lunes, 26 de octubre de 2009

This week's presentation

This is the presentation we did in the first three days of class.

jueves, 22 de octubre de 2009

Beetle or cockroach?



Just the other day in class we did a dictation on the first few lines of Kafka's The metamorphosis. Some students said Gregor Samsa found himself transformed into a (gigantic) cockroach, others said it was a beetle. I think the latter is more likely. Vladimir Nabokov gave a lecture on this story, and he draw this insect. Which looks to me like a beetle.

martes, 20 de octubre de 2009

American sense of humor




The other day in class we discussed two cartoons by Gary Larson, one if not THE one most popular cartoonist in the USA. Today I would like you to explain this one (click on the image to enlarge it)

Who are The Who?

I was surprised that the other day, in the course of the class, I mentioned the rock group The Who and nobody knew who the heck I was talking about. If you watch CSI: MIAMI or CSI: Las Vegas the theme song in both is a song by this group.

As an English instructor, I feel you have to check this video out:

martes, 6 de octubre de 2009

FINDING AND INSTALLING PHONETIC FONTS

You will need phonetic fonts to read the phonetic symbols I will use in some of the assignments and exercises in this course. Please do the following:

As I will show in class today, on the classroom's PC, to read some of the material I will make available you need to install a set of phonetic fonts. For windows, do the following:


2) next click on Charis SIL 4.106 font release - SIL PUA 5.1a (Windows, Macintosh and Linux)

3) finally place the Charis fonts in the folder for fonts that you will find in "Paneles de control"


If you use, like me, a Mac, let me know and I will give you some new instructions.