Hanukkah and the Holiday Armadillo

Friends - The One With The Holiday Armadillo from rarethen9 on Vimeo.

COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS

1. At what time of year does Hanukkah take place?

2. Which religion celebrates Hanukkah?

3. What song do people sing at Hanukkah?

4. Who existed “years and years ago”?

5. What is Hanukkah the ‘festival’ of?

6. What was the miracle that happened?

7. What do they light at the end of the day?

Vocabulary: WORK

In this post I've gathered several exercises and activities to practise the topic of WORK:

1. Practise the vocabulary you learnt with a CROSSWORD

2. MATCH the two halves of several collocations.

3. Play a game of Snakes and Ladders to revise jobs.

4. Short-answer Jobs Quiz.

5. Listening exercises: "Setting up a company"

Innocent drinks

Visit the Innocent Drinks website to practise your reading and learn more about the company we talked about.

Also interesting, and to pratise your listening skills, a 25-minute TV documentary by the BBC to know more about the company, its ethos and how it started: BBC Start Up Stories: Innocent drinks (transcript available at the bottom of the screen)

Housework not good exercise

Housework isn't as healthy as people think... according to Science Daily.

Read it also on Medical Daily and on BBC News.

Now COMPLETE THE TEXT. Full text in the Comments section.

LANGUAGE - CLOZE

A new study suggests housework is not the (1) ____ form of exercise many people consider it to be. The report even went as (2) ____ as saying that those who did the most housework were usually those most overweight. The study is called, "Does doing housework keep you healthy? The contribution (3) ____ domestic physical activity to meeting current recommendations for health". It questions whether physical activities such (4) ____ do-it-yourself, gardening and housework are such good exercise. It acknowledges that (5) ____ activity is better than none, but says, "there is a danger that those undertaking domestic 'chores' may assume that this activity is moderate intensity" and wrongly (6) ____ it as proper exercise.

A total of 4,563 adults participated (7) ____ the survey, which was based on participants' weekly physical activity. The analysis from this research showed that people who included housework as part of their weekly exercise (8) ____ to be heavier. Research leader professor Marie Murphy said: "Housework is physical activity and any physical activity should (9) ____ increase the amount of calories [burnt]. But we found that housework was inversely (10) ____ to leanness, which suggests that either people are overestimating the amount of moderate intensity physical activity they do (11) ____ housework, or are eating too much to compensate for the amount of activity (12) ____."

Put the correct words from the table below in the above article.

1.	(a)	quantity	(b)	quantify	(c)	qualify	(d)	quality
2.	(a)	remote	(b)	distant	(c)	near	(d)	far
3.	(a)	for	(b)	of	(c)	from	(d)	as
4.	(a)	like	(b)	being	(c)	as	(d)	things
5.	(a)	every	(b)	all	(c)	any	(d)	much
6.	(a)	count	(b)	chalk	(c)	chart	(d)	clock
7.	(a)	under	(b)	in	(c)	on	(d)	at
8.	(a)	tended	(b)	extended	(c)	intended	(d)	tendered
9.	(a)	theories	(b)	theoretically	(c)	theory	(d)	theoretical
10.	(a)	relating	(b)	relations	(c)	related	(d)	relativity
11.	(a)	though	(b)	trough	(c)	through	(d)	thorough
12.	(a)	overtaken	(b)	mistaken	(c)	partaken	(d)	undertaken

Have something done

Have something done from Maria Hidalgo

And now... PRACTICE GALORE!

1. The Passive Voice: GET/HAVE SOMETHING DONE
2. Have something done: More explanations and a test
3. Five interactive exercises
4. Money, money, money!
5. Type the correct verb
6. Complete the sentences
7. BBC Learning English GRAMMAR CHALLENGE

Love by numbers

Luisa Dillner, former Guardian columnist and author of Love by numbers, discusses the statistics behind love, romance and relationships. 

Audio: Relationship statistics: 'Internet dating works'

You can read the columns she wrote about Love and Relationships in The Guardian.

Finally, also from The Guardian, a debate on love and new technologies. You can post your comments there (or here) giving your opinion, if you like!
Debate: Is Internet dating killing romance?

Break-up stories

Visit boyfriendreplacement.com and read the stories of how people broke up with their exes. Which story do you think is the most amusing, or the most heartbreaking?

Here's an example:

Wet Rat

I can't believe this really happened. My boyfriend and I had been dating about three years. He lives on a beautiful yacht on the San Francisco Bay. We went sailing all the time and liked to hang out together on the boat. One day I decided to suprise him by visiting him on the boat in the afternoon. When I got there I called out to him as I hoisted myself onto the deck. He came running out of the cabin and looked distressed, instead of happy, to see me. He said, "Please leave, Gen!" I knew something was going on, so I pushed past him and ran to the cabin. He tried to stop me, but I was too fast. Inside the cabin, under the sheets was a woman. I ran back up the steps and started screaming at him. He said, "Get out, I don't want to see you anymore". As he turned to unfurl the mainsail, I stepped towards him and and shoved him over the rail into the bay. Then, as the wet rat was scrambling to get out of the ice water, I went back into the cabin and grabbed the $800 Williams-Sonoma Espresso machine I gave him and threw that overboard, too.
-Genevieve, SF

My recommendation: surf through the website, you might mind some fun and interesting stuff, including some yummy chocolate recipes!