10. GLADIATOR PLOT

This story tells us how a well-known warrior ends being a gladiator. Maximus Decimus is the general who leads armies of Emperor Marcus Aurelius. After many battle winnings, he gained the confidence of the Emperor and they got on really well. As the Emperor is old and is about to die, he decides that he wants Maximus to be the next Emperor and not his son, Commodus. When his son Commodus finds out the decision of his father, he murders him and proclaims himself the new Emperor. Commodus ordered the guards to kill Maximus, but he manages to escape and saves his life. As a consequence, Commodus kills the entire family of Maximus and then he’s taken and sold to Proximo, who uses him as a gladiator. Maximus is forced to fight in local tournaments, and he wins every match because of his superior skill. He makes friends with Proximo’s other gladiators. Maximus’s successes allow Proximo to bring the team to the Roman Colosseum. There, Maximus tells Proximo that what he wants is to be free and kill Commodus. In the first fight, Maximus and the other gladiators aren’t armed too much but somehow they manage to beat their opponents. When this battle ends, Commodus congratulates himself Maximus and here is when Maximus removes his helmet and identifies to the Emperor. As the crowd loves and enjoys him, he does not kill Commodus yet.

After all of that, the Emperor wants Maximus to be dead as soon as possible. He makes him fight against the best other gladiators that exist and with even animals. As Maximus beats them successfully again, the Emperor gets more angry every time. He knows that people don’t like him and don’t accept him as the roman Emperor.

The story ends when Maximus finally kills the Emperor Commodus. As everyone noticed his courage and loyalty to the Roman Empire, he is well accepted and at this time everyone is at his side. No one cares about Commodus any more. 

7. ABOUT AN EXPERIENCE

This time last year, things were getting really exciting for me. I was about to go to Prague with my family and I was really happy for it. I had been looking that forward since my mother told me. I had always wanted to visit Prague as everyone who had gone told me that it’s a really beautiful and lovely place.

Everything changed for me the day I landed there. Everything was going fine when suddenly I fell down the stairs and I had to go to the hospital. I had broken my ankle and I couldn’t move from the hospital during a whole day. Everyone wanted to meet me because I was a foreigner and it wasn’t really that bad, I wasn’t bored at all. They let me go the next day and, although I had to walk with crutches and I had already missed a day, I could see almost all the city during the days left.

These days, I feel that if you are really looking forward to do something, anything can stop you because you’ll almost always have the power make it through somehow or other. So, don’t let anything destroy your happiness! 

MAGAZINE: ONE DIRECTION AT MADAME TUSSAUD'S IN LONDON

One Direction havej ust become the latest addition to Madame Tussaud's collection of figures. What an honour for this boy band to be immortalised in wax! ILE invites you to go behind the scenes to see what happens.

6.AN OPINION ESSAY

The government plans to introduce a new law which will mean that students would have to go to school on Saturday mornings. In my view, this would have some negative consequences.

First of all, I think that this plan would be bad-accepted by the students because nowadays they go to school five days a week and do six hours of class every day. Although they are with their friends, at the end of the day it’s really tired. When they arrive home they can’t do what they want because normally they have homework to do so they finally spent more than six hours studying. I also think that it would be unfair because young people use the weekends to do things they like and can’t do during the week because they don’t have time. Introducing another day of class would mean that they have less time for themselves considering that they already spent 5 days of the week going to school.

If the aim of the government is trying to increase the level of actual students, I don’t think they should do it that way. It seems to me that there’s a better alternative: they could organize learning activities in the weekends encouraging students and making them have fun. 

1.SUMMER HOLIDAYS

MY LAST SUMMER

Hi, I'm Mònica Nogué, and this is my presentation about my last summer holidays. First of all, I'm going to talk about my holidays in l'Escala, then I'm going to explain my stage at Laura's house in Tossa, after that about my stage in a camp and I'm going to finish with my vacations in Blanca's house in Pals. Let's start then.

L'ESCALA

As you know, L'Escala is a beautiful town in the coast. I have a house in there so in summer we can spend some days with family or friends. This year, I was there for almost a month, including my birthay, when I invited Blanca, Judit and Marta to come and spend the day together. Judit stayed with us for a week. We used to go to the beach or shopping. Here you can see some of the photos we took together.

TOSSA

This year Laura Solà invited me to spend some days at her family house in Tossa. It was the first time I was in Tossa and I have to say that it is such a beautiful place. As her house was near to the beach, we went there when we wanted. We went to the town cinema one time and we watched After Earth, a very good film and we also went to the bowling. At nights, we used to hang out over there and have an ice-cream or just sat on the beach and spend the time talking. We went shopping almost every day. I really had a very good time with her and I wish she could come with me to l'Escala next year.

STAGE IN A CAMP

As last year's summer holidays, I stayed in a camp for four days with my friend Judit. We did the kind of activities we did last year and some new more. We tried to do paddle-surfing with two more friends and I really enjoyed the experience. At the beginning it was hard to balance but then we had a lot of fun. We also went for a walk near the sea.

PALS

After all of this, I went to Blanca’s apartment in Pals, a town near l’Escala. We were alone at home for three days so we did anything we wanted to do. It was really funny because we had to cook ourselves. We went to the beach and the pool every day. As the weather wasn’t very good we decided we could take photos and. Here you can see some of them. We went to sleep like at 3 o’clock every day and we woke up every morning between 12 and 13 a.m. I spend a really relaxing days with Blanca in Pals.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, this has been a great summer for me. I spent most of the time at the coast and I really enjoyed it. I’m glad this year I could spend some time with almost all of my friends, considering that last year I went to England for a month and I couldn’t. 

9.TRIP TO ITALY

Hi! I'm Mònica Nogué and in this video I'm going to explain you some things about my last school trip to Italy. During the trip we visited Florence, Pisa, Rome and The Vatican.

We spent the whole morning of the first day visiting Pisa. There, we saw the leaning tower, the cathedral or Duomo of Pisa and its baptistery. We took a lot of photos of ourselves trying to hold the tower, they are really original. We also climbed the dome and saw incredible views.

After having lunch, we took the train and went to Florence. We went to a viewpoint and took incredible photos there too. After that, we spent the afternoon walking around the city. I really liked the city style of Florence. It’s a big city with such beautiful buildings and nice people. We spent the next two days visiting the most touristic points like the cathedral or the Uffizi’s art gallery. The places that I enjoyed most were the cathedral, where we climbed to the top and saw incredible views, the Vecchio Bridge and the academy, where we saw David. The sculpture of David it’s bigger than it looks in photos!

In Florence we had a lot of free time which I and my friends spent walking around the city, taking photos and shopping. In Florence, I just bought some pasta and cheese for my family. Another thing I really liked in Florence was the hotel. The food was good and we also had free Wifi. Thanks to that we could communicate with people of other rooms and meet to hang out together.

In the third day we took a train and went to Rome. After we had lunch, we went to Piazza Venezia and visited Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri. Then, we visited the ‘typewriter’ and the Pantheon. It was quite shocking because I had only seen it in movies and photos. Finally we visited the Trevi Fountain. I had never seen such a big fountain before and it was quite shocking too. I really liked it. We took really beautiful photos there.

In the second day in Rome we went to The Vatican. We visited Vatican museums in the morning. There is so much to see! Then we had lunch and went to St.Peter. We climbed the dome and saw the view of all the Vatican. It was amazing. We also saw the well-known Sistine Chapel.

In the last day we went to the Coliseum and saw how amazing and big it is. It’s really impressive what people back then used to do there. They made people fight between themselves and even animals! There is a saying that they used to organize ship battles flooding part of the Coliseum.

What I enjoyed most in Rome was the Coliseum and the Pantheon. One night that we had free time, Blanca, Elena, Laura and I saw a dance company recording some kind of a sample for a casting of a known TV show in Rome. It was so nice to see.

Generally, the weather was good all of the days and this made the trip more enjoyable. The day that we visited the Coliseum was the hottest. We had a lot of free time most of the days so we could explore the cities by ourselves. We ate pasta or pizza almost every day.

I have to say that the place I like most is Florence. I wish I could travel there again someday! Although, there are a lot of things in Rome that we didn’t visit so if there’s any opportunity to go there again I would really accept it.

In conclusion, this was a really good experience for me and I really had fun with my classmates. Maybe someday we could travel all together again!

ORAL PRESENTATION: HISTORY OF VANS

TRANSCRIPTION

Hi, my name’s Mònica and today I’m going to explain you some things about the product I’ve choosen for this work, Vans. First of all, I’m going to explain you a bit of Vans’ history, including it’s fundator ,the problems Vans had to get through over the years and how they got that success, then I’m going to show some of their products and classify them and finally I’ll explain you some curiosities about the company.

Let’s start then!

Vans is a textile company which got their name because of it's fundator, Paul Van Doren. This company was originally called Van Doren Rubber Company and they only produced clothes and shoes for basketball, bolleiball and wrestling. As they got a great success in 1983 not only with sport player's, they got a big acceptation in the market.

Although, Vans had a problem. They had a 12 milion debt that had to be solved in only three years. Fortunately, they overcame the problem successfully and even with more people interested in wearing Vans. Vans had a huge financial effort when in 1988 the owners sold Vans to McCown DeLeeuw Co., a company with importan investors who expanded Vans worldwide.

Vans became very popular when in 90's new models were sold and some bands like The Offspring, Pennywise, Green Day and Bad Religion used to wear them. They were usually associed with punk-pop or rock. A year later, some models of Vans appeared on Triple Crown Series, a prestigious serie of surf. Thanks to that, Vans became the first brand of skate style.

Nowadays, Vans don't only produce shoes as in the past. They also produce clothes, accessories and even videos with skate triks for skate fans. Vans had become popular all over the world. They are produced in many different colours, designs and styles.

Vans produces for women, men, and kids. The collections are california, where you can find a style of Vans, classics, where you can find the typical Vans, surf and snow, ideated for surf and snow sports.

The slogan of vans is “off the wall”. Off the wall was a saying that the skaters back in 70's used to say when riding pools. For them, it means think diferent from the rest, beeing creative and always expanding your mind.

In conclusion, the thing I like most about Vans is that they have a lot of varieties of their products. They're shoes are really comfortable and you can wear them in all seasons. In addition, their prices are really reasonable.
VIDEO AND PRESENTATION

VANS from Mònica Nogué

EVALUATION 

OBSERVATION OF YOUR ORAL PRESENTATION

Watch your presentation and answer the following questions:

Name: .........Mònica Nogué......................... TITLE: PRESENTATION ABOUT VANS
PRESENTATION	Did you use any resources? Yes I did. Were the resources relevant and attractive? I had a good structure so yes, they were.  Did you show/talk about the photos to the audience? Not much, I should have do it more.
BODY LANGUAGE AND EYE CONTACT	Did you look at your audience most of the time? Yes I did.  Did you read from your notes? Just a bit, to know what was the next thing to talk them about.  Did you do any gestures/movement to hold the attention of your audience? Yes I did.
STRUCTURE	Did you organize your ideas in order of importance? Yes, I did.  Did you use discourse markers to make your ideas more clear? Yes I did. (First, then, secondly, on the one hand, on the other hand, finally..) Which ones? First of all, Then and Finally.
CONTENT	Did you introduce interessting iformation to your audience? Yes I did.  Did you look up information/facts/ideas in the internet/ books..? (Specify) Yes I did. I searched information in the internet.  Was your information more superficial or more detailed and original? Not really detailed but I think it was original.
LANGUAGE	Did you check your grammar?(verbs, word order...) Yes I did.  Did you use rich/new vocabulary looking up the dictionary? Yes, but not a lot.  (synonyms/new words/expressions..) Which ones? For example, I used the expression "I'ts a saying that skaters back in 90's used to say when riding pools".  Did you use sentence linkers?(and, but, moreover,also,furthermore,although,however...) Yes but always the same.  Did you use fillers? (well,you know, for example, one second, repeating a word...) No I didn't.
PRONOUNCIATION & INTONATION	Did you know how to pronounce all your words? Yes I did.  Did you check the pronounciation with a dictionary, a classmate or the teacher? No I didn't.  Did you change your tone of voice or use a monotone all the time? Yes I did.  Did you speed in a fluid continuum or with breaks and interruptions? With some breaks but I tried to speed in a fluid continuum.
SELF-EVALUATION	You are your teacher! What mark did you get? ;-) I think I get a 7.

I'LL IMPROVE FOR THE NEXT ORAL:

1. Speak a little louder and slowly. 

OTHER'S PRESENTATIONS