Final Evaluation of 1st Batxillerat

Observing your portfolio, can you see an improvement of your level of English since September 2008? Where, for example?
I think that my level of English hasn't improved so much but maybe if I look at the texts, the organization of the information has improved and I have learnt some new words.

Which activity best shows your level of English?
I don't know, but maybe the blog because is the activity which has occuped more time.

Which activities were really USEFUL for you to improve English? Why?
Maybe the exams because they are the best way of showing that you have understood the contents of the unit.

Which activities did you not find useful to learn English? Why not?
I think that the blog because is a very repetitive task which doesn't make you learn new words or things and it takes you a lot of time.

Which activities did you enjoy doing and would like to do next year?
I think that I enjoy listen to songs and go to the language room because the hours which you are there are more entertaining than normal classes.

Opinion essay

“We have almost learnt to respect our world. Do you agree?”

Where I live, people now are starting to recycle rubbish, to make cars which don’t contaminate so much and they have introduced some new measures which are respectful for the environment.

In my opinion, is true that during the last few years we have improved our behavior to the environment and now we are conscious of that we’ve been destroying our planet since a lot of years. But as I said, now we are behaving more respectful with our planet.

Firstly, nowadays we are banning some lethal products for the atmosphere and we are also reducing the environmental pollution. This is, we are making cars which expulse less CO2 and which are more ecological, and we’re also investigating for new removable and cleaner energies than oil and other ones.

Secondly, we have created a lot of organizations which are planting a lot of trees to solve the problem of deforestation. This is a good idea because some years ago we didn’t do that and we cut a lot of trees which are very important because plants reduce in a very important measure the quantity of CO2 present in our atmosphere.

To finish, I would like to say that during the history of humanity, we have been very irresponsible with our environment and with our planet, but the last years we’ve improved a lot, and now we are acting in a more responsible way. It’s true but, that if we don’t do more things and start to find better solutions for this problem, in hundreds of years this world will finish destroyed.

Summary: The Oxford Murders

Martin is an American student who arrives at the University of Oxford. He stays at one woman’s house. He goes to the University and he knows one of the most important logic teachers, Shelton. His intention is that Mr. Shelton manages his thesis and helps him. They meet in a philosophy class where they have a little discussion about the number pi. One day when Martin arrives at home he finds the old woman dead. Then Shelton arrives and he says that he was a family's friend. They start to investigate and they realize that it could be the first of a success of crimes because before, the teacher had received a letter with a circle and the address of the old woman. The daughter of the dead woman kisses Martin and then she leaves. Martin doesn't understand it very well. In the gym, Martin meets a young woman and they start something as a relation.

Podcast Barça vs Bayern

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Transcription

A year later, Carlos Finlay, a Cuban doctor treating patients with yellow fever in Havana, provided strong evidence that mosquitoes were transmitting disease to and from humans. The first effective treatment for malaria came from the bark of cinchona tree, which contains quinine. This tree grows on the slopes of the Andes, mainly in Peru. A tincture made of this natural product was used by the inhabitants of Peru to control malaria, and the Jesuits introduced this practice to Europe during the 1640s, where it was rapidly accepted.

When a mosquito bites an infected person, a small amount of blood is taken, which contains microscopic malaria parasites. About one week later, when the mosquito takes its next blood meal, these parasites mix with the mosquito's saliva and are injected into the person being bitten.

Infected Anopheles mosquitoes carry Plasmodium sporozoites in their salivary glands. When it bites a person the sporozoites goes through the blood and arrives to the liver where it enters into hepatic cells and starts to reproduce. Then the new cells travel to the blood and blow up the red blood cells.
Malaria transmission can be reduced by preventing mosquito bites with mosquito nets and insect repellents, or by mosquito control measures such as spraying insecticides inside houses.

Work has been done on malaria vaccines with limited success and more exotic controls, such as genetic manipulation of mosquitoes to make them resistant to the parasite have also been considered.
Education in recognizing the symptoms of malaria has reduced the number of cases in some areas of the developing world by as much as 20%.Education can also inform people to cover over areas of still water which are ideal breeding grounds for the parasite and mosquito.

Observation of your oral presentation

Did you use any resources?Yes, we used a PowerPoint and we included videos and photos.
Were the resources relevant and attractive?I think that they looked fine which was our intention.
Did you look at your audience most of the time?I think that yes mainly because this time I wasn’t very nervous.Did you read from your notes?I think that no so much because I knew the text very well.
Did you do any gestures/movement to hold the attention of your audience?I moved a lot my hands, but I did it unconsciously.Did you organize you ideas in order of importance?I organized them as order of the presentation.
Did you use discourse markers to make you ideas more clear? I don’t think so.
Did you introduce interesting, new information to your audience?Of course. I showed them some of the causes and consequences of malaria and some more interesting things.
Did you look up information in the Internet?Yes I searched in the interned for a lot of information.Was your information more superficial or more detailed?I think it was detailed because we needed some technical words and information about the virus.
Did you check your grammar?Yes I used the World corrector and some dictionaries.
Did you use rich vocabulary looking up to the dictionary?Yes, I did.Did you use sentence linkers?Yes, because I needed them to talk clearly.
Did you use fillers?I think that maybe not so much.
Did you know how to pronounce all your words?Yes, I checked it but I think that I didn’t pronounce all of them well because I was nervous.
Did you change your tone of voice or use a monotone tone all the time?I changed a little bit the tone to make the presentation less boring, but I wasn’t changing the tone at all the time because it wasn’t monotone.
Did you speed in a fluid continuum or with breaks and interruptions?I think that I spoke in a fluid continuum but the teacher didn’t think that.
What mark did you get?I know that my mark is a 7,7 but I’m sure that I should have a better mark because I think that I did a good presentation and I knew the text very well. This is only my opinion of course, but I am not satisfied with the mark because some people have better mark than me and I don’t think that their presentation were better than mine. But obviously I know that I am not a good student at teacher’s eyes.