Aussie Slang & Pathways

Matt is going to help you add to our 101 Health Hints (dental, back, footwear, etc). We're nearly there (81! 20 to go).

• Read Suzanne's post about being Australian and write your opinion in the forum. You can also elaborate on it an publish it in your blog.
  

• If you click on her "Typical Aussie" link, you can listen to a very popular song, Home Among the Gum Trees, by John Williamson. You may have to do this at home if the link doesn't work at TAFE. Here is the lyrics (the words of a song).

Aussie Slang

Find the meaning of these Aussie slang words in the Aussie Dictionary:

• chuck a wobbly
• ratbag
• sanger
• flat out

PATHWAYS

Part of our pathway session last week included EFS and Comms. Today we are going to do a bit more listening and thinking about those courses.

1. Listen to Suzanne, the EFS coordinator
   


2. Listen to Jennifer, one of the Comms teachers. The flyers are a bit old, but basically the information about the course is very similar to the current one.
   


3. Write a summary of both courses (EFS & Comms) in your blog.
   

• Finally, here are some exercises that will help you practise your tag questions (very useful for casual conversation), they're/their/there and conjunctions (very useful for more formal speech, like oral presentations or writing, like reports, opinions, etc).

Casual Conversation

I'm afraid I published some of this post by mistake last week. It was meant to be work for this week. Sorry!

We are going to prepare for our casual conversation assessment. Please revise the following points:
1. the language of agreeing and disagreeing
2. the structure of an anecdote
3. practise different ways of giving feedback
4. Opening and closing the conversation in a polite way



• To help you with content (what to say) for your casual conversation assessment, go to VILC Know your Consumer rights and choose a different topic per student. Use the story as an anecdote inside your casual conversation.


• To improve your conversational skills, it's important to pay attention to your pronunciation. You can do it at home on the weekend. Check this website: Pronunciation with Alanna. Alanna Townsend, from Griffith TAFE, has recorded pronunciation lessons for her students on her blog, Griffith English News, visit it an do some of the exercises at home.
• Finally, we are getting closer to our target of 101 health hints. Did you see anything last week at the Health Expo that we could include? For example, anything related to dental health, massages, women's health, mental health, diet, etc.
  

Health

It's Health Expo Week again! Congratulations to all our students, both in Marion's and Rosa's class (Ivy, Li, Min) on the fantastic health tips left in our f2fwiki. Continue adding to it, we have to reach 101!

Meanwhile, you can do this cloze on Childhood obesity. Double click on each work to put it in the right place. Answer these questions:
1. What is childhood obesity?
2. Which developed countries are more affected by childhood obesity?
3. What is the meaning of epidemic?
4. What percentage of North American kids are obese?

Check this website, CalorieKing that Marion posted for her students. They will be preparing all the food for the Health Expo. We'll be there to taste their healthy food! Read the brochure and answer these questions:

1. How many stalls will there be?

2. Look up new words in your dictionary.

3. Choose one of the stalls. Write 5 questions to ask the stall holder.

• Go to Time4English, News Library 7J. Read the article Hot Chips cause Cancer. It's a good idea to read the three levels, it will help you with vocabulary and comprehension.

• Now read the article 7Y Take-Away Food Dangerous. Read the three levels.In your blog write a summary of both articles and tell us what you think.


• Check the following links :
  Better Health Obesity. Do the worksheet Obesity. (You can print it or do it online)
  Better Health Skin Cancer, download the worksheet Skin Cancer.(You can print it).
  They have a BMI Calculator. You just enter your height and weight and it'll tell you your BMI and if it's healthy or not. (Thanks Marion for the tip!)
  Check their health quizzes .
  

Creative Commons Photos

Last Friday I met Peter Shanks, a TAFE IT teacher from Bathurst. He showed me a great tool designed by him that allows you to find pictures that don't break copyright. They are flickr photos that have a Creative Commons licence, like the ones I showed you last week in class. Creative Commons means that you can use them for free, as long as you show the attribution details, which means that you write the name of the author and a link to where the photo comes from (in this case flickr).

To find a photo you just write the name of what you are looking for in the Find window and then click on the picture you like. If you do it with the tick in the edit box, you can edit it before you save it, add words to it and a frame. You can add the attribution inside the picture itself or copy it and paste it on your blog below the picture. You save the picture as usual, by right clicking on it and storing it in your computer.
Ideally you should link the photo to its original page in flickr.

I'm leaving a permanent link to this tool below Useful Links in our righthand side bar.

This is and example I edited for our Money money week.

Original image: 'Money' by: Joshua Davis
http://www.flickr.com/photos/51194339@N00/8806988
Released under an Attribution-ShareAlike License