Wednesday 16 October 2024

Do or Make... that's the question!!

 

What’s the difference between DO and MAKE? It can be hard to decide when to use 'make' or 'do' in English. Here's some help.

1: We use 'make' when we create or construct something. For example:

  • She made a cake.
  • I've made us some coffee.
  • Did you really make those trousers?
2: We use 'do' for general activities. In this case, 'do' is often used with 'something', 'nothing', 'anything' or 'everything':
  • What did you do at the weekend?
  • She's fed up with doing everything herself. She needs some help.
  • Are you doing anything interesting during the holidays?
NOTE: 'What do you do?' means 'what's your job?'

3: There are many, many fixed expressions with 'make' and 'do'. Unfortunately, they don't really follow any useful rules, so you have to learn them by heart. 

Glastonbury


Glastonbury was a small music festival when it started in the 1970s. Nowadays thousands of people attend, and that means there's a lot of waste! Watch the video to find out how the organisers are dealing with this issue. 

Do the preparation task first. Then watch the video and do the exercises.


Tuesday 15 October 2024

The Biggest Mistakes in Mapmaking History


For thousands of years, people made both functional maps and what are known as cosmographies, illustrating the earth and its position in the cosmos, often including constellations, gods, and mythic locations. These maps were meant to depict the world's geography, but weren't necessarily useful for navigation and contained some glaring mistakes. 


Like most other technologies, map-making has improved over time. This lesson shows just a handful of some of the most fun mapmaking bloopers over time. Here are some links for how to learn more.
  • You can take an interactive 3D virtual tour of the mappae mundi here and zoom in on some of the more fantastical details!
  • Stanford University has a whole exhibit of all the maps of California as an island and you can check it out virtually here.
  • Curious about how one of history’s most renowned mapmakers could draw such an incorrect map with a magical rock at the north pole? Here’s an article that digs into Mercator’s North Pole map a bit more.

Plural Matcher Games

We have just known Robert Burn's poem about a louse, but did you know its plural?

Revise how many of them you remember.