snatched a piece of cultured pork and stuffed it in his mouth during a visit to Prof Post's lab - before it had been passed as safe to eat. He was reportedly unimpressed by the pork, describing it as "chewy and tasteless".
Prof Post's team at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands conducted experiments which progressed from mouse meat to pork and finally beef - the most environmentally destructive meat. "What we are going to attempt is important because I hope it will show cultured beef has the answers to major problems that the world faces," he said. "Our burger is made from muscle cells taken from a cow. We haven't altered them in any way. For it to succeed it has to look, feel and hopefully taste like the real thing."
The ingredients don't sound like something a chef would boast about on a menu - half-millimetre thick strips of pinkish yellow lab-grown tissue, each the size of a rice grain. But Prof Post is confident he can produce a burger that is almost indistinguishable from one made from prime beef. He points out that livestock farming is becoming unsustainable, with demand for meat rocketing around the world.
The industry accounts for nearly 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions - even greater than transport - with 228 million tonnes of meat produced each year. And the environmental problems are only likely to get worse, with the UN forecasting that world demand for meat will double by 2050, largely driven by an increased demand from a growing middle class in China and other developing nations. Added to this, around 70% of all farmland is devoted to meat production, and cattle consume around 10% of the world's freshwater supplies, making meat farming a very costly, planet-damaging business.
Experts say 1kg of meat requires up to 10kg of crops to produce, making it a highly inefficient method of turning plants into human food, whereas synthetic meat uses about 2kg of feed. Research by Oxford University scientists in 2011 estimated that cultured meat needs 99% less land than livestock, between 82% and 96% less water, and produces between 78% and 95% less greenhouse gas.
The burger launched today has cost  £250,000 to produce, but the Dutch team are hoping to dramatically slash the cost by industrialising the laborious process. The Food Standards Agency said that before going on sale, synthetic meat would need regulatory approval, with manufacturers needing to prove that all necessary safety tests had been carried out.

By Alex Watts, Sky News Online - Monday 05 August 2013




Discussion Questions


With your partner, discuss the following questions. Feel free to ask any follow-on questions you like.


1.      What are your initial thoughts on this story? Is this a good idea? 


2.      Do you think you could get used to eating artificial meat products? Will it become popular?

 
3.      Do you think artificial meat will be “transformative for the world”?   In what ways?


4.      Can you think of any possible negative side effects if artificial meat catches on? 


5.      If we all start consuming artificial meats, what will be done with all the farmland that will no longer be needed? What would you like to see done with it?


6.      What other technological advances would you like to see in your lifetime?  Why?


7.      Does it bother you that animals must suffer and die so you can enjoy the taste of meat?


8.      Have you ever considered becoming a vegetarian?
If you are a vegetarian, would you eat artificial meat?


9.      Are you a fussy eater?  Explain.


10.  What is the strangest thing you have ever eaten?







Monday 20 July 2015

July 21 2015 Student Blog

Howdy everybody!

Please watch the video (a comedian). He may be a little bit hard to understand, but try and try again.
Michael McIntyre


Also, here is an aricle to read. Please read it.
https://intentious.wordpress.com/2012/10/29/i-regret-having-children-so-do-you-you-just-wont-say-it/
If the link does not work, please cut and past it into the browser. I will bring it up in the search engine then.

See you in class!
Matthew

Wednesday 15 July 2015

July 15 2015 Student Chosen Blog (Wed)


Q1. What do you think about kidnap measures in your country?

Q2. When you were young girl, what did you think of adults who you did not know?

Q3. What should we do to protects children from kidnapping?

Q4. What should the police do with people who repeat the same crime again and again?

Q5. Have you or anyone you know ever been threatened? By who? What did you do?

Q6. Would it be better is children just were not allowed to use the social media? (They can use computers, but just not social media).




Tuesday 14 July 2015

Blog Discussion July 16 2015 (Thursday)

Please read the article, try to understand the main idea of it, and have a look at the questions below.
Remember, this is the discussion for Thursday.

Man Tries to Beat Bank at its Own Game with Fine Print that Gives Him Unlimited Credit

When it comes to fine print on user agreements and terms of service, I’ve found that there are those who blame companies for making these documents so long and complicated that most people will never read them (and might not even be able to understand the terms even after reading them), and then there are those who say consumers can’t complain if they don’t first read and understand everything they agree to. Here’s a story out of Russia that should appeal to both sides of that debate.
RT News has the story of a man who looked at an unsolicited credit card offer from Tinkoff Credit Systems back in 2008 and wondered what would happen if he signed the agreement, but only after writing in his own additional terms by hand.
Among the amendments in his version of the contract — unlimited credit, 0% APR, no fees, including the stipulation that he “is not obliged to pay any fees and charges imposed by bank tariffs.” Since the contract included a URL for a web page containing the full terms of service, the customer also wrote in a new URL of his own so that the bank couldn’t just say “but these terms are different than what’s published on the site.”
Per the amended terms, every change to these terms would result in a payment of 3 million rubles ($91,000) to the customer, or a cancelation fee of 6 million rubles ($182,000).
A pretty sweet deal. No way Tinkoff would agree to it.
But of course Tinkoff did agree to it, because it did exactly what most of its customers do — accepted this contract without reading it.
“The opened credit line was unlimited,” said the man’s lawyer. “He could afford to buy an island somewhere in Malaysia, and the bank would have to pay for it by law.”
He didn’t buy that island, but he did use the card for two years, racking up only $1,363 (including interest and fees) during that time. Not bad, considering the sweet deal he’d written for himself. But of course he wasn’t paying that amount because he maintained that he had a 0% APR and could theoretically just keep making charges on the sheer promise that he’d pay up someday.
And so Tinkoff sued the customer. However, the court held that his amendments were binding since the bank accepted them, whether it looked at them or not. The court said the customer only owed the principal balance of around $575.
Perhaps emboldened by this victory, the customer then sued Tinkoff for a whopping $727,000 for its failure to honor the amended agreement and for not paying out the agreed-upon penalty of $182,000 when it cancelled his account.
“They signed the documents without looking,” explains his lawyer. “They said what their borrowers usually say in court: ‘We have not read it.’”
Tinkoff insists that it will be vindicated and that the customer will ultimately get four years in prison for fraud instead of the pile of cash he sought.
“We don’t have small print, everything is clear and transparent,” wrote the bank’s founder on Twitter. “Try to open a card – then we’ll talk. Stealing is a sin – in my opinion, of course. Not all in Russia think so.”
By Chris Morran – Consumerist - August 9, 2013


Related articles:



Discussion Questions
With your partner, discuss the following questions. Feel free to ask any follow-on questions you like.


1.     What are your thoughts on this story?  Whose side are you on, the man or the bank?
Who do you think will win in the end?


2.     Do you usually read the small print before you sign documents?  Do you usually understand it?

 
3.     Have you ever regretted not reading the small print more carefully?   


4.     Are you good at managing your finances or you often find yourself spending more than you intended to?


5.     Do you have any financial tips for your classmates to help them manage their finances better?


6.     Are you happy with the service that your bank/credit card provider gives you? Do you ever have problems with them? Have you ever complained or contested any fees they charged you?


7.     Do you think that banks in general treat their customers well? Explain


8.     If you had a credit card with 0% APR and unlimited credit, what would you do with it?