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¿Quieres mejorara tu inglés antes de tu próximo gran paso?,
¿Te has dado cuenta de lo que saber inglés te puede aportar tanto a nivel profesional como personal, pero no tienes tiempo o la determinación necesaria para hacerlo? ¿te apetece hacerlo de una forma divertida y rápida? ¡Este es tu blog!
La idea es aprender inglés a través de series, películas, vídeos, charlas, canciones y pequeños documentos teóricos que a mí me han ayudado a aclarar dudas comunes. Sin más, espero que os sea de ayude y disfrutéis. Un saludo!

Si tenéis alguna duda, sugerencia,...y queréis poneros en contacto podéis mandarnos un mail a marta.hernandez.rubio@gmail.com.

viernes, 30 de diciembre de 2011

A or an?

APParently the rule is simple: you use the article "a" always, except when the word following (noun/adjective) starts with a vocal, in this case you use "an".
The aim of this rule is to make pronunciation easier.

i.e:
-a peach/ an orange
-a squid/ an octopus.
-a continent/ an island

However , as usual there are exceptions to the rule:

-some vowels are sometimes pronounced as if they were consonants.
-also "h" sometimes is not pronounced.


So  for example, we say:

-a unique event (this is because we pronounce the letter "u" in unique as a hard "y" sound (yoounique), but we say an unusual event.

-a horrid man (because we pronounce the "h" in horrid) but we say an honourable gentleman (as we don´t pronounce the "h").
So the rule is: if the "h" is pronounced the correct article is "a", if it is not, the correct article will be "an".


-a football match (because we pronounce the "f" sound in football), but we say an FA Cup final (as we pronounce that F as "eff", it sounds as if it begins with a vowel and so we say "an" and not "a". This applys to similar cases of abbreviations, like MP or SAS,...

So what you have to see is if the noun/adjective following the article starts with a vowel sound or not. You have to pay attention to the sound, not to the spelling of the word.


We also need to know that there are cases where we don´t use articles in Spanish, but WE DO in English:

1. With profeSSions/ oCCupation: She is a doctor (Ella es médico).
2. With numbers: A hundred/ a thousand (Cien/ mil).
3. With What...!: What a nice day! (¡Qué día tan bonito!).
4. With these expreSSions of frequency: Once a month/ twice a year (Una vez al mes/ Dos veces al año. No una vez a un mes/ dos veces a un año).

I hope you´re having an amazing Christmas!

jueves, 29 de diciembre de 2011

What does 'virgin' mean?



This is a very funny short cut. It´s still Christmas time so let´s take it easy.
Merry Christmas everyone!

- Grown-ups: adultos, "los mayores".

- To fit together: ajustarse

- Jigsaw: puzzle, rompecabezas.

- Sort of/kind of: más o menos.

jueves, 15 de diciembre de 2011

Google and Facebook secrets.

Hi everyone! Already in a Christmas mood? We are!



Have you met ... TED?


TED is a website that gathers (reúne) riveting (fascinanates) talks by remarkable (sorprendente, excepcional, extraordinario) people, free to the world. So if you visit www.ted.com, you'll find plenty of really interesting talks for free.
This is one of Them. A really interesting topic: how Google and Facebook are biased (unbiased, biased) and how we all live in our own Internet bubble.


This is a very interesting talk. It also have a really easy vocabulary and pronunciation. So just dive in. It sure won´t let you untouched.





- Google personally tailors (confeccionar, sastre) your equiry results.


- This is something that is sweeping the web.


- The Washington Post", "New York Times",...they all are flirting (coquetear, aquí en sentido figurado) with personalization in various ways.


- Whereas this moves uys very quickly towards a world in wich Internet is showing us the things we want to see, but not necessarily what we need to see.


- What they discover in Netflix was that there is kind of this epic struggle (lucha) going on between our future aspirational selves and our more impulsive present selves.


- The problem is that because of that filtres, instead of a balance information diet, you can end up sorrounded by information junk food. 


(Junk: trastos viejos, basura. Actúa como adjetivo para "junk food": comida basura o junk mail: correo basura o spam).


- In 1915 is not like newspapers where sweating (sudar en sentido figurado) a lot about civic responsabilities.


-...and is not going to do that if it leaves us all isolated (aislados) in a world of one.





Ted: Ideas worth spreading. Highly recoMMended.