Introductions: by the class about the class

Welcome to the new trimester of English at Ondas! The grammar focus of our first two weeks has been interviewing skills and peer editing. Students interviewed each other, wrote an introduction about their partner and peer edited their written work. We discussed common grammatical mistakes, vocabulary, style and best practices as a class. 

Here are four of the final products, with two more coming soon. Well done, class!

Cristina introducing Paco

His name is Francisco José but he prefers to be called Paco. He's 35 years old.

He studied Economy and currently he’s working as a financial analyst. He thinks that you need to understand how Economy works to appreciate how financial markets and enterprises are affected by it.

On the other hand, he hasn't got any pets but he'd like to a dog (he prefers dogs to cats). He would have liked to have had a dog when he was a child but his parents didn't let him.

If you're interested in knowing what kind of music he likes, you'd be surprised to find out that he doesn't listen to any music on the radio! When he has the choice to select the radio station, he prefers to listen to the news.

If you'd like to know more about Paco, just ask him in our next class! ;)

Paco introducing Cristina

My classmate´s name is Cristina. She is 27 years old and she works in a family owned company which produces wine. She works in the customer service department managing different purchase orders. She also coordinates events.

She likes to go to the cinema and her favourite film is Noah's book. Today, many people are talking about 50 Shades of Grey and she has seen it. And although she liked it, maybe she expected more because the trilogy was more sexual.

Her favourite hobby is reading books. She loves it and she could read all kinds of books except historical books. When she does it, she gets bored.

Another of her hobbies is listening to music. As with reading books, she can listen to all different styles of music. However, her favourite music group is “the passenger”, which is from the UK and plays folk rock music.

Elvira introducing Raquel

Raquel is a thirty two year old journalist that works for a communication agency.  She is in charge of collecting diverse information about different companies. She also sends press releases. She has been working there for four years and she says she likes it very much.

However, her face changes when she talks about cinema and her previous job where she used to write film reviews. She loves going to the movies and, when she has the opportunity, she likes going to cinema forums to get completely immersed in the films. The last film she watched is “The imitation game” which is now showing in Spanish cinemas. But watching films is not her only hobby.

She also likes reading, not only in Spanish but in English too. When she chooses a novel to read in English, she usually chooses science-fiction novels such as “The hunger games”. She says she finds these kinds of stories very gripping and this style makes these books easier to read. Apart from this, she fancies doing puzzles and putting them in a frame to decorate a room. She also likes to give puzzles as a present.

Raquel about Elvira

Elvira is 33 years old and she is from Córdoba. She works for a Frequent Flyer programme. She is in contact with Iberia partners like hotels or car rental companies.

In her free time she likes going hiking. She has made different routes through Navacerrada, Cotos and La Pedriza, and she especially enjoyed when she went to La Granja in Segovia. Also, Elvira is learning to dance sevillanas and she would like to go to the Córdoba fair in May to practice all she is learning in her classes.

When she was a child her favourite book was 'The coming back' by Rosamunde Pilcher. It tells the story of a teenage girl during the Second World War and the difficulties she faced. 'The coming back' was the book that inspired Elvira to keep reading.

Today she usually reads books in English for practice. Her favourites are romantic novels (but nothing to do with books like '50 shades of Grey'). In her opinion, romantic novels are good for learning English because they are colloquial and they have entertaining and funny plots that make them easy to follow.