Individual Oral Practice

On the right-hand side of the picture there is a robot, but not a common one, because it takes the body shape of a woman and a face that make it looks almost alive. In the middle there is a white robot and next to him, on the left, another robot with blue and yellow paint details. Behind of them three, and on the left hand side of the picture, there are panels with different colors and logotypes, which are probably sponsoring the robots. It is worth noting that as we analyze the machines from left to right, they become more human-like; what was mentioned has a direct relation with the caption "HELPING US TO WORK OR REPLACING HUMAN WORKERS?", which is directly related to the to the topic science and technology. 

In the society we live today, technology plays a very important part in our daily living. It has always been there to help us in our everyday situations like work, transport, communications, medical purposes and at home. In fact, technology has given us the power to support our rapidly growing needs in order to survive. But we must ask ourselves which is the damage that this development is bringing to humanity.  As the image itself and the caption suggest, are the machines helping us or they are replacing us?. 

Taking a pessimistic position I can say that we in a few years we will end up like in the movie WALL-E from Disney: sitting all day in a couch because machines will do all the work. For example, technology has taken a very important role in social relationships, by the mean of social networks and globalization. Nowadays you can contact a person that lives far away by simply taking your phone and writing them, with no need to be physically with them. If you ask your parents how their relationship started, probably you father will tell you that he took your mother to a lot of dates, but you will have to tell your children that you fall in love texting their mother by Facebook. Again, we must ask ourselves, are we really making progress if we are moving backwards in a basic and very important activity like socialization?. 

In conclusion, we must say that technology has been very helpful for society, but all overages are harmful, and we are not focusing in what is really important. Maybe we should start appreciating little activities in life, instead of taking them as an obligation.

Interactive oral activity.

 

What is the main idea of this son and video clip? To represent the book and his characters by images(video), and the main theme in the book(duality of human nature) using the song.

How is it similar to the novella? Some characters of the novel appear in the video and are named on the song, with their corresponding basic characteristics. Also some settings like the laboratory and Dr. Jekyll's house are represented on the video.

How is it different from the novella? Anyone can imagine a character, setting, or anything in the book as he want, and no one can make a character representation - or any representation - which fits exactly with the mental image that anyone have. Also, Mr. Hyde is very distant of the book representation(small,shrunken, etc.) 

How it is linked to the option topic health? 

1) The fact of using external things like chemicals or drugs to change your personality is very common. It's linked to health because it affects you body and how it works normally.

2) The potion changes the physical appearance of Dr. Jekyll. Anything external which change your body can be related to health.

3) The book is commonly associated with the rare mental condition often spuriously called "split personality", referred to in psychiatry as dissociative identity disorder, where within the same body there exists more than one distinct personality. 

How can you link it to the core topic "Social Relationships" ? Dr.Jekyll uses Mr.Hyde to "unleash" his evil side and to preserve his honorable and respected name. This difference between both of them can be seen in the song "My clothes will impress you, and my claws will undress you". It shows the complete contrast between both of them: Dr.Jekyll use good clothes because he is rich and a man of good habits, and Mr.Hyde uses large claws and goes around doing things he shouldn't.

How can a mental illness affect one's social relationships? With a mental illness you stop being yourself. You stop being the same person people used to know, and probably you become a disagreeable person, you can`t appear in public because it's difficult for you to differentiate between what's good and bad, etc. So the decision that society commonly take is to avert this kind of people from society, which obviously completely interrupts your social relationships.

Personal comments. I think a reflection or a discussion after reading a book is completely important to fully understand it. It helps you to go beyond what you can read, and helps you to understand the themes behind it and what the author is trying to reach. In this case it helped me to understand how important reputation is and how it can affect your social relationships.

Social Skills and Homeschooling Myths and Facts.

j) The myth that homeschooling inhibits the development of socialization skills was born out of a misconception of what it's like to homeschool. They do not study all day, they learn in and out of their homes, and participate in a lot of activities. 

Dr Moore says that is a myth that children need to be around many other youngsters in order to socialize, quite the contrary, they do not respond well to large groups. They are best socialized by parents.

Also, this is supported by Dr.Patricia Lines, and she also adds that children that go to school are never alone and their after-school lives are packed full of activities, instead of homeschooling kids that have time for their own, to discover what they love to do.

k) That they have problems with developing socialization skills. They break the stereotype using empirically proven facts, and using information that comes from people trained in these areas, like Dr. Moore and Dr. Lines.

John Barleycorn: Alcoholic Memoirs.

First Part.

[ a ] Sympathy ; [ b ] Seasoned ; [ c ] Stagger ; [ d ] Dipsomaniac ; [ e ] Numbly ; [ f  ] Vision ;    [ g ] Babble ; [ h ] Universe ; [ i ] Pathway ; [ j ] Clear 

Second Part.

a) Himself.
b) Excesivist.
c) Stupid, unimaginative, brain bitten.
d) He's different because only his brain is drunk, but his body isn´t . The unimaginative one, on the other hand, is body drunk, and constantly falls, and stagger.
e) That he is going to die.
f) To emphasize.
g) That he is mortal, he know he is going to die.
h) Bad days, full of pessimism, but also enjoying freedom ( life is a joke ).
i) Suicide, quick or slow, a sudden spill or a gradual oozing away through the years, is the price John Barleycorn exacts.
j) Meagreness.

The concept of beauty

"Our perception of what is beautiful vary with time and culture."

As time goes on, people change, and consequently, culture too. A long time ago, arround 3000 years BC, egyptians appreciated pyramids as something beautiful. In contrast, now we like high technology buildings. Also, women dressed differentlly than they do now, and people thought that was beautiful. Then, our perception of beauty depends on what time we are, and also in our culture. Although two different cultures are living simultaneously, they normally appreciate beauty from diferent points of view.

What makes a beautiful woman? What makes a beautiful man?

Commonly we associate beauty with the body of each person, but there are more influencing factors, like attitude. Maybe a woman has an astonishing beauty

LOTF

Let´s welcome Jack, one of the survivors of an extreme experience on an island. Jack was flying with a group of children on a transportation plane that was shot down to the ocean. Today he will tell us about his experience, and how it feels like to be completely out of touch with civilization. Jack :

¿ How did you organize when you “arrived” at the island?

That’s a good question. When the plane was shot down on the ocean, all of us were scattered by the wreck, but fortunately, the choir boys always stayed near me. When we were wandering around the island, a blast was heared in the entire place. My first thought was that it came from some sort of ship, but when I got closer to the place where the sound was originated, I noticed that one of the boys was trying to summon us. Once there, we laughed at a fat boy called Piggy, and we choose a leader. Regrettably, a donkey called Ralph was elected instead of me, but I was called leader of the group of hunters, that was composed by all the choir boys.

¿What problems did you have on the island?

The principal problems we encountered on the island were getting food, maintaining a fire that was used for attracting the ships that were sailing around, the littluns, and Ralph.

Getting food was very hard at the beginning because we had to get it hunting. By the end of our days on the island, the choir boys and I were practically experts. The fire problem was very associated with Ralph and the fire. Whenever we were hunting, the fire was dying, and that originated a lot of problems with Ralph, besides other ones originated because of some differences we had. The littluns, on the other hand, where always playing and never helped us on our duties. Moreover, one of them invented that there was a beast on the island.

¿ How did you try to solve those problems ?

The littluns problem was never solved, they were always playing, and they never stopped believing in the beast. As I said before, at the end of our days the food problem was solved.  The problem with Ralph and the fire was solved at the same time: when I decided to separate myself from the group, and form another one without Ralph, we stopped maintaining the fire, because it was Ralph order to keep it going.

¿ Can you name some important events that happened on the island?

Our very first important problem was the beast. A littlun with a mulberry colored birthmark mentioned something about a snake-beast, and all of the littluns, and some of us, were scared. One day Samneric saw the beast and the top of a mountain, and when we climbed up to saw it with our own eyes, we confirmed it was true. That scared me a lot.

Also, by the end of our days on the Island, we started a big fire to catch Ralph, who was trying to fight me. It was important because the fire was very big, and because it helped us to escape from the island.

The first time we killed a pig was an important event too. We finally got something big to eat, but we neglected the fire and a ship passed near the island and didn’t saved us.

¿ Were there many arguments or fights among the boys on the island ?

No. The majority of the problems were between me and Ralph. We all were angry with the littluns because they didn’t work, but there was nothing we could do about it.  

¿ What did you miss most while living on the island?

The warm food prepared by my mom. A comfortable and warm bed to sleep in, and my family. I am tired of eating meet, and of sleeping in the ground. I never stopped missing  my family.

¿ What did you learn from this experience ?

That all of us have a dark side we don’t show, and probably don’t know that exist. People, in extreme situations, can do very ugly things. Things that I am trying to forget right now.

Thank you Jack! I’m sure you want to rest right now. Thank you for coming and sharing with us your experience.

Quote and written task.

1) "Advertising is everywhere you look, whether it is in the newspaper you pick up daily or on that billboard you see while driving down the highway.."

Though we like it or not, it is everywhere we look. When we walk in the street, when we see TV, and in every daily activity. This is mainly beacause of the electronic devices and the globalization. Information and advertising can be everywhere at anytime.


2) Written task: How advertisements afect people. 

Advertisements affect people in many ways. In fact, advertising is to  encourage, persuade, or manipulate an audience to continue or take some new action. 
When people hear the word advertisements, they commonly think about buying something, but there are a lot of functions of advertisements, and therefore many ways in wich they affect us. 

The first of them obviously is the common advertisement that is trying to sell something. The owner of the company that produces a product spend a huge amount of money in ads , because they are very important at the moment of selling something. Maybe we don't notice in the moment that we are being afected, but someday we will. Maybe the cookies that we saw on television last month, will be in the supermarket the day we go shopping, and we will buy them because they looked delicious when we saw them ; or the car washing service that we heard on the radio last week will be necessary because our car got dirty. 

Companies are part of the economy, and the ads have effect on the incomes of the companies. The economy is a very important element in every goverment, and if we live in a country that has an unstable economy, our lives will very affected.  

In addition, what controls the economy and the companies is the goverment. The political and ideological ads are very common in political campaings. They really affect the decision of what man or women we are going to chose to represent us.

Concluding, I would like to say that ads have more influence on us than what we notice, at the moment of buying some service or product, at the moment we choose our goverment, or "indirectly" like in an economy.

Quote analysis.

"The very first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise and cultivate the delightfully vague." Bill Cosby.

I fully agree with Bill Cosby’s quotation. Finally, what is sold doesn't have too much connection with it's advertising. In other words, the advertising doesn't have a big relation with the product itself.

What makes the difference between a successful ad and a bad one is the deepness and strength of the image(or idea) that is built around the product in order to persuade the consumers. A clear  example for this is that, as an exaple: successful soaps - in our mind - do not just clean but purify, and a car is not metal and gasoline at all, but the symbol of the power you have. Society then, is more interested in the “delightfully vague” promise than in a concrete one.

"In general, my children refused to eat anything that hadn't danced on TV" 
Erma Bombeck.

Advertising Analysis

http://mseffie.com/justfor/Ad_Analysis/Crocs.jpg

1) What product or service is the comercial trying to sell?

An innovative version of the well-known crocs.

2) Where was the comercial set?

It seems to be a dock, with some stores in it (left side of the picture). Probably is a dock because people usually take walks in them. Then, if you see that a woman is taking a walk using crocs, is happy and looks comfortable, the new crocs are fulfilling their function.

3) Who was on the commercial?

There is a pretty woman(smiling), besides two people walking far away in the dock. I think she is alone because the ad is highlighting her and the crocs. The position of the  woman legs are doing it too ( highlighting ).

4) What objects are in the comercial?

There are no objects in it. Only the clothes that the woman is using: the new product that crocs is trying to sell, white pants, and a colorful blouse.

5) What happened in the commercial?

There is a happy woman, smiling, and walking. She has one hand in his pocket and is holding his bag with the other one.

6) What is the target group?

Woman, obviously. Specifically two types of woman: 

a) The ones that wear crocs, but don't take them out to the street because they are ugly.

b) The ones that doesn't wear them, because they are ugly, although they are comfort.

7) What is the message?

Implicit. Buy the new crocs and you will look as the woman: Happy, because now you can take the comfort to the street, and still look beautiful. 

Explicit: The new crocs are as comfortable as they were, and also they are beautiful now.

8) Do you find celebrity endorsement?

No, only the woman mentioned.But It would be useful to have a celebrity in the ad.