The urban Tarzan

Today we read about a man living in Villa Borghese, a park in Rome. Here you have a more detailed article about him which appeared in the Telegraph a few years ago:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2000/11/19/wtarz19.xml

If you want to see what the park looks like:

St George's day

What do England and Catalonia have in common? No, it's not the Barça-Manchester United match, but the fact that Saint George is the patron saint of both. You know all about the Catalan tradition for Saint George, but how much do you know about England? Try this quiz:

http://www.its-english.com/festive/national/ex3a.asp

Learn more about the festivity in England here:

• http://www.learnenglish.de/culture/stgeorge.htm
• http://www.ego4u.com/en/read-on/countries/holidays/st-georgs-day

Happy Saint George's day!

A description

If you are at a loss for words for your next composition, use these websites to help you:

• Appearances - how to describe someone
• Appearance and personality
• Adjectives for people
• Negative personality adjectives
• Positive personality adjectives

I am looking forward to reading them next Thursday!

Modal verbs

Created by Crazyprofile.com

Now that we're practising modal verbs, here's a list of some extra exercises that you can (or rather you should) do:

• Modal verbs at the Grammar Aquarium
• A grammar explanation with 4 exercises.
• Another short explanation with 3 exercises.

Passives!

Created by Crazyprofile.com

Now that we're dealing with passives (again!), here's a little refresher:

• Table of tenses in English with active and passive.
  
• A grammar explanation with 6 exercises.
• Another grammar explanation with 7 more exercises.
• A description of the Passive Voice with associated interactive grammar, listening, reading and writing exercises.
• If that was not enough, here's one more exercise with have something done.

April fools!

If you read the articles attentively, you should know by now which articles were April Fools jokes. Most of you guessed correctly that the first article was fake, and so was the second. But could you imagine that the smoking tortoise really exists? Life's stranger than fiction!

The fake articles specify they are a joke somewhere on the page, so you can check for yourselves. You can also read the following articles:

April Fool's Day story round-up (The Telegraph)

Ben Schott's April Fool Almanac (Times online)

Read what La Vanguardia says today.

April Fool's Day

Today is April Fool's Day. On this day people like to play tricks on each other (similar to our Dia dels innocents). Newspapers also sometimes include fake news stories.

Read the following stories and decide which one is real and which one is a joke.

1. Dog racing on ice gets green light: Wembley to host first meeting (Daily Mirror)
2. Calling Carla: Brown enlists first lady to give Britain style (The Guardian)
3. Life's a drag for tortoise (The Sun)
4. The Facebook tool which turns your mobile into a snoop (Times online)

What do you think? Have your say and vote!