Happy Halloween!!!

Halloween it's one of America's favourite holidays, but what's the real story behind the tricks and treats of Halloween? Find out watching this video
"Bet You Didn't Know: Halloween"



Check some Halloween jokes for laughing out loud!
My favourite one is "What do birds do in Halloween? Go trick or tweeting" :D

Hurricane Sandy: more than 10 deaths reported, flooding in New York andNew Jersey

Follow hurricane Sandy in English on the BBC page  by cliking this link! 
Latest updates from BBC News US: liveo video with spoken commentaries on the latest updates.

'Frankenstorm': 

Worse Than Sum of Its Parts

VOXY/AP | 29th October, 2012

 

Hurricane Sandy, dubbed "Frankenstorm", is expected to bring a "life-threatening" surge flood to the mid-Atlantic coast, including Long Island Sound and New York Harbour. 
Photo: Nasa/Getty Images

WASHINGTON- The storm that is threatening 60 million Americans in the eastern third of the nation with high winds, drenching rains, extreme tides, flooding and probably snow is much more than just an ordinary weather system. It's a freakish and unprecedented monster.

How did it get that way?

Start with Sandy, an ordinary late summer hurricane from the tropics, moving north up the East Coast. Bring in a high pressure ridge of air that blocks the hurricane's normal out-to-sea path and steers it west toward land.

Add a wintry cold front moving in from the west that helps pull Sandy inland and mix in a blast of Arctic air from the north for one big collision.

Do all that and you get a stitched-together weather monster expected to unleash its power over 800 miles, with predictions in some areas of 12 inches of rain, 2 feet of snow and sustained 40- to 50 mph winds.

On Thursday, NOAA forecaster Jim Cisco called it "Frankenstorm", an allusion to Mary Shelley's gothic creature of synthesized elements.

Cisco and others have called this storm unprecedented.

Reading and vocabulary questions, (register in Voxy, it's free and safe) and click the link to know the meaning of these highlighted vocabulary words, to listen to their pronunciation, and for some online comprehenion questions. Memory game: practise matching these words to their meanings using memory cards.

PHRASE

To be 'in the eye of the storm'. If someone is 'in the eye of the storm' it means that they are in the centre of a disagreement.

For example:

 -Greece is in the eye of the storm which has gathered over the world economy and is threatening to tear the eurozone apart. 

 -Our teacher is making us sit our exams again. Johnny was caught in the eye of the storm after he boasted about cheating. 

Don't confuse it with

Another phrase based on meteorology is 'lull before the storm'. That means a quiet time before one of intense activity.

The shop assistants took advantage of the lull before the storm and tidied up the hat display. They knew the moment the doors opened they would be flooded with bargain-hunters.

Interesting fact

Although this phrase is used to describe being at the centre of a problem or dispute, the real 'eye' of a storm is very calm. The eye - a circular area in the middle of a hurricane, which can be up to 65km in diameter - is characterized by light winds and clear skies, which last for a short period before the strong winds, rain and thunder return.

The importance of pronunciation

This video  shows how important it is to pronounce correctly, emphasizing the difference between short and long vowels to avoid misunderstandings! Lol

Here you have the pronunciation of all the phonetic symbols of English. Learn them as this will help you when looking up words in the dicionary

Collocations with 'take'

Spain's financial crisis

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Spain Recoils as Its Hungry Forage Trash Bins for a Next Meal

Samuel Aranda for The New York Times

In Spain, the unemployment rate is over 50 percent among young people. Austerity and hunger.

By SUZANNE DALEY

MADRID — On a recent evening, a hip-looking young woman was sorting through a stack of crates outside a fruit and vegetable store here in the working-class neighborhood of Vallecas as it shut down for the night.

At first glance, she looked as if she might be a store employee. But no. The young woman was looking through the day’s trash for her next meal. Already, she had found a dozen aging potatoes she deemed edible and loaded them onto a luggage cart parked nearby.

"When you don't have enough money," she said, declining to give her name, "this is what there is." The woman, 33, said that she had once worked at the post office but that her unemployment benefits had run out and she was living now on 400 euros a month, about $520. She was squatting with some friends in a building that still had water and electricity, while collecting “a little of everything” from the garbage after stores closed and the streets were dark and quiet.

Such survival tactics are becoming increasingly commonplace here, with an unemployment rate over 50 percent among young people and more and more households having adults without jobs. So pervasive is the problem of scavenging that one Spanish city has resorted to installing locks on supermarket trash bins as a public health precaution.

A report this year by a Catholic charity, Caritas, said that it had fed nearly one million hungry Spaniards in 2010, more than twice as many as in 2007. That number rose again in 2011 by 65,000.

As Spain tries desperately to meet its budget targets, it has been forced to embark on the same path as Greece, introducing one austerity measure after another, cutting jobs, salaries, pensions and benefits, even as the economy continues to shrink.

Most recently, the government raised the value-added tax three percentage points, to 21 percent, on most goods, and two percentage points on many food items, making life just that much harder for those on the edge. Little relief is in sight as the country’s regional governments, facing their own budget crisis, are chipping away at a range of previously free services, including school lunches for low-income families.

For a growing number, the food in garbage bins helps make ends meet.

At the huge wholesale fruit and vegetable market on the outskirts of this city recently, workers bustled, loading crates onto trucks. But in virtually every bay, there were men and women furtively collecting items that had rolled into the gutter.

“It’s against the dignity of these people to have to look for food in this manner,” said Eduardo Berloso, an official in Girona, the city that padlocked its supermarket trash bins.

The Caritas report also found that 22 percent of Spanish households were living in poverty and that about 600,000 had no income whatsoever. All these numbers are expected to continue to get worse in the coming months.

About a third of those seeking help, the Caritas report said, had never used a food pantry or a soup kitchen before the economic crisis hit. For many of them, the need to ask for help is deeply embarrassing. In some cases, families go to food pantries in neighboring towns so their friends and acquaintances will not see them.

“It is not nice to see what is happening to these people,” said Manu Gallego, the manager of Canniad Fruit. “It shouldn’t be like this.”

In Girona, Mr. Berloso said his aim in locking down the bins was to keep people healthy and push them to get food at licensed pantries and soup kitchens. As the locks are installed on the bins, the town is posting civilian agents nearby with vouchers instructing people to register for social services and food aid.

He said 80 to 100 people had been regularly sorting through the bins before he took action, with a strong likelihood that many more were relying on thrown-away food to get by.

A version of this article appeared in print on September 25, 2012, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Spain Recoils as Its Hungry Forage Trash Bins for a Next Meal

How to write well

Some tips to improve your writings

Phonetic pun :)

What does 'to cost an arm and a leg' mean?

Listen

Rob goes shopping with Vera to buy a suit for a wedding. Listen to this programme (by clicking the link below) to find out what the phrase 'cost an arm and a leg' means. 

http://http-ws.bbc.co.uk.listening.mp3

The script for this programme

(Rob and Vera go shopping)

Rob: Ah Vera, it's great that you've come with me during our lunch break to do some shopping. I need to buy a suit to go to a wedding and I have to look very smart.

Vera: And I will make sure of that, Rob. Everybody says I have good taste. I've always chosen my husband's and my son's pyjamas and they look good while they sleep! Rob, I love that grey suit in the window!

Rob: Wow! It looks really smart, actually. It will make me look great!

Vera: Exactly! Let's go into the shop, you must try it!

Salesman: The colour suits you, Sir! I will see if I can find a smaller size so that it fits you perfectly.

Vera: You see, Rob... This salesman knows what he is talking about. He thinks it looks good on you. But he is right - a size smaller would fit better. And everybody in the wedding will think you are a powerful man.

Rob: Yes. Wait Vera, this suit is not for me. I'm reading this label and it says it costs an arm and a leg!

Vera: An arm and a leg!? This is terrible, Rob! It's barbaric! This is the 21st century, not the Middle Ages! And the salesman seems quite civilised. He sounded like a nice man who wouldn't demand your limbs!

Rob: Don't worry, Vera. I will keep all of my limbs. In English, when we say something costs an arm and a leg we mean that it is very expensive!

Vera: So, it is something people say but it doesn't actually involve arms and legs. That's a relief!

Rob: Let's hear some examples while I get back into my old clothes.

• "I'd like to travel all over Europe, but the air fare might cost me an arm and a leg."
• "You have to pay a lot of money to give your children a good education nowadays! A place in a top university costs an arm and a leg."

Rob: So, what expression do you use when you want to say that something is very, very expensive?

Vera: You might say it costs an arm and a leg.

Rob: Yes. Now let's leave this expensive suit here and get out of the shop before that posh-sounding salesman comes back.

Vera: Good idea. He will look down on us, Rob. But I would... pay a nail and an elbow for that scarf there... and that red dress over there, it might cost a foot and a knee... Oh, look at that handbag! It's a designer one and must cost an ear and a hand...

Rob: What are you talking about, Vera!? We only say "an arm and a leg"! Now, quickly, let's get out of here!

Vera: OK, OK. Bye...

Rob: Bye.

Fun vs. funny

Verbs not normally used in the -ing form

Stative verbs
Stative (or state) verbs describe states (things that don't change easily or quickly, for example, what you believe, think or own) rather than actions (jump, talk or buy). These verbs are not normally used in the continuous form (ing). Stative verbs can be grouped into these categories:

Verbs of emotion:

	care	feel	hate
	like	loathe	love
	need	prefer	want

Verbs of ownership:

own	have	possess

Verbs of the mind

believe mean suppose forget realise understand know remember doubt

Verbs of the senses - often used with 'can'

hear	see	smell
taste	touch

Other verbs:

	contain	depend	matter
Some of these stative verbs can be used in the continuous form but their meaning will change. For example: To think: Do you think so? (Stative - Is that your opinion? Is that the state of your belief?) He's thinking about his friends in Poland (Dynamic - The action of thinking. His friends are in his thoughts, in his mind right now but he might be thinking of something else soon). To have: He has got brown eyes (Stative - He possesses brown eyes. The colour is unlikely to change). He's having a pint of beer (Dynamic - The action of drinking. He might be drinking something else soon). To see: I don't see what you mean. (Stative - I don't understand what you mean). She is seeing him next week. (Dynamic - She is meeting him).

British politeness

Importance of learning a language (Goldfish vs. Kitty)