Terminale TS1, TS3

This is where you will find information about our classes.

January 28, 2013

“Heroes” presented in oral reports in TS1, TS3

The definition of a hero varies depending on the source or person you ask.  According to www.dictionary.com, a hero is, "(1.) a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities and (2.) a person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a model or ideal."

In our class, many students cited political figures from the past and present as heroes. We heard talks about four prominent leaders who have fought for the rights of blacks in their countries. One student studied Martin Luther King, Nobel Peace Prize-winning civil rights activist who was murdered in Memphis in April of 1968, another spoke about Rosa Parks, the courageous black woman who refused to give up her seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955. Another student talked about Nelson Mandela, the South African anti-apartheid leader who became his country’s president and earned the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. 

American president Barack Obama was also featured as one of our heroes. The American president was reelected to a second term in office in 2012. He also won the Nobel Peace Prize, in 2009.

Others spoke about historical figures such as Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon; Guy Fawkes, an English rebel who planned a protest against the government by blowing up Parliament in 1605; and Horatio Nelson, a British naval officer best known for his victory in the Battle of Trafalgar, where he was shot and killed.

Several people gave talks about Hollywood celebrities. One student cited Tim Burton, the noted director of such films as the Nightmare Before Christmas and more recently Frankenweenie. Another reviewed the career of Matt Groening, the creator of animated comedy The Simpsons. Four students chose actors as heroes. They chose action film stars Will Smith and Bruce Willis, TV series star Patrick Jane and silent movie legend Charlie Chaplin. Another student spoke about James Dalton Trumbo, an Oscar-winning screenwriter and the most famous of the blacklisted film professionals known in history as “the Hollywood 10.” Two students viewed favorite singers as heroes. One was inspired by Houstonian Beyoncé and another chose, “The King of Pop,” Michael Jackson.

Barry Horne, an animal rights activist who went on a 68-day hunger strike, was a hero to one of our students. Another speaker chose the late adventurer Christopher McCandless, who explored Alaska and died there in the wilderness. He was the subject of the documentary, “The Call of the Wild.” The outstanding abilities of BMX racer Sean Ricany prompted one student to choose him for his report on a hero.

Finally, two students gave their reports about fictional characters: Captain America, the Marvel comic book superhero and Harry Potter, the wildly popular hero of a series of books with the same name that were written by British author J.K. Rowling.

Since we began in October, we have heard about actors, athletes and celebrities as well as many political and historical figures. The idea of what makes a hero varied greatly among our students. Sometimes they were impressed by their achievements; others were inspired by them because they were able to make changes in the world.

January 21, 2013

Anything versus Everything

anything pron	(something)	n'importe quoi loc adv
	Anything might happen.
	N'importe quoi peut arriver.
anything n	(a thing of whatever type)	quelque chose pron
	Have you anything to declare?
	Avez-vous quelque chose à déclarer ?
anything pron	(any single thing)	rien pron indéf
	I didn't hear anything.
	Il n'a rien entendu.
anything adv	(to any extent)	pas du tout loc adv
	He isn't anything like his father.
	Il n'est pas du tout comme son père.
anything pron	(all that is)	n'importe quoi loc adv
	I'll do anything to prove my love for you.
	Je ferai n'importe quoi pour prouver mon amour pour toi.
everything pron	(all things) toutes les choses		tout pron
	Everything went wrong.
	Tout s'est mal passé.
everything n	(what is most important) le plus important		tout nm
	My wife is everything to me.
	Ma femme est tout pour moi.
everything pron	(the only thing important) la seule chose qui importe		tout pron
	Location is everything when buying a house.
	Quand on achète une maison, toute repose sur le lieu.

January 18, 2013

Read "Dark Times," p. 58 thoroughly for Tuesday.


January 11, 2013

Note: Tuesday, January 15, 2013: class in room J-2-7!! (bac blanc)

For Tuesday: finish the modals worksheet.  Also, read Dark Times on page 58 of Password.

For those who "don't have" the page on Condition, I will  give you copies on Tuesday. I distributed this at the end of November. I will announce a new quiz date when I know about our class for Friday, January 18th.

I will talk to Vie Scolaire about changing our class time on Friday the 18th from 11:30 to 1:05... I will tell you on Tuesday.
December 16, 2012

For Friday, please do the exercises in your book on page 42, 1-3.

Some immigrants feel like they belong to two countries and belong to neither country, all at the same time.

The American Dream

Different people have varying ideas about what the American Dream really is. For some people it represents wealth. For others it’s fame. For some, just having a job – a good job that will always be there – is what equals the American Dream. Some consider the American Dream to be having a big house, a fancy car and a swimming pool. Others simply want to have the basics like food, clean water and shelter. Freedom from political and religious strife could be the definition of the American Dream for those from countries with difficulties.

When we think of wealthy people, Bill Gates often comes to mind. Many would say that the Microsoft co-founder is living the American Dream. He and friend Paul Allen started the business in Gates’ garage and he has built it into a multi-billion dollar enterprise.

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield are also good examples of people who have lived the American Dream. Ice cream lovers know them as “Ben and Jerry.” They opened an ice cream shop in a small city in Vermont and grew their business into one of the largest ice cream companies in the US. Cohen turned his new-found wealth and prominence toward a variety of social causes, often through the Ben & Jerry's Foundation.

The first American Idol winner, Kelly Clarkson, is often considered as a person who is living the American Dream now, thanks to her fame and fortune brought about by the TV program. When she was young, her family struggled financially, and after her parents divorced, music became her refuge. She doesn’t have to worry about money now. She earned $2.5 million in 2011.

Carlos Martinez is one of the first people to benefit from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program created by the Obama administration. Despite having two degrees in engineering, he was unable to find a job because he did not have correct work authorization papers. His parents had brought him to the US illegally from Mexico when he was nine. Getting a job in engineering will be his dream.

In a video about Ellis Island, we saw the Hartunian family who were Armenians living in Turkey. They made their way to the United States to escape religious persecution. Their son, Vartan, was just seven when they arrived in the US. “America was paradise, the streets were covered with gold, » he said.

CNN anchor and Time magazine editor Fareed Zakaria could be viewed as living the American Dream. He left India to go to college in the United States. He attended Yale and Harvard and has established himself as one of the top journalists in the country.

We can define the American Dream in many ways. The definition depends on the person who is dreaming.

November 28, 2012


Don't forget that tutoring for the bac begins on Monday from 3 pm to 4 pm in room A-2-4 (our room) with Mrs. LeGuern. Take advantage of this opportunity if your schedule allows!


Another suggestion: train for the Bac with the audio on www.dailyesl.com and eventually work your way up to http://learningenglish.voanews.com/... And of course, listen to the CD in your book!

From the story on page 40

brassy -- cuivré
bootlegged -- enregistrement piraté
dazzling -- éblouissant
stagflation -- period of slow economic growth and inflation
bullish -- en hausse
lexicon -- soulèvement (not in the negative sense here)
overwhelming -- accablant


November 5, 2012

I have graded your tests. Looks for your grades to appear after midnight. Here are some notes about them. Study this information! I will quiz you over it soon. Also, if you did not turn in your homework on abstract nouns, please give it to me on Tuesday when we return and I will correct your grade of zero. You will lose a point for being late, however.

• story vs. history (Story for this assignment would be like conte. Tell me a story, not tell me a history. History is a subject for us, where we talk about the past.
• came vs. went (They came to France. They went to the U.S.) Came is for where you are. If you are in France, you say, "They came to France." If you are in the U.S., you say, "They came to the U.S."
• There was no promise of citizenship with the Deferred Action Plan. From a story I found online: "Alejandro Mayorkas, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said being approved to avoid deportation 'does not provide lawful status or a path to citizenship.'"
• Review their/they're/there. They are (they're) different! There is a difference! You should know their meanings.
•  The word should be another, not an other.
• The verb to be born must have the base verbale plus the verb to be, and is usually expressed in the past. I was born, not I am born. Exception: "The baby will be born on Tuesday by Caesarian section."
• Use to pay for when talking about college/university. 
• example, not exemple
• When quoting someone: She said, "bla bla bla." Use quote marks like this.
• equality, not egality
• I'm motivated, not I'm motivate
• Me, mMy name is... We don't say the equivalent of Moi, je... Begin with Je directly. It is considered redundant.
• Know the difference between leave and live. We will leave Canada in June to live in France for one year.
• different reasons, not differents reasons
• Click here to review countries and their nationalities! There were many errors on this. People from Ireland are Irish. 
• Capitalize "I" when speaking about yourself! I am important!
• Note the difference here: We live in a city. We go to a city.
• asked to her
• hear vs here We can't hear them over here because we are too far away.
• to flee = fuir
• the United States, except when USA is used to describe (United States laws...)
• asked to him
• United States, not United State One state can't be united. However, it looks bizarre to your perhaps that United States is treated as a single entity. There are many states but they are counted as one country, so you consider it as third person singular. 

October 19, 2012

Carlos Martinez went to the United States when he was just nine years old . His family remained in the country illegally. Now, he is 30 years old. He earned two university degrees but he could not use them. Companies could not hire him legally, because he had no work papers. 

Martinez's situation is typical of many children who were brought to the United States illegally by their parents. Now he is being given a chance to work in the U.S. for the first time under a deferred action plan. In two more years, he can reapply to remain in the country longer. 

The Obama government gave people like Carlos Martinez a chance to get work papers. This rule changed in June and applications for the program became available in August. 

Some people say the program was an attempt by the Obama administration to get votes from Latinos because most immigrants are Latinos.

I agree/disagree... with the program because I think/ I don't think...

prove

to earn a degree

to be accepted to a university

you apply to a university

to submit an application

no space before a ! and a ?

one paragraph

different systems

scholarship

all the people = everyone

example

if you haven't got the money/if you don't have

the merit, the need

results -- use grades, marks

in the first time  first of all, firstly

secondly

in addition

scientifics scientists

for conclude to conclude

October 11, 2012

There were 30 million Europeans who went to the US between 1815 and 1915.

1851-1860 the potato famine (Irish)
1861-1870 people were in search of jobs (mostly Germans)
1871-1880 people were in search of religious freedom (southern Germans, mostly Catholic)
1881-1890 more Irish immigrants, crop failures, political, religious strife (conflit)
1891-1900 southern Italians (including Sicily and Sardinia) poverty, poor soil, disease
1901-1910 anti-Semitic violence - Jews from Russia. Some Austro-Hungarians were escaping from army conscription

Freedom to worship: People wanted "to win freedom for their souls, to think and speak and worship as they would," according to the PBS web site. "The United States became the most religiously diverse nation on earth, with some 2,000 distinct religious groups by the early 21st century."
Freedom from oppression: In the United States, the Constitution, "guaranteed the nation's citizens a representative government, due process of law, and the protection of fundamental rights, such as freedom of speech and assembly." People are free to think as they like. No one can tell them how to think.
Freedom from want: In the United States, many immigrants have found the ability to have anything they want if they are willing to work hard to get it.
Freedom from fear: For some immigrants, being unable to escape from their homeland meant the possibility of death.
Freedom to create: Many immigrants with exceptional talent got immigrant visas through a program from President F.D. Roosevelt. According to the PBS web site, "The impact of the refugees from Fascism and Nazism on American intellectual life is incalculable."

The famous 19th century American painter Norman Rockwell depicted four freedoms, as outlined in a speech by FDR. These were printed in The Saturday Evening Post. They are similar to the freedoms above.

1. b. The term melting pot came from a 1908 play by English writer Israel Zangwill. The melodrama transposed the plot of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to New York City, with the star-crossed lovers now from Russian Jewish and Russian Cossack backgrounds. In the play's climactic moment, the hero proclaims: "Understand that America is God's Crucible pot de fonte, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming! A fig for your feuds and vendettas! Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians—into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American."

2. b The rise of Fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany led to a "braindrain" (fuite des cerveaux) from Europe in the 1930s, as scientists—many of them Jews—immigrated to the United States to take up posts at American laboratories and universities. Many of these scientists participated in the Manhattan Project—the effort to create an American atomic bomb. Italian Enrico Fermi was working at the University of Chicago when he oversaw the first controlled nuclear chain reaction, which proved that an atomic bomb was a practical proposition. News was transmitted to the Manhattan Project's leaders in a coded message "The Italian navigator has successfully landed in the New World."

3. a. Boomers and Sooners: In the 1870s, railroad executives, real-estate speculators, and would-be settlers—collectively known as "Boomers"—lobbied the government to allow non-Indians into unassigned land. In the 1880s, federal laws undermined the Indians' right to the land they'd been promised. In 1889, President Benjamin Harrison signed legislation opening up two million acres of Indian Territory to settlement, on a first come, first served basis. At noon on April 22 of that year, some 50,000 Boomers raced into the territory. Many of the 1889 Boomers, however, found that others had snuck in before April 22 and staked out land claims. These "Sooners" as they were called gave Oklahoma its nickname, the "Sooner State."

4. b. In 1827, Joseph Smith, of Palmyra in western New York State, announced that the angel Moroni had guided him to a buried set of golden plates engraved in "reformed Egyptian," which the 21-year-old Smith then translated into English with the aid of special glasses. According to Smith, the plates revealed that ancient Israelites had traveled to North America thousands of years earlier. Further revelations led Smith to found a new sect in 1830, which became known as the Mormons, from the faith's principal scripture, The Book of Mormon. Today, there are more than 2.5 million Mormons in America, and they comprise about three-quarters of the population of Utah.

5. c. In the spring of 1917, Russia's government, battered in World War I and beset by internal unrest, collapsed. Czar Nicholas II abdicated in March, and a provisional government took over. In October, the Bolshevik (communist) party seized power. The revolution was followed by two years of bloody civil war as the Bolsheviks successfully fought off challenges from the forces of several White (anticommunist) groups. The war, and the famine that followed, claimed perhaps 2 million lives and created 1.5 million refugees, about 30,000 of whom settled in America before the immigration restrictions of the 1920s went into effect. One of those who was allowed out of the country was Allisa Rosenbaum, who managed to obtain a visa to visit relatives in America in 1926 and never returned. Changing her name to Ayn Rand she later authored the hugely successful novels The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957).

6. b. A colony of a different kind was Rhode Island. Founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a minister who had been banished from Massachusetts because of his ideas on freedom of worship, it was the first colony to guarantee religious tolerance, and it provided a refuge for Quakers, Baptists, Jews and other non-Puritans.

7. b. Mariel and the Balseros
In April 1980, Castro announced that any Cuban who wanted to leave the country could do so by way of the port of Mariel. Between April and October, when Castro closed the port, Cuban-Americans brought 125,000 people to Florida from Mariel, many aboard small craft. Cubans continued to flee to America, many of them in ramshackle boats and rafts. An unknown number of these balseros (raft people) died in the attempt. Before 1994, Cubans who reached Florida were allowed to stay, but that year the Clinton administration changed its policy in order to discourage the balseros. Over the next decade, balseros intercepted by the Coast Guard were sent to camps at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

8. b. The ideas of the English philosopher John Locke had a profound effect on the political development of the young United States. In works like Two Treatises of Government (1690), he rejected the prevailing view that rulers derived their authority from God, and thus were entitled to unlimited power. Instead, Locke argued that all people possessed fundamental rights to life, liberty, and property, and that it was the government's duty to protect these rights—a concept Thomas Jefferson expressed in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence more than three-quarters of a century later: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

9. c. Most historians date the start of the struggle for women's suffrage in the United States to 1848, when Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized a conference at Seneca Falls, New York. Out of this meeting came a wide-ranging "Declaration of Principles" that included legal equality for women and men, as well as suffrage. The aftermath of the Civil War split the small movement. In 1869 Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment, which guaranteed the right to vote to the newly freed slaves, but it applied only to men. The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), led by Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, argued against ratification of the amendment unless it guaranteed women the vote, too.

10. c. The first Korean immigrants to the United States were about 7,000 young men who came to Hawaii in 1903-1904 as laborers on the islands' sugarcane plantations. Korean immigration rose in the early 1960s, when special legislation gave work permits to South Korean doctors and nurses. Thanks to the 1965 reforms, which came about the same time that the South Korean government eased restrictions on emigration, a big wave of immigration began in 1968. By 1980, about 350,000 Koreans had settled in America, rising to 800,000 in 1990 and 1.1 million in the early 21st century. Today, 90 percent of Korean-Americans are post-1965 arrivals or their children.

Personally

My great-great-great grandmother Mary Ruth Egan came with her parents from Ireland at about age 11. She settled in North Brookfield, Massachusetts. At the time it had one of the largest shoe factories in the state/area.

My other ancestors came from Sweden, England, Wales and Nantes, France. In 1998, I bought my wedding dress in Nantes.



September 24, 2012

Test on Friday, September 28, 2012

• Be prepared to write about the cost of going to university
• Know the vocabulary we have covered -- from the book and in class

September 23, 2012

Notes from your essays...  

• Use paragraphs
• Accents are rare in English (exceptions: café and résumé)
• An university degree/diploma (think of the pronunciation, not the fact that “u” is a vowel
• To make a living
• To pass earn a degree (we pass exams)
• Which, not wich (wich doesn’t exist)
• Passport, not passeport
• Obligation: better to say requirement
• Capacity ≠ ability
• Capitalize: nationalities, languages, days of the week, months of the year and proper nouns
• I saw many run-on sentences and fragments. Edit carefully!
• Don’t rely on translation programs. (Google: Ne reposent pas sur des programmes de traduction. Vous vous retrouvez avec beaucoup d'erreurs.)
• I haven’t got or I don’t have, NOT I have not, we have not…
• Be consistent. If you begin speaking about yourself, don’t switch to “people,” “students,” “they,” etc.
• Option: you can type your papers. If you handwrite, please leave me space for comments. Write large!
• To find a work, to find a position/job…
• We are lucky, NOT we have chance
• Depends on, never depends of...
• Success has two c’s…

September 9, 2012

Oral Reports: “Heroes”

Please choose a hero for your oral report. You can choose whomever you’d like, as long as the person would be recognized as a hero by your peers. Please offer typical biographical information and tell us what makes this person exceptional.  Why did you choose him or her?

There should be some form of visual support (computer presentation, poster, etc.) Check your USB key in advance to be sure your software works at school.

Suggestions:

• ·         An artist
• ·         An actor or actress
• ·         A political figure
• ·         A sports figure
• ·         A significant person in history
• ·         A member of the monarchy
• ·         A fictional character
• ·         Someone you personally look up to

Reports must be about three minutes (not much more, please!) and you will be graded on the following:

• ·         Content
• ·         Grammar
• ·         Pronunciation
• ·         Knowledge about the subject matter
• ·         Presentation (time and attention given to what you present)

Additional information:

·         If you have questions about pronunciation, don’t hesitate to ask me or you can check www.dictionary.com and click on the speaker symbol.

·         Please give me a small sheet of paper with your name, class and her name as soon as possible.

·         Reports will begin the week of Monday, October 1. Volunteers may go first; otherwise, we will go in alphabetical order.

 

September 6, 2012


Les 4 notions au programme sont :
1- MYTHES ET HEROS 2 - ESPACES ET ECHANGES
3- LIEUX ET FORMES DU POUVOIR 4 - L’IDEE DE PROGRES

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Charlotte_Simmons