What's it Famous for?

Week 25^th – 27^th May 

Hi! How’s everybody?

Let’s remember what we did in our last lessons.

We started the week chatting! “We talk and talk until the cows came home”; this idiomatic expression means to talk for a long time. (In Spanish I ‘d say something like ‘…and we talked for so long that it was time to take the New Year’s Eve grapes!’ Of course this is Spanish not English! Do you remember the books ‘From lost to the River’ or ‘Speaking Silver’?)

You can download the book on PDF if you'rre interested in it, here.

So, we talked about all the events from the previous weekend: the end of the Spanish Football League, the Eurovision Contest and the Elections!

  We also finished talking about our school days and who was or wasn’t a rebel at that time.

Here’s a summary of the different ways of talking about the past.

Past Simple	Finished / completed actions in the past.	She worked in London for five years.
	Actions that happened one after another.	He opened the door, took off his shoes and sat on the sofa.
Past continuous	To set a story.	The sun was shining and people were happy that spring afternoon.
	An action in progress at some time in the past.	The kids were studying for the exam in the kitchen.
Used to + infinitive	States or repetitive actions in the past which are no longer true.	Her daughter used to have long black hair. (Now, she is blonde) I used to go to the cinema once a moth. (Now, I don’t usually go)

Remember that in the same way we use “am/is/are going to” for the future, we can use “was/were going to”, to express a future action in the past!

After that, we listened to and talked about “The Mothers of Invention”

Did you know that:

… disposable nappies, bullet-proof vests, the dishwasher and the windscreen wipers were invented by women?

Text- messaging was invented by the Finnish (from Finland) company Nokia to help Finnish teenagers who were very shy.

Light bulbs are made specially to last only a certain number of hours so that the manufacturers make money.

The first Harry Potter book was written in a café in Edinburgh.

The 2010 Football World cup was won by the national Spanish football team.

“Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona” is a famous movie that was filmed in Spain.America was discovered by Cristopher Columbus.

“Callos” and “Cocido Madrileño” are eaten a lot in Madrid.

The Iberian lynx is only found in Spain.

This is how we make passive sentences:

Farmers	grow	bananas	in the Canary Islands.
Subject	V	Object
Bananas	Are grown	In the Canary Islands
Subject	Passive V
Shakespeare	wrote	Hamlet.
Subject	V	Object
Hamlet	Was written	by Shakespeare.
Subject	Passive V	Agent

The object becomes the subject of the passive sentence. The subject becomes the agent. When the agent isn’t important or it’s a pronoun, it isn’t necessary to write it.

The verb changes into passive voice by writing the verb “to be” in the same tense as in the active sentence + the participle of the verb used in the active sentence.

Like this:

Present simple	produce		Present simple of “to be”	Am / is/are	+	participle	Is produced
They produce coffee in Brazil.			Coffee is produced in Brazil
Past simple	wrote		Past simple of “to be”	Was/were	+	participle	Was written
Dickens wrote ‘Oliver Twist’			‘Oliver Twist’ was written by Dickens.
Future simple	Will sell		Future of “to be”	Will be	+	participle	Will be sold
They will sell hundreds of tickets.			Hundreds of tickets will be sold.
Infinitive	buy		Infinitive of “to be”	be	+	participle	Be bought
You can buy the tickets on the net.			Tickets can be bought on the net.

We’ll continue on Monday. Have a nice weekend! Bye!