(Advanced) The Innovation of Loneliness

1. 

What is the connection between Social Networks and Being Lonely?

Watch:

The Innovation of Loneliness

(Intermediate) Super Apps

China, was once known as the land of cheap rip-offs, now offers a glimpse of the future for internet business. Or is it a glimpse of something more sinister?

The language:

24 terms

Watch video:

Super Apps

(NZ Culture) Field trip

1. The Fort street area

One of the names for Fort street is Te One Panea, ‘beach of the heads in line’. It is said the heads of slain enemies were stuck on posts from one end to the other of the foreshore.

Horotiu Bay was dubbed Commercial Bay by settlers. That's why we have a street here called Commerce street.

1870 the reclamation of Commercial Bay reached as far as Customs Street East and in the 1880s, Quay Street was formed.

Shortland Street was the early commercial focus, but as Commercial bay was filled in and more streets formed that focus shifted to Queen street. 

Te Whatu (literally The Rock) was a ledge of rock, now the foot of Shortland Street, where waka would tie up.

Auckland’s first European fort was established on the point on the site of an old pa, Te Rerenga-oraiti (‘the leap of the survivors’) in 1840. This headland which was eventually renamed Pt. Britomart. The ancient name describes two similar incidents when attacking Ngati Whatua forces drove their foe off the end of the headland with only few surviving the leap into the Waitemata harbour below. The headland was later demolished and the earth and rocks were used for the reclamation of the shoreline.

The new Lighthouse sculpture by Michael Parekowhai on Auckland's Queens Wharf. Photo / David St George / Auckland Council

Why do you think sculptor, Michael Parekowhai chose to create this kind of house for the artwork?

The House

Extract from a newspaper article:

"Looking across to the North Shore, where Parekowhai grew up, and east toward Bastion Point, he immediately thought of a house - "a simple modest house that everyone would recognise and that had a huge amount of social, political and cultural history."

Thinking about surrounding office and apartment towers, he decided he didn't want to create another tall structure which would compete with existing city buildings. He wanted something on a human scale, which suggested human activity and humanity."

"We read about state houses and undertook practical research, driving around Auckland, photographing details." - Michael Parekowhai

Discuss: 

Walking around the house, can you see differences from a conventional home? Has anything been changed or adapted? Why?

Discuss:

1. Who was Captain Cook?

2. Why did he come to New Zealand?

3. Is there an equivalent of "Captain Cook" in your country? Someone with the same kind of status?

Looking at Cook, why do you think he's been represented this way? Consider the pose, size, materials, surroundings.

The stars

1. What do you think the stars meant to the people of the Pacific?

2. What did they mean to Cook?

"When deciding on constellations to realise in neon and locating them within the house, we were influenced by the position of the stars during Matariki."

- Micheal Parekowahai

3. Do you know what Matariki is? When and where can you see it in the sky? 

18 Questions

Artist Michael Parekowhai. Photo / Derek Henderson

B2.2 Unit 2: Technology

Overall aims for the week

1. To increase fluency in discussing the impacts of technology. 
2. To integrate recent grammar work into a piece of writing.
3. Read, listen and talk about technological advances.

Project

2 options:

1. Write a semiformal piece about personal experiences with technology. 

2. Write a letter of interest to a prospective employer (last weeks's project) 

Conversation starters:

Kahoot Survey

Grammar focus:

Future forms (especially passive)
past continuous passive 

Relative pronouns, comparative structures


Practice: Future forms

Vocabulary:

Unit 2 Vocab Kahoot

Unit 2 vocab

Collocations from Unit 2 reading

Speaking skills:

Comparing and evaluating different technological inventions.



Listening skills:

Improving the skill of listening for specific pieces of information.


Reading skills:

Improving the skill of reading for specific pieces of information.



Vocabulary from Unit 2


1. Define a "gadget".




2. Can you unscramble the bold words?


Our health is something we take for gtedran, until we are noiagsedd with an unexpected illness.


Some people rely on defibrillator-like eevidcs to keep their hearts going.


Robots are increasingly being used in iicntrate surgery to reduce the risk of human error.


Robots can perform certain tasks with greater psionreci than the human hand.





3. What are these technologies?


ultrasound

probes

implants

bionics

malware

freeware


How many applications can you think of for a probe?

4. Ahead and behind

What do we mean when we say one country is light years ahead of (or behind) another?

Do you feel your country is behind or ahead technologically?

In what other ways can countries be ahead and behind?



Cultural
Political
Attitudes
Lifestyle










5. Which join up?

At some point

when all is said

we are only

not readily



available

human

in the future

and done




6. Write a sentence in the present simple with the following words:


wasteful

goods

organs

revolutionise

marketplace

vital