Essay - Television, Catarina Mestre

Looking to the bright images produced by that luminous big box, you can observe the world. You just can’t avoid feeling the attraction of its colors. Nowadays, there isn’t a single residence without it. Nowadays television is considered one of the “must have” objects, and if you don’t have one, you’ll be an outcast of this technologically linked society.

            Television is one of the most efficient was to educate oneself and be constantly informed of the world around. Documentaries on a wide range of topics, shows with educational content and news programmes are some of the best ways to deepen your knowledge and to allow you to build a personal opinion on a variety of issues. It’s also said to be the best way to learn a new language. By watching the speaker, you can actually observe the movement and position of the lips and connect it to the sound being produced.

            Not only it is an amazing strategy to improve your learning skills but it’s also a good way to spend time. By watching movies, your favorite TV Shows or even listening to music, through music channels, you can have fun and save money. Television is a good alternative to cinema, pubs, the mall, and other places where you end up spending you earnings.

            However, it can deteriorate your eye sight that’s the reason people should respect the advised distance to watch TV and have a negative side in your social life. In addition to distancing individuals it’s also changing our youth. Adolescents who are strongly influenced by some reality shows seems to lack their individuality, respect for others and morality. That being said, TV is not the only one to blame. Parents are at fault to, they should protect their children from the adversities of the world and control what they watch.

            Television is also a life saver. Throughout the years, our elderly have been living in complete isolation. Their children go searching for a better life, husbands or wives die, neighbors are put in nursing homes. Sooner or later, they are all alone. Television is a good way to keep someone company. It’s a true loneliness killer.

            In conclusion, television has good and bad sides, but I believed that TV is a good strategy to develop your knowledge and learning skills.

over easter written assessment

Don't forget there is a written assessment to do over the easter holidays - make sure you are in class on Friday or you can get it off the moodle.

reading test

These are the answers to the reading text
To get full marks for part 1 you needed to mention both the following points:
IQ complements EQ
IQ can get you a job.

Part 2 - 1c, 2c, 3b and 4b

Part 3 - In selecting employees for promotion HR managers prioritise skills like self awareness, empath, relationship building, confidence flexibility, resilience, etc.
IQ tests are not reliable indicators of these skills
Instead they are classified as deriving from a capacity termed 'emotional intelligence'
The linke to four year olds resisting temptation or not relies on a correlation between patience or ability to defer gratification at four and desirable (EQ type) behaviour in their teens.
The hypothesis therefore, is those who can pull off 'a triumph of the reasoning brain' at four will become the best business managers.

About Rute.

Rute's first memory is about her and a friend destroying a bathroom. Throwing things at walls, breaking mirrors, etc.

The worst moment of her life was when her grandmother died, last year, at the hospital, after a surgery she had an heart attack...

Rute really likes photography and was recently at a LOMO photography workshop! She'd also really like to go to New York and see everything!

Narrative.

It was a cool August evening and everything was quiet and peaceful. Although it was the peak of summer time, a cool breeze was blowing, that reminded you of spring days. The days when you were happy.

Every year it was the same. By the time spring began, you'd have fallen in love with him all over again, and then break up a few weeks later. But this time, it was different - you thought - this time you've reached summer. But it ended up having the same ending as the past four years.

"I'll never go back again. This was the last time.", you told yourself as you reached your coat and looked in the mirror while putting it on, after hours laying awake in bed, looking at the green walls of your bedroom.

As you left your house, taking with you only your cellphone, keys, documents and a pack of cigarettes, feeling the cool breeze, you allowed yourself to see the world for the first time since the break up. You thought the orange lights on your poorly illuminated street were fascinating, as the sound of an airplane flying over your head, taking its passengers to meet their families, or to go on vacations where they'll fall in love again.

Driving around, you ended up at a fantastic place you used to go to chill, next to "Cristo Rei" in Almada. The view from there is breathtaking. The river, mirroring the lights from the city of Lisbon, the bridge over you, fully illuminated, the cars passing by... You just stood there, smoking cigarettes. One, two, five, eight, half the pack, contemplating the view and thinking about... well, nothing, which was good.

Alone in that sacred place, inside your old black Peugeot 106, you almost jumped off the car when the phone rang in the silence of the night. It was an old friend asking you out. "Let's go" - you said - "I'm in love with life again".

Of course he didn't get what you meant, since you haven't left the house for weeks and didn't see this good old friend of yours in months. "Meet me at the fair", he said. And so you did

"Why are you so thin?" were the first words he said to you, "You look ill!". "Nevermind", you told him, "It's in the past now".

You smiled the whole night, and the whole next day. And you are still smiling, and you'll keep on smiling. At least until next spring.

Reading portfolio

For those of you who weren't in class last lesson, you need to be familiar with the texts in the reading portfolio as they will be the topic of conversation in the next speaking assignment.

Tania's Narrative

In 2005, a very beautiful, but very shy young girl of just twenty-two, who did not realize how her always present smile and her smooth ways enchanted everyone, decided she was fed up with her job, her home, her country, everything. Those who knew her had always seen her as a good girl, very responsible and polite. At home, she always did her chores. At school she always did her homework. At work, she always stayed late, to finish whatever senseless task her boss gave her.

She had always seen herself as a happy, well-off young woman. But one morning she woke up and she felt she wasn’t the same. She was not that compliant girl anymore. She looked out the window and saw a green and yellow bird flying around. The bird flew into an oak tree, where two others were comfortably sitting, in the branches, as if at home. These birds were free. They could fly off anywhere they wanted. They could go to lively, sunny Seville. They could go to the colder cities of the north. Or they could fly off to Barcelona and stand calmly, looking at the blue Mediterranean sea, bringing new hopes and taking new dreams with it.

She wasn’t free. She wasn’t as free as those lovely small birds in the backyard. She couldn’t just leave, go to some distant place, where no one knew her, where she could be anything she wanted: irreverent, bold, adventurous, a free-spirit. And as she chose her clothes for the day (which would be like any other day, colourless) she started thinking about a trip, to a South-American country maybe. No, she hadn’t enough money. In Europe then. To France. She would go to the south of France.

And so, throughout the day, she started making the necessary arrangements. She went on the internet (how she loved the new technologies, fast and efficient, as she liked it) and she looked up a city in the south of France, a small town, in the countryside, with green pastures.

She went home that evening and told her mother all about her marvellous travelling plans. Her mother listened carefully and simply replied: “But honey, there’s no place like home, don’t you agree?”.