Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones returned for its eighth and final season yesterday.  It was premiered simultaneously in the USA and the UK.  This BBC article collects some extracts of the reviews from the press, a trailer of the programme and some reactions from viewers and stars.
The text can be classified as B2. The video as C1.

The Archers: a British Radio Tradition

British people love long-lasting traditions like the Monarchy, Parliament or drinking a "nice, cup of tea".  The Archers is one of them -the longest-running radio soap-opera in the world- The Archers is "a contemporary drama in a rural setting", called Ambridge, which has been running non-stop since 1951 on Radio- 4, the main talk channel on the BBC. It has over 5 million listeners every day, one million of them via the internet, according to Wikipedia.  Here you can find a synopsis of the soap, and a lot of background information (Link B2).

On The Archers web page, you can find videos, clips, podcasts, a list of characters, a blog, and, of course, you can listen to the latest episodes on the archive.  These audios and videos, without subtitles, are problably suitable for C2 students.

Grit: The Key to Success

Angela Lee Duckworth left a high-flying job in consulting for a more demanding job as a 7th Grade Maths teacher in a New Yourk public school.  Then, she left the classroom to go to graduate school and study the best predictor for success in students, rookie teachers, West Point Military Academy cadets, competitive sales people, and she found that the best predictor for success was not social intelligence, good looks, physical health or IQ, it was grit.  Grit is "the passion and perseverance for very long-term goals", it is "having stamina". "Grit is living life like it is a marathon, not a sprint".
This short TED Talk video (06:12) with subtitles can be seen by B2 learners.

Men's & Women's Brains

Are there gender differences between men and women or are we just talking about sterotypes? Are there biological differences between men's and women's brains or are the differences social and cultural? Many English coursebooks for adults use this topic to raise debate in the classroom:  Gender or individual differences? Nature or nurture?

Here you can find a selection of materials to teach a lesson about gender issues, which I have used to expand the reading "How Men and Women Argue" on p. 64 of Christina Latham-Koenig's & Clive Oxenden's, English File Upper-Intermediate, 3rd Edition, Oxford University Press:

"Men & Women", a set of controversial statements which students can discuss, first in pairs and then, as a class.

Some links to TED Talks videos that could be given for listening/oral homework (students are assigned one video, they watch it at home, take notes and in the first 15 minutes of the next class they share the information in pairs):

1) John Gray, the author of the book "Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus" at TEDxBend













2) Daphna Joel at TEDxJaffa: Are Brains Male or Female?















3) Paul Zak, at TEDxAmsterdamWomen: The Differences Between Men and Women. This video contains more technical words, so it is more suitable for C1 or C2 students:












4) Finally, Mark Gungor, a male comedian, uses men's and women's stereotypes to make a wide audience laugh about the misunderstandings that frequently occur between men and women:

Computers Could Read Mammograms

Artificial Intelligence professor at MIT, Regina Barzilay, and Connie Lehman, the chief radiologist for breast imaging at Massachussetts General Hospital, are developing algorithms to train computers to read mammograms and prevent disease in general.  But there are also examples in the past of promising new technologies, such as CAD (Computer Aided Detection), which failed to deliver what was expected from them.
This NPR story can be read as an article or heard as an audio report with a script (6':25").  The technicality of the vocabulary can make this a C2 reading or listening task.