SAA 6 "INGRID BETANCOURT "

Hi everyone!

This amazing assignment was done by Michelle and she chose to talk about the heroine Ingrid Betancourt.

A LITTLE ABOUT INGRID BETANCOURT AND HER SOME BITTER LESSONS IN LIFE

Ingrid Betancourt was born in Colombia on December 25, 1961 and grew up in Paris, France. She returned toColombia in 1989 and became a Senator in 1998. She was kidnapped by the rebel group FARC (Revolutionary

Armed Forces of Colombia) in February 2002, while campaigning to become president. She was rescued six and a half years later in July 2008 with other 14 hostages.

In July 2008, I read about her rescue in Epoca magazine and I was very impressed about her suffering and courage to support all the torture during those years and the doubt of not knowing when it would end. Since then, I started to read everything that was published about her.

So, I read that she wrote a book called “Even Silence has an end”, in Portuguese “Não Há silêncio que não termine”. In this book, she recounts how she was repeatedly beaten, humiliated and threatened with death while being kept prisoner in Colombia's jungle.

I heard an interview in BBC website that she talks about it and she started with:

“The first and most important of all is that we are all captives of something in our free life. We always justify what we do or how we behave because we’ve had this problem or this other. I came to the conclusion that you can be deprived of all kinds of freedom – the freedom to eat, or to drink or to speak to somebody or to move or even to choose to go pee or not to pee, very basic things... But they cannot deprive you from the freedom of being and of choosing who you want to be.”

In this interview, she recounts about the difficult process of writing the book:

“And then, once I was confronted to the blank paper, and I just unleashed the memory, I was there in the jungle again. It was emotionally very, very stressing”.

But, I also found some bad things about her. Some of her fellow hostages wrote unflattering accounts of being held captive with her. Three US military contractors say in their book that she was selfish and one of them says that she was even worse that the FARC guards. Mr. Stansell accuses her of telling their Farc guards that the Americans were CIA agents and they were almost killed because of this.

Mr Gonsalves says Ms Betancourt put pressure on Farc commanders to keep the Americans out of her shelter. However, he wrote that his opinion of her changed after she agreed to share her radio with him. "Maybe she was not the person we thought she was. Maybe Ingrid has a far more complicated and multi-dimensional person than she'd allowed us to believe." Mr. Gonsalves developed a close friendship with Ms Betancourt, he says, and came to admire the former Colombian presidential candidate. "She's a tough woman. She used to give those guerrillas a hard time."

She ends the interview saying: “I think we are in a world where we tend to strive for stupid things… in that striving for stupid things – money, fame, all those kind of glittering stupid things – we forget the essential. We are so frightened to feel pain that we don’t want to look to the pain of others. And we are like the world, we want to forget that there are people suffering”.

I read a comment and I have to agree with this: Ingrid Betancourt remains as an enigma. But, I will read the book and try to discover the mystery because I think she is a strong woman and must be heard or, in this case, read.

Links:

Interview with Ingrid Betancourt: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9015000/9015751.stm

Comments from three fellow hostages: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7914287.stm

Interview at Oprah part 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS42aH3q-d8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjert3Q7lpU&NR=1

by Michelle- Executive Assistant

The importance of WRITING

Hi everyone!

As you must have noticed, the previous postings have been about Student's assignments.

I'm very excited to find out that, not only most of my students enjoy doing these tasks, that is, looking for a current events article, read, check the vocab and write about it, but many readers, from many parts of the world, are enjoying READING these writings.

This for me is extremely rewarding, as I am an avid reader and an "experimental writer" myself.

The sad thing is that, many people do not understand the importance of writing, especially if they are learning a new language.

Writing should always be a priority; it's when you write that you realize what you know and what you don't know. Also, it's an extremely rich way to improve your vocabulary and knowledge about current events and other cultures.

I hope that these samples can help you to bear in mind the importance of DAILY reading and WEEKLY writing. As you can see, these assignments are intelligent and simple. My students tell me that it takes them between 20 minutes to 60 minutes to read and prepare this assignment.

SAA 5 Oil Spill

Hi everyone!

This is a summary of a piece of news from Kariéllen. It's about BP oil spill.

BP finally seals leaking Gulf of Mexico oil well

On April 20^th, the worst accident about oil spill in the Us history happend, when the deepwater horizon rig blew up, killing eleven workers and later sinking.

After eighty seven days , the rupture was sealed after spewed more than four millions of barrels of oil into de Gulf of Mexico.

The BP company put a temporary cap in the hole on July 15^th, sealed the flow, but last Thusday they linked up with the rupture weel and started to pumping out cement. Because of this, the cap wasn’t necessary anymore and the spill was permanently closed.

The spill oil finished but the environment damage is still a nightmare to hundreds of miles of US coast. The oil arrived in many beaches and killed many sea animals. How to clean up everything?

Obama said: “we are commited to do everything possible to make sure the Gulf of Mexico recovers fully from this disaster. But will it be possible?

Maybe it’s impossible to rebuild everything or it will spend too much time and money. The oil can be degradated by the nature luckly, would be worse.

Now all the oil company must think about it and has a plan in cases of accident like this, because the consequences are so serious and affect all the world.

Kariéllen, Quality Control Analyst

ARTICLE http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/11365122

VIDEO http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10848147

SAA 4

Hi everyone!

This SAA is from my student Eduardo.

This is the link from the website:http://www.astro.iag.usp.br/index.php?dir=inst&file=hist.php

And this is his summary:

New Sun Eruption May Supercharge Northern Lights

Today, everybody forgets to look the sky at least one time during the day, but even so, after billions of years, the sun light continues to reach the Earth with big power.

Day after day the scientists try to discover better renewable sources of energy and now some progress was obtained transforming the sun light in electricity to use in our home, car and industries.

In the interesting text published in the FOXNEWS site, you can see a few examples about the quantity of energy generated in the interior of the sun. Each ejection of matter

Is launched to the space in big speed (100,000 Kilometers/Second) and the plasma has temperatures around 1.5 millions of grades Celsius.

I believe one day in the future the man will find a way to use more efficiently all this energy we need.

The following video can help to illutrate this topic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2Bhf42uY3E

Eduardo, Process Manager

Very interesting, indeed Eduardo! Thanks a million!

SAA 3 (Student's Awesome assignment 3)

Hi students!!!!!

This very interesting summary is about and article from www.time.com:http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2013917,00.html#ixzz107C6vgcH

This is the summary my student Cristina wrote about it, as well as some key words:

Who Are Gypsies, and Why Is France Deporting Them?

Editorial review

The recent decision of the French President Nicolas Sarkozy, promoting the Gypsies deportation in France, raises once again the question of persecution and intolerance with these people. They are offering 300 Euros to the Gypsies willing to leave France voluntarily.

The Gypsies or Roma, as they are known in Europe, is a people that haven’t found home since they were expelled from India, probably during the Muslim invasion in 11^th century. Most people thought they were from Egypt, hence the name “Gipsy”.

The intolerance with these people is recurrent, since their immigration to the Europe. Because of difficulties in establishing then, has created an image of them as nomads, bandits, children predators, but great dancers.

As the Jews and the homosexuals, the Gypsies were persecuted and murdered by the Nazis and now, with the Sarkozy’s decision, we probably went back to the Nazism and others kind of racial intolerance.

How long will we live with this kind of racial oppression, where a people judge themselves better than another and with the right to arbitrate in their lives?

300 Euros will be enough for the French to “get rid” of living with the Gypsies?

Are they members of the European Community or not?

Vocabulary

Somehow = de alguma maneira

Cheat = fraude

Slang = gíria

Bounced = devolvida

Settlements = assentamentos

Scuffle = briga

Allegedly = supostamente

Riot = motim

Aside = de lado

Bigotry = fanatismo

Unlawfully = ilegalmente

by Cristina, H.R. Manager

Congrats, Cristina! It's a very interesting topic and your essay was great, raising many points about prejudice, tolerance, bias, etc.

BTW, here is Shakira's video, called "I'm a Gypsy". It's quite catchy! ENJOY!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-UgXXTffg8

"crazy" Uncountable Nouns

Hi Everyone!
Let's review countable and uncountable nouns.
COUNTABLE: Things you can count: table, books, people, etc...
UNCOUNTABLE: Things that you cannot count: air, water, coffee....

However, there are certain words that seem to be countable, especially because they are countable in Portuguese. But, surprisingly, they are not. Here is the list:

INFORMATION
EQUIPMENT
LUGGAGE
ADVICE
IDENTIFICATION
MAIL
EVIDENCE

...

Well, I think that these are the most incorrectly used words.

Therefore, you cannot use those words in plural. Informations, equipments, advices... WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! That's why I call these words "crazy", because in Portuguese, they are perfectly countable! In English, they cannot be used in plural.

So, let's see the quantifiers now.

COUNTABLE	UNCOUNTABLE
MANY/FEW	MUCH/LITTLE
A NUMBER OF	AMOUNT OF
FEWER (THAN)	LESS (THAN)
One, two, three....	A piece of, two pieces of, three pieces of...

So, you cannot say: "Let me give you 2 advices", but you can say "Let me give you two pieces of advice". I know, it does sound weird, but if you learn how to use, you get used to it, this new structure of "crazy" uncountable nouns.

I found this video on youtube about "Eminem's 10 pieces of advice for kids" on David Letterman's show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPm9Q7TjVGo

There's also this video talking about the best piece of fitness equipment:

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/2011959/6430011

So... Keep practicing!

CAN OR CAN'T?

Hi everyone!

What's the difference between CAN AND CAN'T?

CAN- AFFIRMATIVE

CAN'T- NEGATIVE

Of course you know that, that's crystal clear!

I mean, the PRONUNCIATION of these two words?

For example, an American would never pronounce the word "can't":

EX:

1. I can go there

2. I can't go there

For those of you who are used to working with native English speakers, you must have gone through some awkward situations in which you did not know, or was not sure whether the speaker had said CAN or CAN'T, right?

So, how to solve this?

This, my dears, can be easily solved when you learn the importance of INTONATION.

AFFIRMATIVE

When someone says "I can do it", for example, the stress falls upon the verb, not upon CAN itself:

I can DO it.

She can USE it.

They can MAKE it.

You can UNDERSTAND.

NEGATIVE

If you are saying in the negative form, then, the stress will fall upon the word "CAN'T", which will be pronounced "CAN":

I CAN'T do it.

She CAN'T use it.

They CAN'T make it.

You CAN'T understand.

Got it?

I will try to post a video here, giving more examples.