"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, AND that has made all the difference" The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

DREAMING IN ENGLISH. Are you dreaming in English yet?

WELCOME!!! This is a bit of a challenge for me!!! This blog is intended for all audiences. I hope you enjoy and get the most of it!!!

Here you might find resources to help you navigate the muddy waters of English. The humble aim of this blog is just to keep you in touch with different types of English and different aspects of the English culture , to increase your curiosity about English through many different fields.

Licencia Creative Commons
Are you dreaming in English yet? por BE se encuentra bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 3.0 Unported.

miércoles, 28 de noviembre de 2012

Almost Alice

Almost Alice is a collection of various artists' music inspired by Tim Burton's film, Alice in Wonderland. The album is also notable for featuring songs that were either inspired from quotes directly from Lewis Carroll's original novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
For example, both "The Lobster Quadrille" (by Franz Ferdinand) and "You Are Old, Father William" (by They Might Be Giants) are both word-for-word performances of poems from the original Alice as quoted by The Mock-Turtle (the former) and Alice herself to the Caterpillar (the latter). Furthermore, "Very Good Advice" by Robert Smith is a cover of Kathryn Beaumont's "Very Good Advice" from Disney's original animated version of Alice in Wonderland.
The lead single, "Alice" by Avril Lavigne is played during the end credits of Alice in Wonderland, and is the only song of the album featured in the film.The song was written by her as well. 
Watch this video,  listen to the song and complete the lyrics.
The video is very nice and tries to recreate the world of Wonderland and the different sensations Alice may have felt going down the rabbit  hole! What do you think of Avril Lavigne in this video? she could have been one of Tim Burton´s characters...



_______ out , ______ around. I´m _________. i ____   _____ . Yeah I ____   ______
I´m ______   out. Where am I now?______  down and i can´t ______ it now. It can´t ______ it now.

Chorus :
oh, Í´ll ____   ____.  ohh I'll ohh I'll ______
When the world is ______   _____When I fall and ____ the groundI'll just ____ myself around
Dont you try to stop me ohh I'll won't cry

I ______ myself in ________,  ______   _____ on my feet again. Is this real? is this pretend?
I _____ take a _______ until the end.

Chorus :
oh, Í´ll ____   ____.  ohh I'll ohh I'll ______
When the world is ______   _____When I fall and ____ the groundI'll just ____ myself around
Dont you try to stop me ohh I'll won't cry

lunes, 26 de noviembre de 2012

Alice in Wonderland

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll.
  It tells the story of  a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar creaturesIts narrative course and structure, characters and imagery have been enormously influential in both popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre.
It is told in the form of  DREAM and Carroll uses the third person point of view because in this way he was free to make fun of  and satirize the  standard Victorian didactic ideas.
In fact, this book inaugurated a new era of children's literature in English: books that didn't have to be didactic or moralistic, that didn't teach children lessons. Alice in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking Glass paved the way for many books such as The SpiderWick Chronicles , Harry Potter series, Narnia Chronicles and so on.
In this book rationality is replaced  by the bizarre, everything is unpredictable and disordered.  What makes the story more fun is that Alice tries to apply all her previous "adult" knowledge from the "above world" to the new "under world" she is in and obviously it doesn´t make any sense...
Wonderland is a magic place. Everyone feels free there but it is also a place of bad dreams.It is a fairy land where the Cheschire Cat lives and continuously appears an disappears, where the Mad Hatter moves around and  the place where the  Queen of Hearts and her knaves set their own mad and illogical rules. Animals speak and complain as if they were adults.  It is the place where Alice changes sizes several times and where languages loses its logic and its power to communicate. Wonderland is a chaos, but a lovely one!!!

In the pictures below you can see some of the most famous characters in Wonderland: the White Rabbit, the Dormouse, the Mad Hatter, the Hare, The Cheshire Cat, the Carterpillar, the Queen of Hearts, etc. Let´s describe and compare  them and after reading the book do you remember where do they exactly appear in the story? Do you have a favourite one? Why?
In the book there are many recurrent topics:
- growth into adulthood
- games and learning the rules
- language, logic and absurd language.
- Size changes.
- Surrealism
- Dreams and nightmares
Can you find any of these ideas in the version we have read in class?
Where? Explain the ones you can see and look for examples from the book.

Here you have some famous quotations from the original book, they can help you find the themes suggested above.
Alice.  What is the use of a book, without pictures or conversations?
Alice  Curiouser and curiouser!
Alice   I wonder if I've been changed think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!
Alice  I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, Sir, because I'm not myself you see.
Alice  If it had grown up, it would have made a dreadfully ugly child; but it makes rather a handsome pig, I think.
The Cat  We're all mad here.
The Hatter   Why is a raven like a writing desk?
The Hatter  Twinkle, twinkle, little bat! How I wonder what you're at.
The Queen  Off with her head!
The Queen  Sentence first -- verdict afterwards.
Alice  But then, shall I never get any older than I am now? That'll be a comfort, one way -- never to be an old woman -- but then -- always to have lessons to learn!
Doorknob  Read the directions and directly you will be directed in the right direction.
Mad Hatter   No wonder you're late. Why, this watch is exactly two days slow.

In the book we have some nursery rhymes and songs. For example:
The Queen of Hearts she made some tarts all on a summer's day;
The Knave of Hearts he stole the tarts and took them clean away.
The King of Heartscalled for the tarts and beat the Knave full sore
The Knave of Hearts brought back the tarts and
vowed he'd steal no more.

In Central Park East 74th Street in New York we can see a beautiful sculpture of Alice and her friends. Click on the link and listen to this person talking about it and explaining why she likes it.                 Alice´s sculpture in Central Park
1. In which part of Central Park can you find the statue?
2. Which material is it made of?
3. How high is the sculpture?
4. Who is with Alice in the sculpture?
5. How is her hair held?
6. Where is the dormouse?
7. Why is the sculpture very nice for children?
8. Why is the big mushroom nice  for little children to have a rest?
If you feel like reading and listening to the full story here you have the following audio book.