Global plays and sings carols at Wedel Café
Two days after Christmas, on the last Friday of the year, Global Village’s own musical talents will play and sing some of the best known Christmas carols at Wedel Café, Rynek Kościuszki.
Friday, 28 December, starts at 6 pm. Admission free.
Kolędnicy z Global Village:
Marzena Białobrzewska (guitar)
Wiktoria Franczak
Tomek Grygoruk
Ewa Grygoruk
Kacper Jelec (guitar)
Marta Jelec (violin)
Andrzej Kozłowski (musical saw, pcv tube)
Maciek Kozłowski
Magda Kurza
Michał Pawłowski (guitar)
Wojtek Rogalski (guitar)
Andrzej Kozłowski, master of musical saw
Hush… may we ask you all for silence?
Out of the blue
Who could have expected that a seemingly ordinary coursebook text would spur us to develop quite a few brilliant lesson ideas. First of all, it caught our attention because its title referenced indirectly to Miles Davis’ seminal record – Birth of the Cool, although its subject concerned blue pigments. And then were the questions of how to make a rather unappealing IELTS text more personal and how to bring more life into a text-based lesson.
Trusting our intuitions, we just displayed some excerpts from the texts on the walls, read them fast and talked for a bit, only to switch to students’ own experiences, memories and associations of blue. And off it went.
There were personal stories told in the Magic Circle, paragraphs written, blog entries, extra knowledge brought by a doctor, colour charts, idioms and, most of all, a blueprint to apply to other topical lessons in the future.
The Birth of Blue
Homage to blue
Empowering listening
We are all used to listening tasks incorporated into practically every course book, from beginners to truly advanced. Heavily edited and often strikingly unnatural, they function as testing exercises and only in the context of the lesson – once done, instantly forgotten. That’s a big drawback.
The advent of podcasting has changed a lot in using authentic listening resources in teaching and learning. There are tons of fantastic quality programmes available for multiple listening sessions, at any time, anywhere, with that bonus of a personal, almost intimate feel that good podcasts, like good radio, always have.
To meet the needs of Diana, Gosia, Karolina, Jarek, Joanna and Michał, all members of ielts_7 group, we start an online collection of selected podcasts aiming particularly at students focused on IELTS.
Our selection: Raw listening for IELTS
The source: Start the Week
Bring stories back
Blinking TV won’t do. 245 channels won’t do. Most hilarious show with a totally hip presenter won’t do. The hottest clothes, a golden suntan and a fancy car won’t do. Loud and throbbing music won’t do. Special effects worth loads of money won’t do. 24 hours a day won’t do. Free access won’t do. Brad Pitt won’t do. Even Angelina what’s-her-last-name won’t do.
Tell me a story. The simpler the better. About a girl. About a little girl. About a little girl that laughed. About a little girl that laughed every time she saw a tree…
Let me listen to your voice. Let me feel your presence. Let me know you are really there.
(michał_t)
Shopping for Sunday lunch
The air is crisp and smells of smoke. It makes us realise we haven’t cooked for a long, long time and it seems a sin to rely on canteen food when the local market stalls are groaning with late autumn goodness – fat roots, purple cabbage, new apples and Conference pears. Oh, those pears are hard enough to hurt the gums, but when placed in a brown paper bag and left there for a two-day retreat, they undergo a miraculous transformation. On the first bite they turn into a fountain of juice in your mouth, trickling down the neck and ruining your just ironed white shirt.
It is the pumpkins that steal the market show. We go for a smaller, football sized fruit, deeply orangey inside, small enough to roast within an hour. Few vegetables offer greater rewards in return for the simplest possible treatment. A rescue for a cold day.
Pat the pumpkin and babble gently while giving it a good wash. Cut it into 4-6 wedges and scoop the fibre and seeds from the centre. Do not peel the skin. Lay the pieces cut-side up on a cast iron pan or griddle. Cut about 50g of butter into thin slices and put them inside each wedge. Pour some olive oil over the flesh, together with a good pinch of fresh thyme leaves, lots of sea salt and coarsely ground black pepper. Roast in the oven pre-heated to 180°C for an hour, checking the wedges occasionally to see how they are doing. They are done when the kitchen fills with sweet caramelised flavours. The flesh has to be utterly tender when you pierce it with a knife.
Serve with brown rice as a vegetarian meal. For a meaty variation, place some good quality sausage in the pan with pumpkin halfway through roasting.
Było nam niezmiernie miło wspólnie z Państwem realizować projekt “Europejskie Podlasie mówi po angielsku – druga edycja”.
Zgodnie z założeniami projektu, w sześć miesięcy po jego zakończeniu, uczestnicy proszeni są o wypełnienie ankiety pytającej o wpływ kursu na ich obecną sytuację zawodową. Uprzejmie prosimy wszystkich Państwa, z którymi nie udało nam się skontaktować osobiście, o przeczytanie i wypełnienie poniższej ankiety oraz odesłanie jej pocztą elektroniczną lub listownie. Serdecznie dziękujemy i do zobaczenia w przyszłości.
biuro@gv.pl
Global Village
Nowy Świat 17
15-453 Białystok
Pobierz ankietę (PDF, 197KB) (DOC, 262KB)
Monday evening lecture presentation
Professor Mark F. Tattenbaum (a Fulbright Program Senior Scholar) is soon closing a series of his lectures on American drama of the 20th century, given at Bialystok’s Theatre Academy. Courtesy of Prof. Tattenbaum and the Academy, Global Village students and teachers will hear him on Monday, 12 November, at 8.15 pm, presenting selected works of Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and the likes. Admission free.
For All Souls’ Day
Suzanne
Vega is her name. As she is going onstage in Warsaw this weekend, we dearly regret not being able to see her in the the flesh. The radio concert, we can’t afford to miss it, will have to take us there. She is special in many respects. In a way it’s a wonder how she has managed to survive in a very cynical, macho industry, where everybody pushes their way through, without that prima donna attitude you usually get.
As teachers, we’ve had a secret relationship with Suzanne for nearly twenty years. Through little occasional trysts. In the classroom! With her seemingly simple music and lyrics she has offered us her unpretentious persona, wit, reflective mind, numerous mini-stories, the sensitivity and warmth of a wiser, older sister we’ve never had and always missed. ‘Luka’ and ‘Tom’s Diner’ have invariably been on our list of classic, song-based lessons.
One of the students, old enough to be her grown-up daughter, recently remarked while visualising ‘Luka’ at a lesson: ‘Funny, I’ve heard it so many times and always thought of it as a happy song, but it isn’t.’
In Liverpool (.mp3 approx. 4.3MB)
