Mid May Materials

This is a photo I took along the shores of Lake Michigan in The Upper Peninsula of my home state of Michigan in the USA — June or July last year — 2018

Hello Students,

As many of you may have found out, many students are not receiving the emails I send out from my Global English email to the Intesasanpaolo email addresses. My work email is adam.fitzgeral@glt-talent.com & my personal email is adamfitzsmith@gmail.com — so I have been emailing you from both accounts in hopes my messages & the materials therein reach you properly.

One of my students had this bright idea — to post all of my messages & materials to a webpage online, then just send you the link. Hopefully this makes life easier. This week can be our trial run, if this works, we will continue, if not, we will figure something else out.

Without any further ado, here are the links to the articles I have selected for our mid-May materials. Hopefully these are helpful to you!

Here is a story from BBC about young people who are “changing the world”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/0e9e80de-62cb-4782-a26f-1cd480d28f26

One of my students requested some articles form the publication VICE — somewhat of a controversial news outlet with very interesting topics & opinions. Here is an article about Russia — I always take VICE articles with a grain of salt
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/j5w5j8/russia-fimaco-moneyland-corruption-offshore

Here is a link to help decode that idiom “with a grain of salt” if you’ve never heard it before —

take with a grain of salt

Here is an article by NPR about the state of employment in the US
https://www.npr.org/2019/05/20/722650602/america-is-in-full-employment-so-why-arent-we-celebrating

Here is an article on women’s rights in France, written by NPR
https://www.npr.org/2019/05/19/719691001/in-france-the-metoo-movement-has-yet-to-live-up-to-womens-hopes

Here is a short video from The Economist on “how to detect the deadliest forms of cancer”
https://youtu.be/smEIxg-oa6w

A few months ago I sent out an article on the science of sleep from BBC — here is another, newer article from BBC decoding the health of sleep & rest —

Light mornings and the secret to a good night's sleep

Here is a link to a relatively new TED Talk about “getting your brain to focus” — something I have difficulty with time to time

https://youtu.be/Hu4Yvq-g7_Y

For a while I was running my own website (besides this Medium website, which was mainly for University, projects, team projects, hosting lessons from my students, etc.) I was writing articles on music — primarily my “Underrated Records” series, which focuses on criminally underrated & under listened to music — one article I wrote focuses on the band “Cotton Jones” — an indie folk rock group from America who made one of my favorite albums ever, “Paranoid Cocoon” — you can read my entire article here:

Adam's Underrated Records #3

& you can listen to the entire album here:

https://youtu.be/yYti6gX0plg

Here is a simple resource from “Grammarly” on the 10 Best Online Resources for English Language Learners —

10 Best Grammar Resources for English Language Learners

I’ve had a lot of questions about Clauses lately — hopefully this helps
https://www.ef.edu/english-resources/english-grammar/relative-clauses/

Another simple resource — Wikipedia has this wonderful list of English contractions, you are probably familiar with many, but it’s always good to read these to keep your English fresh, many English speakers use contractions when speaking -

Wikipedia:List of English contractions - Wikipedia

I’ll leave you with a quote from one of my favorite wise men — Plato

“There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.”
― Plato

Plato Quotes (Author of The Republic)

Have a great week! Feel free to email me at either email address listed above or contact me via Skype if you have any questions, comments or concerns. I look forward to catching up soon.

Best regards,

Adam Fitzgerald