YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT.

INTRODUCTION

Have you ever heard the English proverb "You are what you eat" ("Somos lo que comemos" in Spanish?). A proverb is a short saying which intends to express a basic truth. We have lots of this type of sayings in Spanish, but it will be interesting to learn some of them in English; and we'll focus in the specific sayings we can relate to food and gastronomy.

OBJECTIVES

- To learn English traditional sayings and revising and learning basic vocabulary used in them.

- To revise different verbal tenses and linkers used in English to write a narrative text.

- To work in grammatical and lexical error correction, and in the creation of different drafts to improve the students’ writing skills.

LEVEL OF THE PUPILS THAT WILL CARRY OUT THE ACTIVITY

- This activity will be done by students in the third year of Compulsory Secondary Education. 

MATERIALS NEEDED TO DO THE ACTIVITY

- We will need a computer with internet connection.

PARTS OF THE ACTIVITY

1. We'll visit the webpage:

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/proverbs.html

and we'll make a list of all the proverbs including words related to food or gastronomy.

2. We'll translate all these proverbs and make sure we know what they really mean. In some cases, you can find a Spanish equivalent for a particular proverb. If there is a Spanish equivalent, we'll write it next to the English proverb.  Let's take, for example "Revenge is a dish best served cold”. In Spanish we say: "La venganza es un plato que se sirve frío".

In some other cases, it's difficult to think of an equivalent proverb, but it is important that we understand what the proverb implies. Thus, "Don't teach your grandma to suck eggs", means that it's better not to give advice to someone who is more experienced than you. We don't have a similar proverb in Spanish including a grandma and eggs, if we do and I'm not aware of this, please tell me ;-)

3. Now, we'll choose a proverb and we'll write a story. In this story:

- We'll use the proverb we have chosen in a meaningful way

Or

- The chosen proverb will act as a conclusion of the story we write. To do this, we'll carefully plan our writing:

A. Thinking about the verbal tense it's more adequate. Do we remember the uses and form of the verbal tenses we have studied so far? If not, have a look at

http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/verbtenseintro.html

You can also practice doing different exercises to check that you remember.

B. Considering using convenient linkers that we'll help us to organize what we want to write about. You can check:

http://www.pronunciandoeningles.com/gramatica/los-conectores.html

 

When we finish, we'll check that there aren't any grammatical or lexical mistakes. We'll revise it again after some time, and we'll submit it to the teacher's mail. All the essays will be marked by the teacher and the best of them will be read in class.

C. Each student will create a list in which they will capture the mistakes they made and they will revise that list before writing some other essay for the teacher. In doing this they will be more conscious about the mistakes they make.

RESULTS OF THE ACTIVITY

The activity was fun and interesting. Some of the stories were really imaginative and creative and the activity contributed to make the students more aware of the things they need to improve when they create a text.

By Belén Ortega