Celebrate the 10th anniversary of the European Day of Languages with us!

At the initiative of the Council of Europe, Strasbourg, the European Day of Languages has been celebrated every year since 2001 on 26 September.

Throughout Europe, 800 million Europeans represented in the Council of Europe's 47 member states are encouraged to learn more languages, at any age, in and out of school. Being convinced that linguistic diversity is a tool for achieving greater intercultural understanding and a key element in the rich cultural heritage of our continent, the Council of Europe promotes plurilingualism in the whole of Europe.

Learn more about this, click here.

For some language fun, click here.

Self-evaluate your language skills here!

 

A day at the beach (logic problem)

Yesterday was such a beautiful day, four couples decided to spend the day at the beach. They had a great day of fun in the sun. At one point, each couple went off on their own for a while to enjoy their favourite beach activity.

Determine each couple's full names (one man's name is Hank), the color of each woman's bathing suit, and each couple's favorite activity.

1. Mark Collins and his wife were not the couple that liked to swim in the ocean. Rachel wasn't wearing a green bathing suit.

2. Mr. Bailey and his wife collected shells, but they didn't have blue bathing suits. Tabitha's husband wasn't Mark.

3. Peter's last name wasn't Delgado and his wife didn't wear a green bathing suit.

4. Sally and Peter were not the couple that liked to climb on the rocks along the shore's edge.

5. The woman in the red bathing suit loved swimming in the ocean. Louis, whose last name wasn't Colby, enjoyed sunbathing with his wife. Tabitha didn't wear the purple bathing suit.

6. Vanessa, whose last name wasn't Collins, went swimming with her husband.

Try to solve this problem and check the answer with your English teacher.

Describing a place

“Descriptive writing is an art form. It’s painting a word picture so that the reader ‘sees’ exactly what you are describing.”

Brenda Covert

(High school teacher)

What’s the big deal about writing descriptively?

For one thing, it’s much more than page-filling fluff.

Descriptive writing imprints images into the reader’s mind, making you feel as though you’re “right there.” It‘s all about engaging the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch to transport the reader and stir emotion. By choosing vivid details and colourful words, good writers bring objects, people, places, and events to life. Instead of merely telling you what they see, they use their words to show you.

Writers use this powerful method to make their pieces memorable—even brilliant—rather than dry and boring. In many ways, description is the most important kind of writing you can teach your children because it supports other reasons for writing such as storytelling, informative reports, or persuasion.

Vivid writing is especially important when describing a place—whether to describe a vista for a travel guide or flesh out a scene in a novel.

Master storyteller Charles Dickens was also a master of using description to create a particular mood or idea.

It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, arid vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. Charles Dickens, Hard Times

Here, a ninth grader draws on all five senses to describe a place and set an effective mood.

Moist and salty, a chilly breeze blows in across the swells, bringing with it the pungent smells of seaweed and fish and making me pull my jacket a little closer. Sea spray transforms into fiery prisms as the waves splash against the shore, catch the last golden rays of sun, and toss them up like liquid crystals.

Read more here.

Going back to school after the holidays

Going back to school after the holidays can be difficult. You might be really excited to get back to school, catch up with all your friends and start the new school year.

Or you might be sad that days of sleeping in, going to the beach, and having extra time on your hands are over until the next holiday.

No matter what you might be feeling, here are a few tips that can help you get back into the right headspace for going back to school and get you motivated for the new school year.

Some suggestions for making the move back to school as stress-free as possible are:

Set yourself some goals for the year - A good way to get motivated for the new school year might be to think about the things you might like to achieve during the year. These might be school related goals - for example, to get good marks in English and Maths. Or, they might be more personal goals, for example to get your drivers licence.

Get involved - A good way to get back into things at school and to make new friends is to become involved in activities that interest you. This way you are meeting people whom you have things in common with. You may want to get involved in:

• sport (most schools offer a range of different team sports)
• music
• debating
• Student Representative Council.

Breaking the ice - It is possible that you will find yourself in classes with people you don't know very well when you go back to school. Often other people are feeling nervous about making new friends. It can sometimes take someone to suggest doing something to break the ice. You may like to ask someone in your class to kick the footy or head down the street together.

It is often easy to identify different groups within schools: popular, academic, sporty, rebellious, etc. However, interacting with anyone (no matter what group they sit in at lunchtime) can help you to be more open-minded.

Express yourself - Being able to express how you are feeling may help to release some of the tension you may feel. There are a number of ways that you are able to express yourself safely, such as exercise, writing in journal, or share your experiences and find support.

Have something to look forward to - Sometimes it is helpful to plan ahead so that you have something to look forward to. You may want to plan to catch up with friends after school or plan to do something special over the weekend.

And there are always next holidays to look forward to!