Attend the Talk!

The talk teaches how to use the EOI Cartagena C1 & C2 blog to improve your English, explore resources and strategies, and become a more independent user. Participants are encouraged to attend, share information, and support other students, with a focus on the importance of turning visits into learning and maximizing the available tools to progress at advanced levels.





CONCURSO DE IDEAS de ‘IGUALDAD’ Para el cortometraje de la EOI

Our School proposes an Idea Contest focused on gender equality, to be carried out in class as a brief oral and/or written activity: Microviolence in young  people. 

The goal is a contest for ideas on gender equality, whose main aim is to raise gender equality topics in the classroom. Another obvious aim is to harness and showcase our students' creative talent. The short film script will be based on the winning idea, and the creators will have the opportunity to participate in its development.

You can find the steps for setting up the activity in this document. It includes a couple of examples of a "hook" and a "synopsis." The first example is provided in English, while the second is just for your enjoyment. 

The deadline is Tuesday, October 27th. Please send the ideas to this email address before October 30th, which is when the final vote will take place. The judging panel will consist of teachers from our school.

I encourage you to participate both in this idea contest on gender equality and in the short film itself, which we will be shooting in late February.

Improve your Vocabulary

EL PAÍS (News in English)

An unbridled Trump

With 20 days to go before the midterms, the leader of the party that stands to lose everything at the polls insists on ignoring what those polls advise him to do: to step aside to prevent his unpopularity from affecting those who are running for office. Far from following that logic, Donald Trump has spent recent days on an unrestrained campaign tour across the country, giving speeches driven by his obsessions.

Meanwhile, a recent study by UnidosUS shows that nearly four in 10 Hispanic voters belong to what it calls the “moveable middle,” a bloc that represents 38% of the Hispanic electorate and remains undecided ahead of the midterms. (...)

And our interviewees this week include the economist Mariana Mazzucato, the chief conservator of the Acropolis in Athens, and the Spanish stunt double who does "all the dangerous stuff" for Brad Pitt.

We hope you enjoy this selection of articles from EL PAÍS US Edition

You can also read:

• Menopause isn’t a gentle slope, it’s a ‘cliff’: The consequences of a woman’s last period are much worse than previously thought
• Spain’s ‘grandchildren’s law’ before the Supreme Court: Who can vote on November 29?
• The researchers who achieved Chile’s first cloned horse: ‘It would not be complicated to clone humans; the only limitation is ethical’
• The cost of basic groceries, measured in wages: 1.2 hours of work in Ireland and a month in the Central African Republic
• How much AI is in Spain’s bestselling books?
• King of Spain in Ceuta: ‘Sovereignty and territorial integrity are not negotiable, and faced with any risk, our duty is their defense’

Houses of Astrology related to Star Signs

Astrology is a great field for dealing with personality adjectives. You can find in What Do the 12 Houses Mean in Astrology? a great deal of vocabulary associated with each of the signs. Click on the signs written in each House (in the article) to revise vocabulary and check whether it is  the same (or not) as the adjectives seen in class.

How To Write In the Subjunctive Mood

Read this article by Dictionary.com.

Types of Buildings & Houses

 

Hair & Accesories

20 C1 Words

Join our Pronunciation Workshop (every Wednesday)

If you cannot attend it, you might follow the blog with the topics and activities we see and study in our Pronunciation Workshop.

Office Politics

Speak more Confidently

Debate Technology

Think of possible questions and answers for these topics as if you had to talk about them in the interaction part.

C1 Transition Words 2

Ways of Walking (2)

 

Movimientos sigilosos o cuidadosos

Creep: Moverse a gatas o con mucho sigilo para no ser visto.
Tiptoe: Caminar de puntillas de manera silenciosa.

Formas particulares de caminar
Stride: Dar pasos largos, enérgicos y firmes al andar.
Limp: Cojear debido a una lesión o dolor en la pierna.
Shuffle: Caminar arrastrando los pies sin levantarlos bien del suelo.
Strut: Pavonearse o caminar con una postura exageradamente orgullosa y erguida.

Movimientos rápidos o rítmicos
Dash: Correr a gran velocidad o salir disparado hacia un lugar.
Hop: Dar saltos pequeños, generalmente sobre un solo pie.
Sway: Balancearse suavemente de un lado a otro al moverse.

Learn many more "walking" verbs HERE.

Success

Would you agree with this picture? 

Give reasons for your answer.

EL PAÍS (News in English)

Spain mourns Maricarmen, the symbol of a new movement

Dear readers,

In Spain, the death of Maricarmen, the 87-year-old woman whose eviction sparked protests across the country, has become a defining moment in the debate over housing and tenants' rights. Once an anonymous Madrid resident fighting to stay in her home, she died as the unlikely face of a movement demanding action on one of Spain's most pressing social crises.

Beyond Spain, the war in Ukraine remains at a critical juncture. In an exclusive interview with EL PAÍS, Volodymyr Zelenskiy delivers a stark assessment of Europe’s response to Russia's renewed offensive against Kyiv, warning that Vladimir Putin "isn't afraid of Europeans."

And in the United States, a once-fringe idea is gaining traction: should artificial intelligence pay taxes? As AI transforms the economy and threatens to reshape the labor market, policymakers and economists are increasingly debating whether tech companies should help offset the social costs of automation.

This week we also sat down with Richard Dean Anderson, the actor who turned MacGyver into one of television's most enduring heroes, and spoke with Sylvester Stallone, who reflects on masculinity, aging and the changing cultural landscape.

We hope you enjoy this selection of stories from EL PAÍS English Edition.

You can also read:

• Hispanidad or latinidad: Shakira opens debate on cultural identity beyond a common language
• Mount Athos, the Greek stronghold that bans women from entering
• The just-world hypothesis and other mental traps that guide us, but that we can avoid
• Canadian poet Anne Carson wins the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature

Business Idioms 1

Check these and many more HERE.

General Election Campaign Vocabulary

Have a look at this (AI-generated) document providing with specific vocabulary that you will be able to hear in the following weeks everywhere anytime.

UK General Election Glossary: What do all the words mean?

Another Lucy's Grammar Test

Take the quizz 

C2 students must get ALL questions RIGHT. 

C1 students may make 3 or 4 mistakes, but at the end of the year they will get ALL of them RIGHT.

KEY to Written Mediation Vegetarian World Day

Check your Written Mediation HERE.

Personality Idioms 2

Answer to Question in Personality Idioms 1 (last Tuesday): 

• An early bird (the most common and natural expression) She's an early bird. She's always at work before everyone else.

• An early riser (specifically someone who wakes up early) He's an early riser and usually starts his day at 5 a.m.

• Punctual (if the emphasis is on being on time, not necessarily early) She's very punctual and often arrives a few minutes early.

• Ahead of schedule (for a specific occasion) He arrived ahead of schedule.

• Proactive (if arriving early reflects a responsible attitude) She's very proactive and likes to get an early start.

There's also the saying: "The early bird catches the worm." which means people who act early tend to be more successful.

Rules of Conjunction

Conjunctions (Cambridge Dictionary)

Protest Vocabulary

The Language of Protests

Ways of Looking 2

Personality Idioms 1

Talk about Politics

In Spanish politics, the far right encompasses movements and ideologies that advocate: 

• keeping decision-making power at the national level rather than transferring authority to regional governments, 
• stricter immigration control, 
• more traditional social values, and 
• tougher law-and-order policies. 

In contrast, the far left includes movements that promote: 

• Support for greater public control or ownership of key industries and services such as energy, education, healthcare, or housing, 
• a broader redistribution of wealth, 
• the expansion of social and labour rights and 
• higher taxation of wealth and income to reduce economic inequalities & expand public services.

Both extremes are positioned outside the moderate political spectrum and tend to propose more radical reforms than those generally supported by centrist parties.

Talk about the above issues and add as many others as you consider worth mentioning.

Commonly Misunderstood Words

EL PAÍS (News in English)

Democrats regain ground with Latinos

Dear readers,

With the U.S. midterms just a month away, new polls suggest that the Democratic Party could win back between six and 10 points of the Hispanic vote that supported Trump in 2024, partly on account of an immigration policy that "has gone too far."

Elsewhere in the world, anger over the housing crisis came to a head in Spain after an elderly woman was evicted from her low-rent home despite years of court struggles. Maricarmen has become the symbol of a growing global movement that aims to regain rights for tenants.

This week we also traveled to Zurich to visit the headquarters of On, the hot new running shoe that's attracting the likes of Kylian Mbappé and Zendaya, and to a town in Colombia where children on their way to school have to deal with an angry three-ton hippopotamus.

We hope you enjoy this selection of stories from EL PAÍS US Edition.

You can also read:

• How Putin, Trump and Xi are aiming to make the EU fail
• From Mamdani’s veto to enthusiasm in Estonia: Schools around the world are grappling with the use of AI
• Tennessee governor halts executions after Christa Pike survives two lethal injections
• The just-world hypothesis and other mental traps that guide us, but that we can avoid
• A living tissue factory: printed cells to create everything from bone marrow to lab meat
• Turning offices into homes: Manhattan’s solution to its housing crisis... but with some risks
• Gaza before and after: New Google Maps imagery shows destruction of the Strip

British & American Slang