TO LEARN FOREIGN LANGUAGES USING MODERN TECHNOLOGIES.




Technology is part of the human development. Without it human beings didn’t would reached our present state of civilization. In their own history, human beings had use a lot of technologies and now the use of technology had reached a big development. In this particular case, studying languages at university, technology help students in different ways, allowing them to do his works more efficiently, saving time and assist them when they have to study.
In order to be clear, let us to take an example: if a student have to do a research about a specific theme, he can use the Internet, which is available at university, and found fast enormous quantities of information, virtual books, links which refer to the investigate topic, photos, music as well, etc. So, technology helps students to gather information and use it to accomplish his research. And after it, he can continue to use more technological tools, like Microsoft Word, Power Point, Excel, etc. in order to build his work, printing it as he wish, and/or make it available to show a visual presentation, if it is necessary.
The library is an old “invention”. In the past, if you wanted to find a book, you had to see a catalogue and you had to know what book you needed. At the present, using an online catalogue, students can find and relate books, authors, themes, very fast. It allows them to save time because they can find all what they need in the same place. Students can find books which have CD’s. It help them to understand better what they are reading, and are available in the Library. So, they can take it and listening in the Computer Unit in the same university.
There are many students who are studying foreign language, English for example, which is the more common at the present. Technology gives them the possibility to employ online dictionaries, websites like Oxford University, where they can hear how a word is pronounced in English, or they can practice English grammar doing test and rectifying mistakes in the moment. If you do not do it, you can do it in your home, depending if you have a Internet connection, or use a “cyber café” near your home.
Some universities have language laboratories, which are similar to Oxford University website, where they can practice their language skills. It allow them to develop quickly learning English language or to correct their mistakes.
The main conclusion that we can get, looking how a student can learn English today, is that him can use a lot of tools which allow him to learn better and faster than in the past, where was indispensable to have a teacher and some books available. This old way were slow and, sometime or depending the character of the student, very boring for him. To use technology allow students to learn fast and better and, why not, funny..

Chilean Miners: a new life.

MINERS

The case of the chilean miners, trapped deeply into the Earth for almost 70 days, caused a big impression in the entire World. For the first time in the history a group of men survived during a long time and the work of the rescue units permit to take them on the surface alive.
The press of the world concentrated their efforts to capture the situation and many of them, like the BBC, transmitted the all rescue operation, showing the importance that the press gives to this event.
This rescue become, in the case of our country, in a matter of national prestige and national pride, a symbol about what we are, about the “qualities” of own “race”, causing the entire country lived this drama day to day and compel the Government to use all their tool to take saves the miners.
After the rescue all the world wants to knows how their survived for a long time and, after it, many people wants to know who they are like persons, how they live normally, their families, their personal stories, etc. So, started the third part of this event (first part was to found them, second was the rescue ). A lot of the national and international press wanted to interview the miners. They received a big number of invitations coming from many countries, like Spain, Greece, the UK, etc. They received monetary offers too because this case “sold” to the public opinion and provoke big monetary utilities to the international companies, and national media too.
These facts changed to life of our miners. 70 days before the mine crushed upon them, they were common people, like any other workers, and suddenly they were transported into a unknown world, becoming like a rock stars, showed day by day in the medias of the country and the world. If we think that they don’t are people with a high culture, who are living in a little city their entire life, like Copiapo, for example, this projection onto the world attention surely had to be very hard to assimilate for them and their families.
It is inevitable that this case will be study deeply in the future. And use to make money too. Looking from the side of science this story is interesting because show how human beings can survive trapped for days and days, like Russian astronauts floating in the space for months. And will be used to make money, because is an interesting story, which concentrated the international curiosity, using books, films, interviews, just for quote some.
And it will compel the miners ( we don’t know if will be all of them or many ) to accept invitations, offers of many kinds of things, etc. In other words their drama will become ( but the true is that it is happening since a while ) a business, like happened with Che Guevara, the hippies and many others cases in the past.
A sense of mankind push the common sense to hope they would be return soon to have a normal life, if not their life can be very different and strange for them and looking they social skills that cannot be good.

Good and Bad Points.

The only thing that I do in my life, at the moment, is to study in the University. So, for me, is an important activity, maybe the most important and I try to do it at best as I can do.
I waited 32 years to arrive here. I can’t did it before because I had to work.
I like to study here. Since a lot of time I wanted to study English and here I discovered Linguistics, a new theme for me and a new discovery is always interesting. I hope that I will get a lot of new knowledge studying here.
I thing that I got no bad level in English, is not the best of course, and I fell I can get more improvements if I study hardly.

GREEN IS BETTER AND HEALTHY

We live in a world that gets every day more and more contamination. It provokes a lot of problems, for example the rise of the global temperature and pollution in the big cities. The worst of it is that we live in the middle of them and it can cause us diseases, health problems, etc. At the end, the contamination is causing a global change of our entire environment and this change can lead into the end of many species of animals, plants, birds and other forms of life.

Another problem that we find is referred to the water. Every year is more difficult to many human beings and other forms of life to get it. The industries contaminates the water as much as the air too, helped by the humans rubbish, our cars, our heating systems and any other kind of garbage. So, the pollution in the air and the contamination of the water are changing our environment very fast. It is time to do something. It is not easy to resolved because I think we have to change our entire style of life. Our civilization is based on the technology and that means industries, irrational consume, so we must to find a new way, a new form of life on the Earth. Every system has is own balance and we are breaking it and nobody knows what will happen in the future. But we can suppose that changes will arrive and it will not be good for our entire planet.

To return to live like our ancient ancestors is impossible. None of us can survive in a different world but we can help to contaminate less, waiting for new scientific discoveries that can preserve the whole life of our planet.

Of course, we need a new way and to create it isn’t easy. However, we can help with the “ Green Cause” changing our habits. In my particular case, when it is possible, I walk as much as possible to me. In my house we separate the rubbish, like glass and plastic bottles in one side, papers and magazines in another place and the vegetal rubbish in a dustbin. In the winter, we avoid, as long as possible, to use stoves or something like that because they use fossil fuels which cooperate to contaminate the air.

I hope that in the future the new generations will play in a forest, take a bath in a clean lake or look a beautiful blue sky, if it doesn`t happen it will mean that everythink is finished., so saving the planet means stopping with our present lifestyle, means to change our civilization.

Videogames

http://www.lineage2.com/
http://www.eveonline.com/

Videogames

The true is that I like top lay videogames, but not the usual videogames. I like to play online games, specially two of them: Lineage II and Eve.

Both are games called roll games because you build a character which acquire some particular characteristics, like race, skills, clothes, weapons, armors, etc. Playing Lineage II you have to play in order to leveling your character. If not you can’t grow and you can’t get more skills and a better level, so if you play a lot you can grow a lot too, if not nothing happened and the play become boring. Another characteristic of this game is that you must to join some clan – an association of players who play together and raise their players and raise the level of their clan too, which can get special skills. These skills helps the members bringing them another special skills which helps when a player is in combat.

You can build mages, fighters, dwarves, etc. There are 4 races: Humans, Elfs, Dark Elves, Orcs and Dwarves. Any of these races have some personal abilities that the others races don’t have. For example elves can run very fast or the human are standard abilities so they can develop a lot of skills better than other races.

Every two weeks the clans have the possibility to get control of a few castles which are in the game. This action is called Siege. You can the control of the castle if your boss clan arrive alive in the Throne room and cast a special item located behind this room. Is very funny it because a lot players are fighting against others and many are killed and resurrect at any time.

This game exist than a lot of time, about six years at least. Just few days ago all servers had been merged in two servers, first were 8. That means that the number of players is low than was few years ago.

Eve, in the other hand, is a game where you have to play in the space. You can drive a lot of spatial ships, which are different abilities, like to be combat ships, or miner ships, to be carriers, etc. Here the way to get better skills isn’t to play a lot to get them, just to have to train skills and don’t need to stay in front of your PC for hours and hours, like Lineage. So, is less hard to play. But there are common elements like form corps, you must to be together with others players.

A Career - Related Website

According to my personal “taste” I thing that a useful website for us, who are studying English, is. http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/ This website is owned by the Oxford University Press and offer a lot of interesting themes that you can use for study purposes.
There you can found interesting news about English, like dictionaries, teachers, reading, exercises, school resources, music, etc. More precisely you can access from this website the Oxford Dictionaries & Thesauri or buy books online, like The Oxford Books of Flexible Carols, The Rise and Fall of Great Companies, which relates the story of many British companies which are fall and rise in the past,. Even you can buy music, for example Jazz on a Winter’s Night, which is a collection of Christmas pieces, or English Church Music, a sacred choral English music.
Anyway, for me the best is the links to access a lot of interesting books: http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/category/librarians.do, where you can found “jewels” like Oxford English Thesaurus for Schools. In this book you can found thousands of synonymous, or Adonis to Zorro, strange title, a Oxford Dictionary of Reference and Allusion, which teach us something about the meanings of references and allusions that is possible to find in modern English. In this case you have to pay just & 20 for it, that its around $ 16.000 chilean pesos. Maybe the price isn’t precisely cheap but you have to think that is very difficult to get this kind of book in our bookstore, or, if you find it, certainly you have to pay more than the price I had write above.
If you are interested in History you can look this book: Aleppo Observed, which was written in 1756, so is a old book and it study the Europeans. I thought that have to be very interesting because the date when the book was written. I mean that maybe this book is one of the first efforts to study a human society more scientifically.
That’s all, I hope that this website can be useful for all of you.

FOOD

FOOD

I like to eat spaghetti. Because it is made with flour, like pizza, you can prepare spaghetti with a lot of components, like tuna, meat, tomatoes sauce, cheese, ham, olives, oil olives, anions, garlic, etc.
I prefer to Italian system, not our system. I don’t like the Chilean method because always the pasta finished too much cook and/or you have to eat it with other strange ingredients, like “carne mechada”, avogados, ananas or some other thing.
If you want to eat very Italian spaghetti you must to use crushed tomatoes, if it is recommended in the recipe, not our “salsa”. The difference is remarkable when you taste pasta made with “salsa” or with crushed tomatoes.
Today I want to share with you a very popular Italian recipe, called “Spaghetti all’aglio”. Is very simple and fast. First you have to crush garlic, a lot of it, one red or green pepper, cut very small and be ready with a lot of black pepper. Of course, first of all, you have tu put on fire a pot with water, as much is possible, this is always true for any kind of pasta you can cook. When water is boiling take the garlic and the others ingredients and put in a frying pan with olive oil, extra virgin if it is possible to you. Turn on the fire very slowly and be careful about the garlic doesn’t become brown or, worst, black! I recommend to put the garlic on the frying pad just two minutes before the spaghetti are ready. After it, put in the pepper, black pepper, and any other ingredient you like. So, when the pasta is cooked take it and reverse on the frying pad and mix. Serve it immediately. Don`t forget to buy a good red wine bottle, if not take a cup of tea after finished your food.

My favourite actor

My favourite actor is, in my opinión, Anthony Hopkins. Why ? Because he’s a very good actor, who has been capable to interpret a lot of roles along his carrier.
He is an English actor, born in 1937 in Wales. He studied acting in an Academy, The Royal Academic of Dramatic Art, so he is a prepared actor and maybe, because it, is a good actor too. Was Richard Burton who put him on the way to become an actor.
His most famous film was The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, between many other good films. During his carrier he had won the Oscar and the Emmy prizes for his acting.
He is, in opinion of many people, the most great living actor and this opinion maybe is right because he has got a lot of prizes and the people known him everywhere he goes.
Certainly all us had known him when he works in The Silence of the Lambs making a crazy killer, who was a educated man, a psychiatrist and he terrorized the audience of the entire world. But he has acting in many other good films like “Lo que queda del día” with Emma Thompson or “Amistad” where he defend a group of slaves arrived in the USA before the American Civil War.

My favourite music

My favourite music
This is difficult to me because I’m not very interested about music.
I have to confess that I connect music with youth. I m conscious about this kind of thought is wrong but I think that is true arts are connected with fillings. I want to talk about the music which have a significant for me.
Well, when I was young my sight was directed to change the world and if you wanted to change it you to do something called Revolution, so the music was I liked at that times was the revolutionary music, Inti Illimani, Quilapayun, Rolando Alarcon, Violeta Parra, Aparcoa and many others which I can’ t remember the name now. At present I think only Inti Illimani continue to sing, Alarcon and Violeta Parra are died and Quilapayun doesn’t exist like a group.
I remember another musical groups, foreign groups, like Led Zepellin, Grand Funk, Deep Purple, The Rollings Stones, The Beatles, etc. I liked their music.
After them, when I returned in Chile I liked to listen Mercedes Soza, Santiago del Nuevo Extremo and Illapu, only Illapu is still singing, Mercedes Soza is die and Santiago del Nuevo Extremo doesn’t exist at present.
Music and life are connected and because many people think that our best part of our life occurs when we are young maybe my remembers about music are connected to that far days..