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
Thursday, 23 July 2015
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
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
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:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/10083124/Dont-tell-your-daughter-she-is-beautiful-parents-told.html
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
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
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
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
Article + video
from Sky News Online - http://news.sky.com/story/1124439/test-tube-burger-served-up-for-first-time
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.
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
Please watch the video (a comedian). He may be a little bit hard to understand, but try and try again.
Michael McIntyre
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
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?
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