Ice-breaker
If you could change one of the following, which would it be:
- Where you were born
- Where you went to school
- The subjects you studied at school
Life-changing events: birth, death, getting engaged/married, having children, moving house, leaving school, going to university, getting a job, changing jobs, passing exams/driving exams, changing country, etc.
Language notes: Metaphors
1) When we compare something to something else and we want to use a metaphor, we say X is Y, eg, TV is a drug.
2) Metaphor is a very important way of creating meaning. In everyday conversations, we use many metaphors and they are so common that often we don't explicitly state what the metaphor is.
Cultural note: JRR Tolkien and The Hobbit
Tolkien was a professor of English Literature and Ancient Languages, such as Anglo-Saxon, at Oxford University from the 1920s to 1950s. One day, he made a note on a student's exam paper: In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Tolkien didn't have any idea what a hobbit was, or what the words meant! But this was the start of one of the most famous series of fantasy books. The first one, The Hobbit, was published in 1937.
The stories are very influenced by classical mythology. Because Tolkien was a professor of language, he invented fantasy languages for the different races in his books.
Cultural note: Babies&others
If you could change one of the following, which would it be:
- Where you were born
- Where you went to school
- The subjects you studied at school
Life-changing events: birth, death, getting engaged/married, having children, moving house, leaving school, going to university, getting a job, changing jobs, passing exams/driving exams, changing country, etc.
Language notes: Metaphors
1) When we compare something to something else and we want to use a metaphor, we say X is Y, eg, TV is a drug.
2) Metaphor is a very important way of creating meaning. In everyday conversations, we use many metaphors and they are so common that often we don't explicitly state what the metaphor is.
Cultural note: JRR Tolkien and The Hobbit
Tolkien was a professor of English Literature and Ancient Languages, such as Anglo-Saxon, at Oxford University from the 1920s to 1950s. One day, he made a note on a student's exam paper: In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Tolkien didn't have any idea what a hobbit was, or what the words meant! But this was the start of one of the most famous series of fantasy books. The first one, The Hobbit, was published in 1937.
The stories are very influenced by classical mythology. Because Tolkien was a professor of language, he invented fantasy languages for the different races in his books.
Cultural note: Babies&others
- Childcare is a general term for looking after children, maybe by a parent, a nursery, a childminder, etc.
- Adult company means 'other adulst you spend time with' (There is no business meaning here).
- A nappy is the cloth of paper pants a child wears before he/she learns to use a toilet.
- Consultancy work is giving expert advice to other people or companies.
- Maternity leave is the time that a woman can stay away from her job when she has a baby (paternity leave).
- Nursery is the place that a very young child can go before they can to to school. Sometimes the word also refers to a part of a hospital for newborn babies.
Listen to Tolkien reading the poem
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