A NEW TWIST ON A CLASSIC TALE

On Friday, you asked me why all English teachers love Jane Austen. Why, indeed?

"… the peculiar brilliance of Austen lies partly in what she focuses on, and what she ignores." (Times Insider).

It’s no wonder. She’s among the most revered authors writing in English. Her novels take a critical and often humorous look at life in the late 1700s. The tales of life, and love, are filled with irony, and a sense of realism about the era and the characters she wrote about. Besides, her work remains relevant. As the Jane Austen Society claims, "[Austen] is very pertinent even today".

https://www.digitalausten.org/node/50

Jane Austen in modern-day India. What do you make of it? Surprisingly delicious!

This is Gurinder Chadha's all-singing, all-dancing new Bollywood-Austen spin. She is an English film director of Kenyan Asian origin. She is best known for the films Bend it like Beckham (2002) in which we can see a very young Keira Knighley and What's cooking? (2000). If you haven't seen them yet, don't put it off much longer, I'd say. Her 2019 film is Blinded by the Light, the inspiration of which is Brexit, as she explains in this interview.

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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!!!

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/...

Big Brother, the thought police, the two minutes’ hate, doublethink, unperson, 2+2=5 and the ministry of truth.

"It was a bright cold day in April," goes the first line of 1984, "and the clocks were striking thirteen" George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four opening sentence. Another 35 years have elapsed since then, and Nineteen Eighty-Four remains the book we turn to when truth is mutilated, when language is distorted, when power is abused, when we want to know how bad things can get. Nothing but the truth: the legacy of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (The Guardian)