Halloween: 50 Costumes, 3 Stories and a Song

Halloween is right there, so if you are planning to go to a party and you want some ideas to dress up, you can't miss this Cosmopolitan link: 50 Cheap Halloween Costumes That You Can Easily DIY . This article is suitable for C1 students.

Halloween is an old tradition, whose origin can be traced to Roman and Celtic times, but it is deeply rooted in the Catholic tradition too, as Mary Reed Newland points out in her article, All Hallow's Eve (for C2 level). Halloween marks the beginning of winter, the season of cold and darkness, where misty figures stir people's imagination to inspire spooky tales of terror. You can find lots of Halloween folk stories, for example, on American Folklore there is a long list of creepy short stories that can be read in class to swop stories and do an information gap task. I have chosen Jack and the Devil and The Lady in the Veil , while other stories can be just played for fun, to listen to the sound effects the voice of the storyteller makes, like Sifty, Sifty San. These three stories can be downloaded in Word format on this link, and here you can also find a vocabulary matching task for "The Lady in the Veil" and "Jack and the Devil", with its answer key.

Halloween can be the right moment of the year to revise vocabulary about horror stories and fairy tales, so here you can find a Halloween Word List and a Halloween Cloze Activity with its answer key, to practice some of this literay vocabulary. These activities can be used with B2 students and above. Some of the key words you can find in the cloze task are: candle, mist, goodies, ghost, haunted, a wizard, a corpse, gruesome, spine-chilling, costumes, to carve, to hollow-out, ghastly, a jack-o'-lantern, a spider web, an imp, a broomstick, a troll, spooky, a coffin.

In the Halloween Word List, students may feel curious about some words like a bat, bizarre, the bogeyman, to cackle, chilling, a curse, doomed, eerie, elf, evil, fairy, fangs, ghoul, grim, grisly, hocus pocus, a magic wand, a prank, repulsive, revolting, to shiver, a shriek, sorcerer, a spook, a tombstone, wicked, witchcraft.

And finally, if you love music, you can listen to the traditional song "A Soul Cake", which talks about the ancient religious antecedent of the "Trick or Treat" game that children play now on Halloween. You can choose between Sting's jazzy version of A Soul Cake (2009), or, if you are a fan of melodic music, Peter, Paul and Mary's version, A Soulin' (1965). Here you can find a fill-in the gap listening exercise based on Sting's version, and its answer key.

El Pilar Festival (Hispanic Heritage Month, Columbus & Indigenous People's Day)

The new edition of "Hispanic Heritage Month, 2023" is here!  You can check out this link which collects several articles, exhibitions and podcasts programmed by major government cultural agencies:  National Hispanic Heritage Month, 2023, or two more links which will show you some music programmes NPR's World Café Special on Hispanic Heritage Month, and a collection of Latin stories and music on NPR's Extra, Hispanic Heritage Month, 2023.

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Below, you can find the entry about El Pilar Festival with a lesson plan, the glossary and the Hispanic Heritage Month events in 2022:

El Pilar festival is in full swing after the pandemic. The streets of Zaragoza are packed with people enjoying the festive atmosphere, and relatives come to Zaragoza from miles away to celebrate October 12th and participate in the popular Offering of the Flowers to the Virgin of El Pilar, who is the patroness saint of Aragón and of the Hispanic countries.  

In America there are parallel celebrations around this date, like National Hispanic Heritage Month, from September 15th to October 15th; Columbus Day, held on the second Monday of October (10/10/22), which includes the famous Columbus Day Parade in New York City, broadcast live on ABC-7 New York, or the alternative celebration of  Indigenous People's Day, which conmemorates the history and contributions of Native Americans. If you are interested in reading further about the debate between Columbus Day and Indigenous People's Day in the USA, you can check the article What Indigenous Peoples Day is all about, and why it's gaining in popularity over Columbus Day, by Anna Deen in Grid News. If you want a comprehensive compilation of the stories that NPR has broadcast this month about Hispanic culture, you can check Hispanic Heritage Month: Somos NPR. These readings, podcasts and videos without subtitles are recommended for C1 students and above.

In Spain, El Pilar festival can be a good excuse for a conversation about Zaragoza and festivals at large.  Here you can find a lesson plan about El Pilar festival, which includes speaking, writing, reading and vocabulary tasks for B2 students and above. The reading texts in El Pilar Festival, come from Spanish-fiestas.com, from City Life Madrid and from Wikipedia, and there you can come across interesting words like: to lead up to, parade, a patron saint, a trail, a lilly, an orchid, a gladiolus, to wind your way, to spread [Christianity], a marble pillar, a chapel, to be displayed, a pilgrim, to trace back to [1600s], the big heads,  papier mache figures, the carnival, to mingle [with the crowds], bull fighting, a gathering, to be spotted, to be packed with [bars and revellers], impressive [landscapes], picturesque [villages], gorgeous, [people] flock to the streets, endless [activities].

In the conversation class about El Pilar festival, the following words may come up: the opening speech, the flower offering, the trade fair, the crafts fair, the venue [of a concert], food trucks, the river waterfront, the beer festival, the bullfighting ring, a matador, a recortador, to jump bulls, to dodge [a bull], a street brass band, the giant puppets, the bigheaded, the fireworks, the glass rosary procession, the mass of infants.

If you want to find out what a village festival is like in the UK, you can go to Kimpton May Festival, where you will find a listening and a short conversation task for B2 students.

Cabaret (1972)

 

October 6th marks the 50th anniversary of the premiere of "Cabaret" in Spain.  This movie is not just a happy-go-lucky musical, but a dramatic story of how violence can shake the foundations of a free, democratic society when intolerance, defamation and poverty strike, as in Berlin in the1930's. 

It is worthwhile to watch Cabaret again, so here you can find a Worksheet and Viewing Guide with a Key, to help B2 students discuss some scenes in the movie (with subtitles), and here you can read a recent article from BBC Culture entitled "Cabaret: How the X-rated musical became a hit", where you will find interesting words like: a ground-breaking [film], to take on, a hit, a chilling [message], release, against the backdrop, uncompromising [hate], acclaim, packed audiences, in pursuit of, vibrant [gay scene], a misfit, the likes of [Sally Bowles], a supporting actor, a magnet, to barrel [into the abyss], to treble, to be purged, grim, prescient, doom, to pervade, on the fringes [of history], to debut, camp, debauched, to dim, grime, bewitching, an outsider, hedonistic, free-spirited, oblivious, a breakout [role], divergence, to be trapped, a gaze, taboo, creeping [fascism], to embrace, explicitness, matter-of-fact, depiction, queerness, a riot, a [Pride] parade, a portrayal, stuffy, [Iserwood's] alter ego, a glance, an utterance, to star [eddie Redmayne], to be cast, quaint, to underscore, a mainstream [film], androgynous, unapologetically, rake-thin, smothered, chalky, raucous, a drag, depravity, to strut [across stage], seediness, gleeful, abandon, to goosestep, to don [a military helmet] a fake [gun], to be embodied, buoyant, to hold [your] breath, [political] apathy, unwittingly, to facilitate, a sledgehammer, to pan out, a paean, to be enraptured, destitute, stark, to depict, to tackle, garish, sleazy, to be burdened, to dread,, burgeoning, an outcry, 

Below you can watch a clip with the song "Tomorrow belongs to me", which starts as a romantic lyrical song in the countryside, and ends up with a suffocating chorus, that compels the protagonists to flee the scene. There are no subtitles, but the close-up shots need no further explanation.

And here you can watch the famous song "Money makes the world go round".  No need for subtitles, again, because the choreography is quite revealing:

World News Media Congress, Zaragoza 2022

 Zaragoza has recently hosted the World News Media Congress, WAN-IFRA, where news corporation leaders, editors, journalists and academics have discussed the latest trends, innovations and challenges in the profession: disinformation wars, polarization, fake news, social media, trust, press freedom, female leadership, young readers, monetization of news services, audience engagement, financial sustainability, Web3, artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, metaverse, diversity and inclusion have been some of the subjects of debate in the different summits and seminars of the conference.

Here you can watch a short video clip (4':30") of the World Editors Summit "Resetting Newsroom Priorities" by Adriaan Basson, Editor-in-Chief of News24, South Africa, where he explains the successful transformation of the company. The video comes with a listening task entitled "A Successful News Website" and the answer key. This task is suitable for C1 students.

Some of the words you will find in the video are: to be up to, a breaking news website, payable, the hype, Afrikaans, aggregation, a wire, the motto, the lotto, UGC (User Generated Content), to shift, trusted, a slogan, era, disinformation, fake news, to pivot, freemium, a subscriber, a trade model, to reset, newsroom, a stream, a publisher, investigative [journalism], in-depth, a podcast, a sub-editor, a complaint.

During the conference, King Philip VI of Spain presented Piotr Stasinski and Joanna Krawczyk of Gazeta Wybcorza with the Golden Pen of Freedom for delivering independent journalism in authoritan contexts in Poland. The Women in News Editorial Leadership Award was given to Faith Zaba, editor of The Zimbabwe Indenpent, Diana Moukalled, editor of Daraj Media, Lebanon and Regina "Ging" Reyes, editor of ABC-CBN News, Philippines. And the Digital Media Awards Worldwide went to Spain, Philippines, Singapore, New Zealand and South Africa.