COMMUNICATING IN THE XXIst CENTURY: PICTOGRAMS

 (6th Cultural Week-5: Writing in the 21st century)

Information is also shown through pictograms nowadays, specially in public places. They are used to be understood by people speaking any language. No written word is used, but precise information is communicated. Do you understand them?

Their meanings in the same order:

Public telephone / Emergency-Hospital / Post office-box / for the Disabled

Restaurant / Cafeteria / Gift shop-Souvenirs / Rent-a-car

Train-Underground / Helicopter / Taxi / Airport / Port-Docks

Luggage reclaim / Customs / Check in / Meeting point / Passport control

Escalators / Cloakroom-Left luggage office / Lift-Elevator / Men's & Women's toilets

- PROJECT 5 FOR THE CULTURAL WEEK IN ENGLISH:

a) CREATE YOUR OWN PICTOGRAMS. MAKE PEOPLE GUESS WHAT THEY MEAN. ANSWERS MUST BE SHOWN IN ENGLISH.

b) DO YOU KNOW ABOUT ANY OTHER PICTOGRAMS WIDELY USED? FIND OTHERS, THEIR MEANINGS MUST BE GUESSED & WRITTEN IN ENGLISH BY OTHER STUDENTS.

WRITING IN THE XXIst CENTURY: TWEETS

 (6th Cultural Week-4: Writing in the 21st century)

Continuing with the different ways by which we communicate by writing in the XXIst century, it's the turn for tweets. To tweet is the English word which refers to the vocalization birds do, both their calls and their songs, which have a function and a meaning.

From this original meaning, now the word has developed to give name to Twitter, the online networking service, which enables users to send and receive short messages, not more than 140 characters, which are called tweets.

Here are some examples of tweets on Twitter:

- PROJECT 4 FOR THE CULTURAL WEEK IN ENGLISH:

- WRITE ORIGINAL OR FUNNY TWEETS IN ENGLISH. REMEMBER NOT MORE THAN 140 LETTERS. YOU MAY USE ABBREVIATIONS LIKE WHEN TEXT MESSAGING.

WRITING IN THE XXIst CENTURY: SMILEYS OR EMOTICONS

 (6th Cultural Week-3: Writing in the 21st century)

Technologies have stirred up the way we communicate in writing. Text messages and Whatsapp have made us use all kinds of abbreviations and smileys o emoticons. Is this the way handwriting is changing for the future? Is digitalwriting and smileys the future?

Here are some charts with basic meanings of smileys.

- PROJECT 3 FOR THE CULTURAL WEEK IN ENGLISH:

- WRITE MESSAGES USING SMILEYS/EMOTICONS FOR OTHER STUDENTS TO DECODE INTO ENGLISH & ALSO TRANSLATE INTO GALICIAN/SPANISH.

GOODBYE HANDWRITING?

 (6th Cultural Week-2: Writing in the 21st century)

TODAY IS NATIONAL HANDWRITING DAY 

IN U.S.A. & BRITAIN

Today is National Handwriting Day in USA and Britain and this course, our Cultural Week (the 6th) will be devoted to the History of Handwriting. Last November we learnt that Finland, one of the countries with the highest quality education in the world, has decided to stop paying attenction to handwriting teaching in school and will concentrate on teaching keyboard writing.

Is handwriting out of fashion? Is it from the past century? Handwriting isn't that important? Isn't our own handwriting part of our personality? Arguments for and against have appeared since the news was known. In the history of handwriting, will this mean the end of an era? The end of handwriting?

- WRITING BY HAND: SO 20th CENTURY...
(Enrique Dans. 30-Nov-2014)

(Handwritten quotation from J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter & The Philosopher's Stone")

Above a photo of a handwritten quotation on the BooksBlog of the British newspaper The Guardian, which to celebrate this National Handwriting Day, today, has published inspiring written literary quotations, handwritten by their readers. Click on this link to see them all.

The English Department is going to work on how communicating via writing has changed in the XXIst century. Different posts will be following to show these changes and propose different projects to be done in English for the Cultural Week exhibits and quizzes. Such as:

- MOBILE TEXT-MESSAGING. (The only post which has been published previously)

- SMILEYS & EMOTICONS.

- TWEETS.

- PICTOGRAMS.
(The last three will have following posts published very soon) 
Stay tuned and participate in the proposed projects. Thanks.
Here's the second one:

PROJECT 2 FOR THE CULTURAL WEEK IN ENGLISH:

- GIVE A HANDWRITTEN LITERARY QUOTATION IN ENGLISH OF A BOOK YOU'VE ENJOYED.

Galician version of this post @ ArquivosDoTrasno.

WRITING IN THE XXIst CENTURY: MOBILE MADNESS TEXT-MESSAGING

 (6th Cultural Week-1: Writing in the 21st century)

OMG = oh, my God                                               NSFW = not suitable for work
AKA = as known as                                              THANX = thanks

We've been talking about text messages in 1ºBAC classes recently and how abbreviations or acronyms are also used when sending text messages in English. Above you can see a glossary of SMS English. Below there are links to a game to practice and play with text messages in English and also other websites which deal with this way of writing or a glossaries of possible acronyms to be used. 

Links: 
- To game-practice of text messages. Try to discover what they mean...

MOBILE MADNESS-1.

MOBILE MADNESS-2.

MOBILE MADNESS-3.

- More about text messaging:
- HOW TO TEXT IN ENGLISH.
- NETLINGO: CHAT ACRONYMS & SHORTHAND
- TECHDICTIONARY

- PROJECT 1 FOR THE CULTURAL WEEK IN ENGLISH:

- WRITE TEXT MESSAGES IN ENGLISH USING ABBREVIATIONS FOR OTHER STUDENTS TO DECODE INTO ENGLISH & ALSO TRANSLATE INTO GALICIAN/SPANISH.