IT'S CARNIVAL TIME HERE... BUT NOT IN NOTTING HILL (LONDON)

These days we're about to celebrate Carnival, like in Cádiz, Tenerife, Venice, Rio de Janeiro and many other places... In Britain Carnival is also celebrated, but not now. Bad weather could be the reason, Britain celebrates Carnival in summer, more exactly during August, and Britain's most famous Carnival celebrations are held in Notting Hill (London).

Before we go to Notting Hill, let's check up with some basic Carnival vocabulary in this first video:

The Notting Hill Carnival taking place in West London each year is Europe's biggest street festival. For two days at the end of the month of August, the members of the West Indian community flock the streets of Notting Hill in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea for one of the biggest celebration on the planet. The carnival has lived in the area since the 60s and is today attracting over a million people a year. If you are looking for a vibrant celebration, with plenty of sound systems for street dancing and numerous Caribbean food stalls serving up jerk chicken, then the Notting Hill Carnival is the place to be.

Video:

Link to more about Carnival on previous posts in this blog:

- IT'S CARNIVAL TIME (2010)

- MARDI GRAS OR FAT TUESDAY (2011)

- CARNIVAL AROUND THE WORLD (2013)

- SHROVE TUESDAY-PANCAKE DAY (2013)

VOTE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE PUNCTUATION MARK

The magazine More Intelligent Life from "The Economist" has asked its readers to vote for their favourite punctuation mark. The candidates have been proposed and valued by famous people from the world of books.

So what's your favourite one. if you want to vote link with the page above. 

Galician version of this post @ ArquivosDoTrasno.

QUESTION TAGS

A question tag is a grammatical structure in which a statement or an imperative is turned into a question, by adding an interrogative fragment (the "tag") at its end.

Most of the times you're not really asking because you really know the answer already. You're just making sure that it is the answer you expect. 

As in the example on the photo:

This is a tag question, isn't it?

(It is a tag question, you only want to make sure that it is).

This is how they work:

The statement can be affirmative or negative, the question tag is in the opposite: if affirmative statement, negative tag and viceversa: if negative statement, affirmative tag. Always use the corresponding personal pronoun in a question tag.

Possible answers:

To make the correct question tag, you must always use the corresponding auxiliary verb according to the statement, this depends on the statement's verb tense form or if a modal verb is used. Look at the examples below:

Statement examples:

- Simple tenses will use DO.

- Continuous tenses will use BE.

- Perfect tenses will use HAVE.

- with modal verbs, the same modal verb is used.

To summarise:

Link to

- GENERAL INFO ON QUESTION TAGS.

- MIXED EXAMPLES OF QUESTION TAGS

- QUESTION-TAG EXERCISE QUIZ ON ENGLISH CLUB.
- QUESTION TAG EXERCISES ON PERFECT ENGLISH
- QUESTION TAG EXERCISES ON WORLD ENGLISH
- QUESTION TAG EXERCISES ON ESL LOUNGE

...AFTER COMES AGREEING OR DISAGREEING

Once an opinion is given, you can agree or disagree with it. These are different ways of expressing that you either agree or diasgree with what another person says. Most are typical conversational ways of agreeing or not.

To agree with an affirmative statement:

To agree with a negative statement:

To disagree: you can simply use the opposite form of the corresponding auxiliary verb:

- "I am happy" - "I'm not"

- "I am not hungry" - "I am"

- "We went to the concert last night" - "I didn't"

- Mike can't reach the top shelf" - "I can"

etc...

Other basic expressions to agree or disagree:

Some more:

Grading the level of agreement/disagreement:

FIRST, EXPRESSING AN OPINION...

Here are different ways of introducing your own opinion.

SHAPES

Check on these charts for the different vocabulary of SHAPES & FORMS.

VALENTINE'S 2014

This year we're presenting a link that shows you HOW TO BE ROMANTIC IN ENGLISH

You can also click here below to previous Valentine celebrations on this blog:

- 2013

- 2012

- 2011

...and some music for the day:
- Video "TAKE MY BREATH AWAY", Berlin:

THAMES VALLEY FLOODINGS (BBC)

This winter has been very tough here, and in Britian, with lots of storms, one after the other, and loads of rain, which have ended up flooding over. Here's an aereal video from the BBC, which follows up the river Thames along its valley and shows how serious the floodings have been there.

Video Thames valley flooding (BBC):

Many more pictures in this link from DailyMail

TYPES OF INSTRUMENTS: PERCUSSION (&3)

The last group of instruments is:
3- PERCUSSION

They are musical instruments that sound either by 
- being hit with sticks, mallets, brushes or rods 

or struck, shaken or rubbed by hand

or clashing against another similar instrument

TYPES OF INSTRUMENTS: WIND (2)

2- WIND INSTRUMENTS
The sound in these instruments is produced by air passing through a tube.

There are two kind of wind instruments which depends on what they are made of:

a) WOODWIND 
This group of wind instruments are almost always made of wood and are played using a wooden reed

like: the flute, the clarinet, the oboe,the bassoon, the saxophone, as seen below.

2- Brass

In this group is the horn, the tuba, the trumpet, the trombone, as seen above.This group of wind instruments are made of metal or brass and don't need a wooden reed, but a metalic mouthpiece.

TYPES OF INSTRUMENTS: STRINGS (1)

Remember the slide on a previous post: THE ORCHESTRA, where we can see the different types of instruments.

1- STRING INSTRUMENTS: 
The sound in these instruments is produced by the vibrating of their strings.

These instruments are subdivided into:

a) BOWED STRINGED INSTRUMENTS, 
which are played rubbing the strings with a BOW

and in this group we find:

(The difference between bowed stringed and plucked stringed instruments below ↓)

b) PLUCKED STRINGED INSTRUMENTS, (see some above ↑)
which are played plucking the strings with fingers:

or with a plectrum:

in this group we find, among others:

c) STRUCK STRINGED INSTRUMENTS, 
played by small hammers striking the strings:

 in the piano: