This Rough Magic

This Rough Magic is a book by Mary Stewart, which my FCE students and I read this month. It is set in the island of Corfu in Greece, and it is a love story between the main character Lucy and a musician called Max.

Love story, you said? Don´t worry I assure you it´s not boring. There is a lot of action in the book as Lucy finds out something illegal is going on in the island and somebody tries to kill her!

I´m not going to tell you the end, though (I know everyone hates spoilers). You´ll have to find it out yourself.

My opinion of the book? In a word: Riveting !

Some (British) English words/phrases

I have the healthy habit of checking the BBC web page every now and then (http://www.bbc.co.uk). Here there is a list of some expressions I have found in the blogs/articles:

"I wouldn´t pay a fiver for it"  - British English informal  (A fiver being 5 pounds, saying you don´t think something is good enough)

"to take a dim view of something" - (Meaning to disaprove of something. Click to see phrase in context in a BBC article on The Green Lady by Vladimir Tretchikoff)

Mind-mapping

According to the creator of mind maps, mr Tony Buzan, our brain works through associations. When we listen to/ or see the word SUPER, for instance, we immediately think of super man, super market, super model or super inflation.

What we associate words with will depend largely on our life experiences, personality and field of work/education. That is to say that when listening to the word "super", a comics fan is likely to think of super heroes, a housewife of super markets, and an economist of super inflation.

The theory of mind maps also states that our brains are incredibly visual, so mind maps use words, pictures, lines of different sizes, and colours.

Mind maps in the English classroom

I have been using mind maps in my classes for a while now, and I have seen wonderful results. After reading a text I encourage my students to record the new vocabulary using this technique, and I have seen that it is a fun and memorable activity for them.

Here are some examples of mind maps produced by some of my students.

Interested in learning about mind-mapping? Try these links:

http://www.thinkbuzan.com

http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/mind_maps