30 GREAT OPENING LINES IN LITERATURE

"A few miles south of Soledad, the Salina River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green."

Sounds familiar? Of course, it does. It's the opening line in Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.

According to an article published in The Telegraph today, position number 1 of the ranking is Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice: "It's a truth universally acknowledged...". You can check it out here.

Let me recommend two wonderful websites which provide free books online:

Project Gutenberg

Literature.org

More literature? Sure! Do you know that today, 22 Feb. marks the 75th anniversary of Antonio Machado's death at Collioure (France)? Antonio Machado was one of the greatest Spanish poets. I'm sure you remember your Spanish Literature teachers and their lessons about Machado's poetry, don't you?

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LISTENING + SCRIPT

My dear students, here you can find different websites where you can practise listening on your own. Some of the websites include exam practice exercises. Others, however, only provide the videos but you can read the script at the same time, which, as you all know, it's good practice for your learning. Just click on the words TRANSCRIPT, SCRIPT, TEXT or something similar and get ready to improve your listening skill! PBS NewsHour (American English) ABC The World Today (Australian English) CNN Students News (American English) NPR (American English) Click on TOPICS VOA News (American English) Future Radio (British English) BBC Learning English (British English) Here you have a link to a list of British radio stations . Before choosing one, please have a look at the information about the location so that you can have a go at different accents. Listening + script + exercises: http://www.examenglish.com/CAE/ http://www.instant-practice.com/ http://w

SMART GOAL SETTING AND LANGUAGE LEARNING HABITS

Why learning a language is a daily commitment. 7 ways to develop good habits in language learning. How to set SMART goals in language learning . 7 Ways to Develop Good Language Learning Habits from Transparent Language, Inc. Top ten reasons to learn a language. Fawlty Towers (tv series). Top ten Fawlty Towers moments (watchmojo.com video) Hilarious!!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE

Christmas traditions: Santa Claus, Christmas tree, Mistletoe, the Candy Cane, etc. Christmas around the world (or here ). By the way, do you know that Santa Claus is known as Father Christmas in the UK? And have you ever heard of Christmas crackers ? If any of you is planning on talking about Christmas crackers on Thursday's speeches, you should know that I'll take one to the school so that you can show other students how it works. For previous posts about Christmas, click here . Now, check part of an episode about Christmas from Are you being served? , a 1970s British comedy. You'll find all the British Christmas traditions here. MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!! Snow is falling all around me children playing having fun it's the season love and understanding merry christmas everyone Time for parties and celebration people dancing all night long time for presents and exchanging kisses time for singing christmas songs We're gonna have