Finally I have succeeded in uploading your e-books to the Internet.

You can click on the icons below to open them. Please wait until the book is completely charged before opening it or you might not have access to all the pictures and / or audio illustrations.

Notice that I haven't been able to include the audio files I had received too late. I will include them (maybe during the vacation but not now). Unfortunately, there are still some mistakes and and typos but I haven't corrected them either (NO time.... :s).

Hope you have enjoyed completing this project even if I am totally aware it was straining (i.e. extremely tiring) for both you and me. What you have achieved is of great level.

You can be proud to show your work around! Congratulations to you all!

Take care,
Mr Hattais.

1	2
3	4
5	6
7	8

Now that you have read / listened to the fairy tales, it's your turn to elect the best one!

Fill in the survey below:

Hey,

today we finished the lesson on Road safety with a very good presentation by Juliette of the poster from last time.

To finish the lesson, here is the lastest French advertisement campaign I told you about for road safety against drink-driving:

Then I gave you a new document to work on; it was an extract from the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. We analysed it and saw how difficult it was at first sight and how easy it was to understand in the end.

Finally, we were able to watch 10 minutes of the movie "The Princess and the Frog" with English subtitles so that you could follow better. I hope you liked it.

You can watch the trailer down here:

We will continue watching it on Friday morning during our little "party"...

Until then, take care,

Mr Hattais.

Hey,

today we first did a quick recap of what we had talked about last time. Here is what we added today about the video:

If the driver had respected the speed limit, so many people would not have died. The girl would have kept walking; she would not have ended up in a wheelchair.

If the driver hadn't sped:
(...) the couple may have lived happily ever after.
(...) the couple in the car would not have been injured.
(...) the driver wouldn't have been surprised to see the dog which was crossing the road.

Then we continued our lesson about road safety with two new documents dealing with the problems of mobile phones when driving. You can listen to the first one down here:

Here is what we said about it:

The message of the ad is:

Switch off your mobile phone before you drive because it's difficult to concentrate on two things at the same time. It may cause a crash, you may collide with another car. The chances of having an accident are multiplied by four. You are four times more likely to have a crash.

Voc: It's likely to happen.

And here is the poster:

Here are the notes that you had to take to prepare yourself for a 2-minute oral presentation next week:

  "to be written by Félix / William"

1) Present the document:

This document deals with: road sign / road safety ...

2) Describe what you see in details
3) Analyse
4) Comment
5) Give your opinion

Finally, we learnt some words and expressions dealing with giving a phone call. Here are these words and phrases:

Voc:

(to) pick up ≠ (to) hang up
(to) dial
the receiver

(to) receive a phone call
≠

(to) give someone a call / (to) ring / (to) give someone a buzz * 

(hand held) mobile phone [UK] / cell phone [US]
"Can you give me your digits?"**

HW: get ready to speak about the poster for at least 2-3 minutes.

Hey,

today we worked on both a picture and a video to speak about this young boy who has climbed Mount Everest and who has become a celebrity. You can watch the document narrating his record down here:

Here is what we said about him:

The document is a report about a 13-year-old boy who has climbed Mount Everest. He is the youngest climber to have scaled the highest mountain in the world. He must be filthy rich and he sounds arrogant. He brags about his records. Even though it seems inspiring, I wouldn't do it because it's treacherous, I would need to be sportier.

Info : the shortest time to climb the Everest (the most treacherous mountain in the world) is 20 hours and 24 minutes. 

Grammar: Superlatif (le plus, la plus, les plus ...) -> the most + adj. long / the adj. court - est

Adj court = pas plus de deux syllabes après ajout du suffixe.

13-year-old: avec des tirets et sans "s" à /year/ car ce mot est en position adjectivale.

Then we continued speaking about our new theme: "Mobile Phones in the Middle East" and we particularly commented on the graph illustrating the text. Here is what we said about it:

Voc:

Cellular phone suscriber / user / owner
a package, e.g. 2h + unlimited text message

The graph:
The country in the Middle East where there is the most important number of mobile phone suscribers is Israël

Hypotheses:
They are the most talkative people.
They like to show off their mobile as a fashion item.
The fixed-line network was destroyed during the war.

Hey,

today we first dedicated the first part of the hour to the correction of your tests. Then we continued the lesson with the study of a new text, more precisely with the study of the picture illustrating the text.

We'll continue working on this document next time.

After making things clear about your fairy tale, we began to study a new theme: Road Safety.

We first warmed up with making a list of the risks on the road and then we watched a video document about the problem.

You can watch it again below:

Here is what we said about it:

Some risks in the video:
- Not wearing protective clothing increases the risk of serious injuries.
- Driving too fast / speeding and changing lanes dangerously increases the risk of accident.
- Crossing a red or an amber light increases ... //
- Not paying attention to pedestrians increases ... //

V-ing -> Verbe en position de sujet

Here is the vocabulary words related to "the road":

Road Safety

Risks :

The environnement
The weather conditions
Other people not respecting the rules.

Voc :

(to) cross a red light
pedestrian crossing / zebra Xing
pavement [UK] / Sidewalk [USA]
the curb
the gutter
(to) change lanes / (to) take over
car pool lane

Hey,

today you took one of your final tests of the year. I hope that you will have good grades since you will certainly have only one more opportunity to get better results before your "conseil de classe".

You can download the test here:

"yet to be uploaded"

Take care,
M. Hattais.

Hey,

today we first read a new text entitled "The Pangs of Love" and analysed it briefly to see why we could say it was a subverted fairy tale.

The main character, Elsa, is a mermaid but unlike her sisters (and the famous mermaid of Hans Christian Anderson), she is not polite at all. She is rude and quite coarse. She is even punished at the end. She is sent to the cave and "made to miss her supper".

Then we worked on speech verbs and we improved the story with verbs that were more meaningful than /say/... Here is what we wrote in the copybooks:

"to be written by Félix / William"

We also had time to work on reported speech. Here are the sentences that we made:

- she said she didn't see why she had done it.

- she insisted disrespectfully that love for a man was ridiculous.

- she didn't know how she had suffered for love.

- she retorted that she didn't understand this "suffered for love".

- she added that she sounded very silly and obviously had spoiled her life.

- the mother admitted that she might have spoiled her life.

- the little mermaid asked in a high-pitched voice what he had done.

- the mother admitted that he had done nothing.

- the mermaid wanted to know what he sacrified for her. (= asked what he had sacrificed)

- the mother answered that he hadn't sacrificed a lot and added that she believed they didn't on the whole and that it didn't stop mermaids loving them. (= humans)

- the mermaid shouted that it would stop her and she said that she had to get a look at some of that mankind and perhaps she would then understand more.

- her mother reminded her that she had to wait until her 15th birthday
and that it had always been the rule with her sisters.

- the 7th mermaid swore and whispered that times changed. And she added that she was as mature now as her sisters had been at 15. She asked her if she agreed for the day after.

- her mother replied that she was sure she didn't. 

HW: finish re-writing the direct dialogue into reported speech until the end of the text.

Don't forget that Group 1 needs to turn in their parodies by Tuesday 11th by email (so that I have time to help you improve your pronunciation) and same thing for group 2 but by Thursday 13th.