HUGH LAURIE: BRITISH SLANG VS: AMERICAN SLANG

Hugh Laurie visited Ellen's show and they played a brilliant game on slang. Have a gig watching it at YouTube.

US CAMPAIGN RESUMES AFTER SANDY

Excellent update at BBC site. Both teachers and learners will find it useful to check out the above heading at the 'Words in the press' section. You can read reports, listen to them, download them or check relevant vocabulary. I would recommend as well: 'Challenges remain after Sandy'

GAUGUIN AND THE VOYAGE TO THE EXOTIC

With so nuch competition from the public sector, the quality of Madrid private galleries and museums has also improved. The current Gauguin Exhibition at the Thyssen features the voyage as an escape from civilisation, a theme that provided the avantgarde with new impetus, but also as a return to the origins, to the edenic state.

AUTONOMOUS LEARNING REVISITED

Autonomy was a buzz word for the TESOL market. I would recommend 'Teaching and Researching Autonomy in Language Learning (2001). it is an appropriate starting point for student teachers, researchers in Applied Linguistics, and teachers involved in self-access learning, and learner trainning in autonomy. 

STEVEN PINKER: THE LANGUAGE INSTINCT

The language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (1994)

In this classic, the MIT's expert on language and mind brilliantly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. Full of humor and wordplay. Do not miss the preface.

THE YOUTHXCHANGE GUIDE UNESCO

It is an excellent toolkit to train and teach on sustainable lifestyles available in 20 languages. If you search for its website, you would be able to add content, dowload documents and send your comments to UNEP and UNESCO.

TREASUE ISLAND: BRITISH ART FROM HOLBEIN TO HOCKNEY

'Treasure Island' portrays the artistic evolution of the British Isles, from religious sculptures - damaged by the Puritans during the Reformation - to Pop Art pieces by Blake and Hamilton and Toni Cragg's emblematic 1981 sculpture `Britain Seen from the North´.

According to the organizers, its title 'invokes the eponymous novel by the British writer R. L. Stevenson, showing how the island has a treasure -its art, painting and sculpture- which, like almost every treasure, remains half-hidden, waiting to be discovered.' Very impressive.

FUNDACION JUAN MARCH, MADRID.