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Hey Everyone!

This week in our conversation groups we talked about the environment and its many related subtopics.  Conversations ranged from our environmental concerns to "greener" habits, global warming, endangered animals and carbon footprints and "handprints."  There is certainly a lot of homework you could do to keep working at home!

Let's start with listening.  Learners may enjoy listening about "Save the Earth"  or about "A Green World" whereas more advanced speakers should check out "Climate Crunch: Will Climate Change Release Geological Mayhem" or A Sustainable Future? (available with subtitles).

Don't forget to do some reading.  BBC English has an interesting article about environmental protest groups.  You can also calculate your carbon footprint, or read about the 10 most environmentally friendly nations.

Hello Everybody!


This week's topic was memory: how our brain works (or doesn't!), what we remember from our childhood, and how to improve our memory.

Try doing some listening activities at home.  Learners may try this listening exercise about Memory (mp3, transcript and quiz).  Or you may enjoy these audio concentration games. For more advanced students, there are many fascinating things to listen to: TED talks (available with subtitles) about The riddle of experience vs. memory or A Stroke of Insight.  Or maybe you would like to watch a video called Endless Memory or listen to a Radiolab episode about Memory and Forgetting

For reading you may be interested in this BBC overview of questions about memory  or an article about research to create a "forgetting pill". Do you think this type of technology will ever really be possible?  Another possibility is to read this article about how the internet is changing our memory. Have you ever experienced this phenomenon?

Don't forget that writing is a great way to practice and realize what mistakes you have, and this week there are plenty of things to write about. You could describe a joyful, sad or hilarious memory. Or, if you could change one memory for the better, what would it be and why?  Creative writers may enjoy describing what the experience of amnesia would be like.

Some of you discussed the best way to remember new vocabulary in English and we talked a bit about flashcards.  Quizlet is a good program to use to memorize new vocabulary.

Have a good week!

Kelly

--
It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.  -- Lewis Carroll