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marzo 2018

Donald Trump and the magic wand

Donald Trump and the magic wand 800 590 Like Inglés Like Inglés

Seventeen youngsters were shot in Florida by another student when they were attending at their school lessons. It’s not the first not the second time that something like this happens in this country, and with the same method, “a gun”.

Can anyone understand what’s going on in this country,…in this world? Trump spent some time listening to the pleas from shooting survivors and from some of the affected families. But, does Trump really need a note with some talking points for the occasion?

And, an absolutely “not”… for Trump´s proposal of endorsing guns for teachers. Their job do not involve exactly shooting people but teaching. And, you can’t do your job well if you don’t feel safe in a place where you are supposed to spend a lot of hours, almost your life. Teachers need books and not guns.

The solution is not carrying more arms, and as Andrew Pollack (whose daughter died in the attack) said, “We, as a country, failed our children”.

And, who… has the magic wand? The President … or the teachers?

REMEMBER: SLANG vs FORMAL – be pissed(at sth./sb) – slang expression

  • (Brit.) – drunk
  • (US) ­- angry, sad

VOCABULARY

Youngsters: young people

Plea: request, excuse

Endorse: support

Wand: magic stick

Lights with a message

Lights with a message 800 590 Like Inglés Like Inglés

Wow! Is it really the way our society is evolving? Some countries have decided to change the existing 18-year-old traffic lights into more attractive ones.

In southern Taiwan, the little red and green traffic light men are now accompanied by their girlfriends. The green lights show a man holding his girlfriend´s hand and the red one features a man kneeling down to propose to his girlfriend.

The goal of this change is to make traffic lights more attractive, but… are they? And,in what sense? The message is quite confusing.

Other countries,which had decided to do something similar, changed their signs but to raise cultural awareness and nothing to do with gender bias. For example, in the Netherlands they featured Miffy, the local rabbit cartoon, as a tribute to his creator.

Changes are necessary and almost always awesome, but where is the limit?

Do men feel identified? And, what about women?

REMEMBER:

The English language is full of silent consonants which cause many difficulties to native speakers and non-native English learnersbecause the spelling is quite different from the pronunciation.

e.g. design, would, signs,

VOCABULARY

Kneel: go down on knees

Bias: preference, discrimination

Awesome: wonderful, remarkable, amazing

Paying kids to do their homework

Paying kids to do their homework 800 590 Like Inglés Like Inglés

When we think about Mathematics, do we consider it as a subject, a real world or a complex world? Who knows? MoharmadJebara felt his world came down when studying complex numbers, and the teacher asked him to do a square root of a negative. He went puzzled. “Impossible”, he thought. Not in a real world. And, there it is the solution, it can be done in the complex world, and the solution is the imaginary number “i”. Where, what is the imaginary or abstract world in maths? I could finally understand how useful mathematics were in life.

He realized it was going to be a hard work but he proposed himself to find the way students could understand and enjoy with it. In order to get his aim, he believed that the curriculum had to change and students should endure long enough the most difficult parts to appreciate the magnificence of numbers.

Moharmad built a web app to help students with maths. First, he tried with gamification elements, later incentivizing young students with trophies and older ones with cash. It worked, indeed. But, was it ethical? Would the results be kept up if the students were no longer paid?Was it the solution to see the magnificence of maths?

The main interest of this app is to get students involved in this skill. Mathematics is not only a subject you study at school but a human effort which will help to understand the world. So, the miracle of mathematics will be the stimulus and the comprehension will be the reward.

REMEMBER:

The English “th” can be pronounced in two different ways:

  • As a voiced dental fricative: “this, the, with” : / ð /
  • As an unvoiced dental fricative: “mathematics, thought”: / θ /

VOCABULARY

Endure: persevere, keep going

Trophies: rewards, tokens

Keep up: continue, maintain

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