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ESL forum >
Message board > European Day of Languages
European Day of Languages

baiba
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European Day of Languages
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Here is the display of postcards I received from you!

I did not have special activities worth mentioning here, except that I asked my students (17 y.o.) to read each postcard as they think right. It was great fun! The easiest were Russian (understandable because we can study it as a foreign language, but for some pupils it is native) and - guess which? - Serbian! (Incredibly similar to Russian.) Lithuanian came as the third easiest for us.
The most �alien � languages for us were Greek and Hungarian! Even I could not pronounce one word - It was all Greek to me!
I want to say thanks again to everybody who sent me the card and special thanks to Silvana whose idea it was!!
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29 Sep 2009
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mariannina
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It �s a good work! My school children will be happy to see another of their postacards dispayed in a bullettin board of a "far" school.
Ciao |
29 Sep 2009
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silvanija
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Well well, Latvian wasn �t very easy for us
When my my pupils looked at the text they said that it was familiar. But when it came to guessing words there was only one more or less understandable ("hello").
Most words they managed to guess in Portuguese.
We had no problems with Italian and Hungarian texts. There was one boy, Umberto, whose father is Italian, so he read the Italian card . And it appeared that there was another boy, Aaron, whose mum was from Hungary and he knew Hungarian very well. It was a great release as Hungarian words seemed really difficult for me to read.
Silvana |
29 Sep 2009
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serene
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Hi Baiba,
..."It was all Greek to me!" Well, at least, now you and your students have completely understood the origin and the meaning of this idiom. 
Warm regards to you and your students
serene
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29 Sep 2009
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teresaraiva
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Hi girls
What a fantastic idea you had!! Congratulations!!!!
Thank you for sharing it.
Tell me. Did your students manage to read Portuguese? Did they find it difficult?
teresa |
29 Sep 2009
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silvanija
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Hi, Teresa, it wasn �t difficult to read Portuguese for my students. Only nobody knows if they read it correctly There were 6 words for them to guess: paz, ola, adeus, liberdade, obrigado, amor. They were given translation into Lithuanian and had to match words with the same meaning.
Silvana |
29 Sep 2009
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mariannina
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In my school I have a Romanian boy, an Albanian girl and a Brazilian boy. We could manage, but not with Portuguese because we haven �t received the postcard yet.
Ciao |
29 Sep 2009
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epit
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Hi ! Baiba,they are nice work.,but what does it mean ?Sorry but I don �t know...."It was all Greek to me!" If anyone explain I would be pleased.Thanks |
29 Sep 2009
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serene
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Hi epit,
"It �s all Greek to me" is an idiom. It �s a way of saying that you do not understand something that is said or written. |
29 Sep 2009
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baiba
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Epit,
"It �s all Greek to me" is an idiom meaning "I absolutely don �t understand it, it makes no sense to me".
My students could guess the Portuguese words (with my help ) rather easily, there is something universal in them. We also had some success with Romanian and Italian.
Well, it does not require a lot of effort if you know what words are written there.
If only you had heard HOW my students were reading, you would probably have died from laughing.
We had a lot of fun!
Edit: Don�t misunderstand... It was not only a laughing matter, we also learned something. My students said it was a very good activity!
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29 Sep 2009
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