film review: Slumdog Millionaire

„Slumdog Millionaire“ was nominated for ten Oscars and four Golden Globes. The British romantic drama, directed by Danny Boyle and written by Christian Colson, is a very exciting movie. Dev Patel as Jamal K. Malik, Madhur Mittal as Salim Malik and Freida Pinto as Latika give a brillant performance as the main characters in this movie.

The story is set in India. Jamal K. Malik, a young man from the slums, participates in the Indian version of „Who wants to be a Millionaire?“. Nobody understands why he can answer all those difficult questions and so the police start investigating this case. And Jamal tells them about his whole life. Starting at his childhood in the slums. He talks about Latika, a very pretty girl and his brother Salim, who had to take care of Jamal at a very early age.

It is a very dramatic film which deals with violence and poverty. The film shows us much of the Indian everyday life, how poor the people there are and about child abuse. It´s a tragedy movie for all people over twelve. It touches everyone´s heart and make us understand how important and strong a relationship between two people can be.

English homework unit 2: Austria schools

BG Tanzenberg

Education in Austria – some basic information

The compulsory education in Austria starts with a year in kindergarten at the age of five. But also many 3-and 4-year-old children attend the kindergarten. School starts at the age of six and children have to stay at school for nine years.

After four years at Volksschule (which is compulsory)  they can choose between Hauptschule, Neue Mittelschule or Gymnasium (compareable to junior high school) where they have to stay for four years, too.  Then there are many possibilities of further education. At the age of fourteen the teenagers can choose between:

·         another four years at Gymnasium

·         BHS (Berufsbildende Höhere Schulen), these are schools educating for specific professions. There are many different types of BHS, for example there is HTL, where they mainly learn about computers, machines, and other technical stuff. BHS education lasts for five years.

·         If they have already stayed at school for nine years,  they also could go working.

At the end of these schools you have to sit an exam which is called Matura (you can compare it with SAT or ATC).

I visit the school BG (which stays for Bundesgymnasium) Tanzenberg. So I´m studying the majors  maths, German, English, Latin and Ancient Greek and many minors; e.g. geography, history, biology, PE (Physical Education) etc. My favourite subject is Maths, because I´m really good at it and I like logical thought. My least one is Geography. I think our teacher isn´t so good at explaining things.

Because of many other free time activities I don´t do an extra activity at school. But there are a lot of extra-curricular activities offering at our school; e.g. drama, ECDL etc.

I check out the website of Greenhill High and found out subjects they offer that we don´t have at our school. They for example offer social studies and word processing.

My English book

Quelle: http://www.jpc.de/jpcng/books/detail/-/art/Nicholas-Sparks-The-Last-Song-Film-Tie-In/buchnum/139552326

I read a new English book. It`s called "The last song" by Nicholas Sparks. When I first saw the cover of the book, I thought that this book is a story about love and holidays. The sundown in the back is one thing, that makes the cover even more interesting and shows that this is a very romantic and touching novel. What do you think is this book about?

Useful expressions

Talking about statistics (s.142)

As the graph shows us...
we can see from the graph that...
If we look at the graph, we notice that...
According to the graph...
the information shown in the graph tell us that...

English homework unit 1: Music

I haven´t really got a favourite kind of music. If you ask me what kind of music I liked, I would say, I go with the crowd. So I listen to the music that is on the radio. I really like bands like the Plain White T´s or Lady Gaga but I also like to listen to many other bands. There are lots of bands that I like, not only English or American bands, I also like to listen to German music groups.

I can listen to some songs like "Waka waka" by Shakira again and again without getting bored. But I think songs by Lady Gaga get boring and lose good effect if you listen to them too often. 
One of my favourite songs is "Give me everything tonight" by Pitbull. It has got a good beat. If I listen to it, I get a "get up and dance" feeling. It reminds me to live my life and to have fun. I think the words aren´t so important in this song - it is the beat, which makes it really good.
But the beat doesn´t always matter to me. In the song "Twilight" by Vanessa Carlton it is the lyrics which I like best. When I listen to this song, it helps me relax and I can think about many things because the tune is calm and the lyrics are sad.

Besides the lyrics and the beat the voice of the singer is another important thing. If a singer has a great voice the song  has a better effect. I like singers with an extraordinary voice.

Sometimes I listen to music on YouTube but I often can´t remember or I don´t know the song titles and so I don´t listen to many songs on YouTube.

So now you know that I don´t really care for styles of music. I also don´t listen to music so often and if I listen to music, I listen to it on the radio during my rowing training or while I go by car...

Here is the original music video of "Give me everything tonight" by Pitbull: