Bend it like Beckham

Drama-comedy from 2002. Jess, or Jesminder as her Indian family calls her, loves to play fotball in the park with her male friends. The family don't like it, her mother wants her to learn more about cooking instead. Then she meets Jules who help her join a girl's fotball team and Jess realise that she will have to lie to her family to be able to do what she loves. I watched it without subtitles.

Pride and Prejucide

Drama from 2005 based on a novel by Jane Austen. I have seen this film before, read the book and watched the BBC series from 1995 several times. It's about the Bennet family who has five daughters that they (or at least the mother) want to find husbands for. Then they get a new neighbour... The film has several well-known actors like Keira Knightley, Matthew Macfadyen, Judi Dench and Donald Sutherland. The pace is quite fast compered to the tv-series which of course is not that strange. I watched it with English subtitles.

Report week 2

I have now uploaded my answers to the first assignment. We got 12 sentences where we should mark the different word classes, clauses elements and grammatical phrases. They are uploaded in a discussion forum and we are four people in each group. We should comment each others work which is good, you get new ideas and start thinking differently about some things.
Yesterday I used VoiceThread for the first time and did two short recordings for a fun assignment. We were supposed to talk a little about British and American stereotypes.
I have also started to study the cultural part of the course. I'm still waiting for my books so I have read some documents online and listened to an audio lecture, both about British culture.

Gosford Park

I have watched a drama taking place in England in autumn 1932. A couple has invited relatives and friends for a hunting weekend. We get to meet people both upstairs and downstairs. The gathering will be interrupted by a burder though... The story is written by Julian Fellows (the man behind Downton Abbey) and even though this film has lots of famous actors the story isn't that interesting. I watched it without subtitles.

The Holiday

American film from 2006. Britsh Iris and American Amanda both need to get over someone and through an exchange site online they deside to swop houses for two weeks over Christmas. Iris ends up in a big house with a pool in sunny L.A. and Amanda arrives to a snowy English countryside and a little stone cottage. They will both meet new people that will change their lives. Not my favourite category of film but this was quite good. I watched it with English subtitles.

The term has started

Yesterday, the spring-term started. I read in the grammarbook about word classes, clause elements, grammatical phrases, coordinators and subordinators. I try to understand the difference between things like nouns and verbs, adjectives and adverbs, subjects and objects. I have also listened to audio lectures on the book's website and read material published on the course page at the University's website.

Viva la vida

I have listened to ten songs by Coldplay and looked at the lyrics online while listening. The songs are: Magic, Another's Arms, Cemetries of London, Viva la Vida, What if, Speed of Sound, God put a smile upon my face, Yellow, Clocks and Charlie Brown.

Magnificent

I have listened to ten songs by U2 and looked at the lyrics online while listening. The songs are: The Miracle, Every Breaking Wave, Magnificent, Vetigo, Elevation, Where the Streets Have no Name, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking for, Pride (In the Name of Love), One and Beautiful Day.

A University Grammar

Since the first edition of the grammar book is no longer available to order, I contacted the University and now I have ordered the second edition that was published this autumn. The book has an activation code that will give me access to web resources connected to the book.

Arthur and Louis

I have read two articles in the magazine All about History, Book of Kings & Queens. The first one was about King Arthur - was he a real person or just a myth? The article talks about things like Camelot, Lady of the Lake, Merlin and The Round Table.
The second article was about Louis XIV of France, the Sun King who built Versailles and fought many wars.

Dictionary

My favourite dictionary is the one online from Cambridge. I can look up a word and get a short explanation, get to know what word class the word belongs to, get examples of sentences with the word and click a loudspeaker symbol and get to hear the pronunciation in British and/or American English. Could it get any better? Check out the website.

Coldplay are happy

I have read an article in the December issue of Q magazine: How Coldplay got happy. A journalist met the band in London in June and October and in New York in September. The band work in the studio with their seventh album (released in December), play at the Global Citizen Festival and the journalist takes a walk with singer Chris Martin in London. I have listened to the album, it's not my favourite, but it was nice to read this article.

Music, food, art and fashion

I have read some more in the Totally Gothenburg magazine: an interview with the singer Seinabo Sey, texts about the restaurants Kometen, Bhoga and Heaven 23, interviews with a Finnish art duo and a Swedish fashion designer duo.

Totally Gothenburg

I happened to come across an issue of the new free magazine Totally Gothenburg, a culture and lifestyle magazine in English. I have read an article about the Musik Livet exhibition at Göteborgs Stadsmuseum (which I had just visited when I found the magazine), texts about Gothenburg Film Festival, the P3 Guld Awards and the Go To Sea Festival. A nice way to read shorter texts in English and practice the language. It's possible to read it online here. The next issue will be out in February.

Student account

I got an e-mail from the University that told me to create and activate a user identity for the schools IT system, so now I have done that. I have read the introduction and the chapter "What is grammar?" in the grammar book. I studied English grammar in 2009 and then I used the book "Engelsk universitetsgrammatik", the big difference between the two books are of course that the "new" one is written in English (but with a Swedish perspective).

First step

I went to the City Library to look for some of the books that I will need for my studies. I borrowed the book "University Grammar of English with a Swedish Perspective" and "Contemporary America". I will need the first one right from the start but the second one is compulsory for part two of the course. I start to think that I might have to buy the grammar book, even though it's just compulsary for the first weeks of the course, it might be useful even later.