FINAL REFLECTION, looking back

1.  Can you see an improvement on your level of English in the past year/s?  Where, for example?

Last year I think I just have done one or two oral presentations in English, this year I practiced more my oral English.

2. Which activity best shows your level of English? 

I think these are watching films,  the class songs, the three reading books and the oral exams.

3. Which activities were really USEFUL for you to improve your English? Why? 

News and the vocabulary extension dossier were so useful to improve my English. News because I search for interesting things to talk about in Spanish, so I have to translate them to English and sometimes I have to look for the words in English because I don't know how to write them so I can learn new vocabulary. And the vocabulary extension because there was different topics where you can practise and like this you learn a lot.

4. Which activities did you NOT find useful to learn English? Why not? 

Composition writing in class for me haven't been useful. I didn't learned anything but it helps me for practise.

5. Which activities would like to do again next year to keep on improving your English? 

Blog yours-says and news, listening and evaluating to other presentations, Grammar and vocabulary and Skills exams, oral exams and reading books.

The oral presentations makes me so nervous but at least I learn more more about different topics and I practise my oral English, so I like to do it. Watching videos in class, for people that are used to watch things in English or have a good level it's a good activity, but for the others that can't understand it easily I think it's bored.

Extra my-say, "What makes me happy?"

I have listened at least 5 times the question "What makes you happy?" and I had always said one thing: people that I love like family or friends. So in this my-say I wanted to specify my hapiness.
Before all my family, to be with them, to sleep in my grandmother's house with my cousins and watch films, the summer, swimming relaxed, spend time with my friends and to enjoy the moment, go around the beach and to relax observing the pretty ones views that are there, travel fascinates me, my best friend and their nonsense that make me laugh, photography despite not having a good camera, singing, watching series and staying with the intrigue in each chapter, riding a motorcycle even if I don't do it often, climb on a swing as if it were the first time, look at my photos as a child and try to remember the moments, it makes me very happy to have constant memories in my head of the best moments of my life, make new friends, experience new things, live risky adventures, take care of my little cousins and play with them, have good marks obviusly, to advise my friends when they are sad ... I could name a dozen more things, but I think that is enough.

Extra new, the artist who colored the gay pride flag

Gilbert Baker is the creator of the rainbow flag, symbol of the LGBT community (lesbians, gays, transsexuals and bisexuals), he was born in 1951 in the American town of Chanute (Kansas). Baker joined the Army at age 19 and was assigned to San Francisco (California) in full swing of the civil rights movement, for women, as well as claiming homosexuality.
Two years later, Gilbert Baker decides to leave the Army and they license it with honors. In San Francisco was where he learns to sew in a self-taught way and begins designing banners for anti-war demonstrations and pro-homosexual rights. It was at this stage that he met and formed a close friendship with the political and activist Harvey Milk.
Thus begins a degree as an artist who has in the rainbow flag (1978) his most famous creation and has also become the iconic symbol of his work.
On the occasion of the gay pride parade of 25th June 1978, Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected United States politician, commissioned Gilbert Baker to design a symbol to represent the homosexual collective.
Gilbert Baker sewed some fabrics that he himself had dyed to create that rainbow flag. According to confessed Baker himself in various interviews, was inspired by the song Over the Rainbow, interpreted by Judy Garland. At first, the flag consisted of eight horizontal stripes with different colors with a particular meaning. After November 27, 1978, after the murder of his friend Harvey Milk along with the then mayor, the demand for the rainbow flag increased exponentially.
A year after the tragic death of his friend, Baker began working at the Paramount Flag Company of San Francisco and from that moment he designed advertising panels for numerous political figures, presidents of different countries and even kings.
In the Paramount Flag Company Gilbert Baker began to sell a new version of the flag, reduced to seven colors, to the detriment of the pink color, due to the scarce availability and difficulties to acquire that color in the factories but then it was reduced to 6 colors, disappearing turquoise.
Since its creation in 1978, the rainbow flag has become a worldwide symbol in favor of gay, transsexual and bisexual rights and next year will turn 40. Baker, with his creativity and skill to sew it by hand, replaced the Existing pink triangle until that year, a symbol of oppression of the Nazi classification of LGBT people in World War II.
In 2003, to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the LGBT flag, Gilbert Baker devised a two-kilometer rainbow flag that crossed Key West from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean. After the celebrations, he sent different parts of the flag to more than one hundred cities around the world.
There in 1978 began to change the history of visibility and recognition of the rights of the LGTB collective, and in its main square, on a huge mast, has been flying for years a flag of colors that vindicates the gay community.
Gilbert Baker, who died in his home in New York on March 31 while sleeping, will receive the homage of the Castro neighborhood in San Francisco next Thursday, 8 th, while the city of New York will make a march in his memory the Next June 14.

http://cultura.elpais.com/cultura/2017/06/02/actualidad/1496354435_812969.html

Extra new, the genius of Google

The genius who invented the Google engine, whom nobody knows is called Massimo Marchiori, a professor of Computer Science University of Padua.
The world of science and technology sometimes resembles a large vanity fair. The search for the medal, the prize, the recognition or the glory of passing to history as one of those human beings who made a contribution to the advancement of humanity, lead to unfair forgetfulness and relegate to the background to Many anonymous geniuses. We live surrounded by objects that make us the simplest things, and that were created thanks to the ingenuity of women and men of whom we do not know the name. We can all list the names of those who were Tomas Alva Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Guillermo Marconi or Isaac Peral. But few know who was the engineer who discovered that the waves used by the radars could be used to cook popcorn. Although most of us take advantage of their idea every day to heat the milk in a microwave oven.
Massimo Marchiori is one of those guys. His name is completely unknown to most of us and yet it is possible that some of those who are reading this have now come to this page thanks to him. Because Marchiori is the mathematician who devised the famous Google algorithm. From his head came the heart of the beast, the secret that has led the company to become one of the most powerful technology companies in the world. The funny thing is that Marchiori, after presenting it at an international conference, gave up his idea for the development of Larry Page and Sergey Brin. In a time when all the young people related to technology, even tangentially, are looking to become millionaires and to enter that rockstars club in which Internet gurus have become, Marchiori chose to continue investigating. And don't regret: "making money for a certain company and increasing my bank account is not what I want to do in life."
The Italian, who after spending some years at MIT lives and works near Venice, insists that his goal has always been to do something to improve people's lives and that this can not be achieved from a company that is bound by Income statement. That is why, he says, he does not envy the founders of Google, since he says he only needs "a place to sleep and time to think". This freedom is what makes you notice the development of the Internet, with Google at the top, with the analytical distance of real scientists, and considers that the time has come for us to change the way we relate to the network: "until Now the seekers are like the oracle of Delphi: you put the key words and you wait to obtain the result ".
Marchiori works in a more dialogic type of search engine, which includes a social dimension and in which the artificial intelligence behind us allows us to interact with the Internet more naturally. The goal, in short, is to make technology a more human space: "those who understand how good technology is made know that in the end what has to be is a heart behind," says Marchiori. Undoubtedly, the Italian deserves a place in our memory; Much less Percy Specser, the inventor of the microwave, has a building in Massachusetts that bears his name.

I chose this new because before that I didn't now who was the genius who invented the Google engine, so if I didn't I think most of you don't know him too.

http://one.elpais.com/genio-invento-motor-google-quien-nadie-conoce/

Extra new, arrested for a sexual assault

Three arrested for a sexual assault in Plasencia that was recorded with a mobile.
Police have arrested three young people with the aged of 26, 27 and 28 accused of sexually assaulting a woman in Plasencia (Cáceres) and recording it with a mobile phone.
They forced the victim into a vehicle and, while two of them "subjected it to humiliating and vexatious acts", the third recorded the aggression.
The events occurred around 3.00 on May 20, when the victim, as reported in the complaint that he subsequently filed, was walking along Avenida de la Vera. Then he was approached by a moped vehicle occupied by three men and, "after standing at his side, one of the occupants showed him through the window a wad of bills, while another of the men got out of the vehicle, took it by behind and put it in the car in knees.
In the same place, and when the vehicle was stopped, two of the occupants assaulted the victim and, under threat, "subjected her to all kinds of degrading and humiliating acts of a sexual nature", while the third recorded the whole scene with a telephone Mobile phone from the rear seats, has informed the National Police in a press release.
While recording, the man commented to his companions: "We are going to rape her with a condom, we take her to the camp, we kill her and we put her in the trunk." When they saw a person passing by the sidewalk, the authors were frightened, they threw the victim of the car and left the place.
Once the complaint was filed, the agents of the family and women Unit assumed from the outset the investigation of the facts and the protection of the victim. It's a comprehensive police service that provides specialized and personalized attention to victims of gender and domestic violence, as well as any victims of sexual violence, regardless of gender and age.
From the type of vehicle in which the assault was committed, the color of the car and the partial registration data provided by the complainant, the investigators were able to identify the car as well as its owner, a man whose physical characteristics fully match With those described by the victim. The policemen also managed to identify the other two men who allegedly participated in the criminal acts, friends of the owner of the vehicle, that night they had gone out with him for drinks.
Identified the alleged perpetrators of the aggression and obtaining the necessary evidence and evidence, two of them were arrested on May 31, while the third was arrested Thursday. The three young people have passed to the judicial authority.

In my opinion it's incredible that there are still people of this type, after all the problems that have happened in our society I can't understand why people can do this like it were a funny thing. Don't we have enough?

http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2017/06/02/actualidad/1496416795_786951.html

Formal letter

St Sector Muga BA13

Empuriabrava

Girona

29th March of 2017

74C Burnett St, Pretoria
South Africa


Dear Madam,

I am writing to you because I want to offer myself as a teacher volunteer. I would like to apply for a position in a orphanatge, music school or somewhere else where I have to teach kids. I am 18 years old and I just finished baccalaureate so I would like to have a gap year for do something related with my future and take a time for myself.

I like children so much and I have a lot of patience for them. I also like teaching and if you accept me I would learn a lot of things. I am able to do activities related with sport, music, maths, etc. Careful, responsable, understanding are some of my qualities that will help me being a volunteer teaching. You would help me a lot because it would be a big step to start working with children.

I would be grateful if you could attend to this matter. Thank you in advance.


Yours faithfully,

Fouzia Ben Mokhtar

Youtube?

YouTube is a website that has now raised the number of people who like it and people that does videos. I leave a different advantages and then a few disadvantages.
It is a good resource for everything you need, if you want to watch a tutorial to learn something (as if the studies is as if something in our daily lives, such as care for our hair, etc. ) to search for a song and its lyrics or a song sung by yourself, watch videos for entertainment, laugh or people tags / challenges, to upload videos giving a personal opinion on any subject or talking about oneself, can also be daily blogs (record what you do on your day to day), is an environment where many people is advertising, etc.
There are many good things that you can do, but there I say other bad things also happen in youtube.
There are people who use videos against yourself threatening you; once you have uploaded several videos of yourself, you're making public your life and if you get to a point where a lot of people know you, wherever you go there will be people who will ask for a photo or autograph as if you were famous, at the beginning it seems a good thing to be recognized for what you do, but in my point of view is also something stressful, because you can not lead a normal life, because maybe journalists including will wonder about something interesting in your life to publish and it's something that usually don't like; comments have no censorship, so you can receive good and bad critics worldwide.
As you can see, there are a lot of things that can happen with youtube that are useful but care should be taken with the content.