mardi 26 octobre 2010

IT'S HALLOWEEN TIME AGAIN !!!



it’s Halloween …

It’s scary, fun … and big business!

It’s nearly 31st October. The shops are full of pumpkins, creepy costumes and chocolate ghosts. It’s Halloween.

Halloween is more than 2,000 years old. Then, it was called ‘Samhain’. The people living in Britain then were Celts, and they were afraid of evil spirits. They believed that ghosts walked on earth, so they put on scary costumes to frighten them away.

Halloween is still very popular in Britain. Children and teenagers dress up in scary costumes and go ‘trick or treating’. They go out in groups after dark and knock on doors. The people in the house give the children sweets or chocolate. But if the people in the house say trick – the children can play a trick on them. They throw eggs or flour at the house.

Some people have Halloween parties too where they play Halloween games like ‘apple bobbing’. You have to pick up an apple from a bowl of water. Sounds easy? It isn’t! You have to do it with your teeth!

Halloween is big business too. According to Britain’s biggest supermarket, Tesco, Halloween is the third biggest event in the UK (Christmas and Easter are first and second). Tesco expects to sell 1.4 million pumpkins, 2 million toffee apples* and 1.5 million scary costumes this week.

But not everybody is looking forward to Halloween. Many old people feel anxious. Others feel it’s an evil tradition and some schools have even banned it!

  • A toffee apple is an apple on a stick covered in caramel.

Do you celebrate Halloween? How?

Is Halloween ‘big business’ in your country? What about other traditions like Christmas? Do you think these traditions have become just another way for shops to make money?

Should Halloween be banned?

dimanche 10 octobre 2010

WHO IS MARK ZUCKERBERG ?

Businessman, co-founder of Facebook.
Born on May 14, 1984, in Dobbs Ferry, New YOrk. With the sociel networking website Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has helped revolutionnize the way people interact and connect with each other online. He comes from a comfortazble, well-educated background.His father ran a dental practice at the family home. His mother Karen worked as a psychiatrist before the birth of the couple's four children.
Zuckerberg developed an interest in computers at an early age, creating a messaging programme to be used at his father's dental office.Together with his friends, he also created computer programmes just for fun.Later, Zuckerberg studied in New Hampshire. He remained fascinated by computers and continued to work on developping new programs. He became known for his talent for writing software.
Zuckerberg went to Harvard University in 2002.He started working on a social networking site called Harvard Connection. However, before long, Zuckerberg dropped the project to work on his own social network, which later became known as Facebook.The creators of Harvard Connection have claimed that Zuckerberg stoile their idea while Zuckerberg has maintained that these were two very different types of social networks.
Zuckerberg co-founded Facebook with Dustin Moscovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin.The site allowed users post profiles and photos and communicate with other users.The group ran the site - first called thefacebook.com- out of a dorm room at Harvard until 2004. Then, Zuckerberg dropped out of college to devote himself to Facebook full time, moving the company to California. By the end of 2004, Facebook had a million users. In December 2005, Facebook had more than 5.5 million users.Lots of companies offered to buy the successful social hub but Zuckerberg has always refused to sell. Today, there are more than 500 million users on Facebook.
The story of Facebook now serves as the central plot of the feature film "The Social Network". The movie doesn't portray the young entrereneur in the most favourable light.
Accroding to a magazine, Zuckerberg is worth approximately 6.9 billion dollars, surpassing Apple founder Steve Jobs.

OCTOBER, 12th- COLUMBUS DAY

THE FREEDOM WRITER'S DIARY - the movie

John Lennon Biography - Biography.com

John Lennon Biography - Biography.com

lundi 13 septembre 2010

Robert Pattinson is a twenty-four-year old British actor. He was born on May, 13th 1986 in London where he still lives; but he also lives in Los Angeles part of the year because of his job as an actor.
His parents are married and both of them work, but in different fields. His father is a car salesman and his mother works for a modeling agency .
He has got two older sisters, so he is the youngest child of the family. The eldest child, Victoria is twenty-seven and Rob has also got a twenty-six-year-old sister whose name is Lizzy.
Rob is an actor, a musician and a model as well. He is keen on music, playing darts and pool. So, he's rather artistic and musical, but not very sporty. He can't stand baseball, by the way.
The last movie he played in was "Eclipse", in the Twilight series, which was released last summer.

jeudi 9 septembre 2010

BACK TO SCHOOL - SEPTEMBER 2010


Hi everybody ! After a year of absence, the Cassignol Writers are back !! We're all ready to share lots of news with our readers and we're looking forward to getting your comments and contributions. You will find all kinds of messages on this blog, ranging from movie reviews to students' essays or news articles. You will also find extra historical or cultural information that may be useful for your English lessons. Above all, we hope you'll have fun and will visit our site regularly !