Mixbook 'Faces and Places I'd Like to Learn Better'

http://www.mixbook.com/photo-books/interests/faces-and-places-i-d-like-to-learn-better-5274203

Blind Virtuoso

Stevie Wonder

An American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and activist. Blind since shortly after birth.

Some of Wonder's best known works include singles such as "Superstition", "Sir Duke", "I Wish" and "I Just Called to Say I Love You". Well known albums also include Talking Book, Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life He has recorded more than thirty U.S. top ten hits and received twenty-two Grammy Awards, the most ever awarded to a male solo artist. Wonder is also noted for his work as an activist for political causes, including his 1980 campaign to make Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday a holiday in the United States. In 2009, Wonder was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace. In 2008, Billboard magazine released a list of the Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists to celebrate the US singles chart's fiftieth anniversary, with Wonder at number five.

Stevie Wonder was born in Saginaw, Michigan in 1950, being the third of six children to Calvin Judkins and Lula Mae Hardaway. Owing to his being born six weeks premature, the blood vessels at the back of his eyes had not yet reached the front and their aborted growth caused the retinas to detach.The medical term for this condition is retinopathy of prematurity, or ROP, and while it may have been exacerbated by the oxygen pumped into his incubator, this was not the primary cause of his blindness.

When Stevie Wonder was four, his mother left his father and moved herself and her children to Detroit. She changed her name back to Lula Hardaway and later changed her son's surname to Morris, partly because of relatives. Morris has remained Stevie Wonder's legal name ever since. He began playing instruments at an early age, including piano, harmonica, drums and bass. During childhood he was active in his church choir.

A prominent figure in popular music during the latter half of the 20th century, Wonder has recorded more than thirty U.S. top ten hits and won twenty-two Grammy Awards (the most ever won by a solo artist) as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award. He has also won an Academy Award for Best Song, and been inducted into both the Rock and Roll and Songwriters halls of fame. He has also been awarded the Polar Music Prize. American music magazine Rolling Stone named him the ninth greatest singer of all time. In June 2009 he became the fourth artist to receive the Montreal Jazz Festival Spirit Award.

Wonder's songs are renowned for being quite difficult to sing. He has a very developed sense of harmony and uses many extended chords utilizing extensions such as 9ths, 11ths, 13ths, b5s, etc. in his compositions. Many of his melodies make abrupt, unpredictable changes. Many of his vocal melodies are also melismatic, meaning that a syllable is sung over several notes. Some of his best known and most frequently covered songs are played in keys which are more often found in jazz than in pop and rock.

Modern IT (Internet Technologies) in EFL teaching

Google Wave

The product is part email, part Twitter and part instant messaging. Users can drag files from the desktop to a discussion. Wave even showed character-by-character live typing.
A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.
A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

Advantages of Google Wave

Innovative Interface

Real Time Interface

Promoting new waves of Collaboration

Disadvantages of Google wave

No undo system

No option to hide replies

Limited user’s invitation

No notification system

Only Google account login option

Friendship in my life

The important role in my life plays a friendship. Understanding of that near to me always reliable friends gives me forces for self-improvement and aspirations in life. To be on friendly terms probably both with girls and with guys, but thus it is necessary to know precisely that you want further from this friendship:)
A friend can be a casual companion with whom we socialize occasionally, an intimate person that we interact with everyday whom we share the most private thoughts and feelings, or someone we have known all our lives and will never deceive us. I will define friendship as a voluntary relationship between two people, and it may involve in varying types and levels of companionship, intimacy, affection, and mutual assistance. We humans are very sociable being. Without friend or family, we feel empty and hollow inside. We feel isolated or separated from the world, cut off from those who we love, and who love us. Loneliness leads to depression, which is a miserable state. It is true friendship that we are seeking in our life, which we can trust and depend on, and it is a great self-achievement.
The majority of people being in a difficult situation prefer to resort to the friend's help.
In my life there was such situation. The girl was in love with a guy, they were a long time together and as a result after long relations she has felt treachery from him. It was awful. It seemed to her that it remained one all over the world. Being in relations with him, she plainly didn't pay attention to the friends, wasn't interested in their problems, there was only He. And when it remained one alone with treachery from the loved one, she has understood that she lost her friends... It became terrible that because of him she has lost the closest people. From this situation I have understood one. Don't renounce friends, after all the guy is today and tomorrow already isn't .. And friends are always nearby! Girls be carefull with friendship and friends! Any guy isn't deserve such victims!

The Day of Love

My love is like a cabbige:
Devided into two.
The leaves I give to others,
The heatr I give to You!

It's nice to have a friend like you.
I'll tell you what I'm going to do.
Because you make me feel so fine,

I'll take you for my valentine!

My eyes are blind without your eyes to see,
Like a rose without color.
Always be there in my life sweetheart.

Axe Murder Hollow

Susan and Ned were driving through a wooded empty section of highway. Lightning flashed, thunder roared, the sky went dark in the torrential downpour.

“We’d better stop,” said Susan.

Ned nodded his head in agreement. He stepped on the brake, and suddenly the car started to slide on the slick pavement. They plunged off the road and slid to a halt at the bottom of an incline.

Pale and shaking, Ned quickly turned to check if Susan was all right. When she nodded, Ned relaxed and looked through the rain soaked windows.

“I’m going to see how bad it is,” he told Susan, and when out into the storm. She saw his blurry figure in the headlight, walking around the front of the car. A moment later, he jumped in beside her, soaking wet.

“The car’s not badly damaged, but we’re wheel-deep in mud,” he said. “I’m going to have to go for help.”

Susan swallowed nervously. There would be no quick rescue here. He told her to turn off the headlights and lock the doors until he returned.

Axe Murder Hollow. Although Ned hadn’t said the name aloud, they both knew what he had been thinking when he told her to lock the car. This was the place where a man had once taken an axe and hacked his wife to death in a jealous rage over an alleged affair. Supposedly, the axe-wielding spirit of the husband continued to haunt this section of the road.

Outside the car, Susan heard a shriek, a loud thump, and a strange gurgling noise. But she couldn’t see anything in the darkness.

Frightened, she shrank down into her seat. She sat in silence for a while, and then she noticed another sound. Bump. Bump. Bump. It was a soft sound, like something being blown by the wind.

Suddenly, the car was illuminated by a bright light. An official sounding voice told her to get out of the car. Ned must have found a police officer. Susan unlocked the door and stepped out of the car. As her eyes adjusted to the bright light, she saw it.

Hanging by his feet from the tree next to the car was the dead body of Ned. His bloody throat had been cut so deeply that he was nearly decapitated. The wind swung his corpse back and forth so that it thumped against the tree. Bump. Bump. Bump.

Susan screamed and ran toward the voice and the light. As she drew close, she realized the light was not coming from a flashlight. Standing there was the glowing figure of a man with a smile on his face and a large, solid, and definitely real axe in his hands. She backed away from the glowing figure until she bumped into the car.

“Playing around when my back was turned,” the ghost whispered, stroking the sharp blade of the axe with his fingers. “You’ve been very naughty.”

The last thing she saw was the glint of the axe blade in the eerie, incandescent light.

Interview with Svetlana Tsymbal

Who are you?

My name is Svetlana Tsymbal. First of all – I’m a student of Tavrida Kerch University of Economics and Humanity. I study there 2 languages and I hope that my life will be closely connected with studying and use of German and English. I like to learn something new about English language; its history seems to me rater interesting. English takes away the main part of my life, but there are moments which are important for me not less: I’m artist and to become the professional in this sphere so important, as well as to become a good philologist.

 How did you learn English?

I began to study English at the age of 5. Unfortunately, I did not visit a kindergarten, and my parents joined me on preliminary courses. There I learnt what other language is. It was so fascinating to learn something absolutely new, unfamiliar. All that was delightful for me. I sang songs, read verses and small fairy tales with the great pleasure. Then my school started. I studied in class where English was the basic subject. Year after year I understood that I like to learn a foreign language, I loved country studying and rhetoric lessons. I understood that I want to continue studying English and entered this institute. The first years did not seem to me difficult, but then, certain difficulties with which I have coped came, and I constantly continue to work on my knowledge.

What has English given you?

It gives me certain freedom and this freedom consists in knowledge. If to compare my base preparation earlier and now – the result is obvious. I do not afraid of dialogue in a foreign language any more. Surely I have some difficulties, but their greater half I got over. I visit English-speaking sites with pleasure, I watch movies and I read books, magazines in English. Listening foreign track by radio I catch sense of a song, and it’s great! But I’m faced with learning and understanding so much more. So I have aspirations more than enough.