markdavis

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Following these are wonderful flowers.

How to improve your English?

Friend! Do you know the Internet well? Do you ever surf on the Internet? If you have got a computer, you can enter a wide world. You can also improve your English skills.
To create yourself blog is a good way to practise your English writing, reading, listening and speaking. A blog is a short word for weblog. It is a personal online journal . Where you can write about your hobbies, thoughts etc, and everyone can do it. In your blog, you can create anything which is useful for you.
If you think your English listening is poor. You can link a podcast to your blog. The podcast is a digital media file which is published on the Internet and people can download it or subscribe to it. This means it goes to your computer automatically and then you can hear it on the PC or put it into your ipod. For example, you link to Patricia's podcast, you can hear Patricia's talking and answer her question, such as "What does Patricia say is a good idea for ESL student?'' You listen and find the answer ESL students could borrow stuff before buying it."
If you want to make friends or talk to different people, there are two ways. First one, you can go into the wiki which is a website created by groups of people. You can discuss different topics. The second one you can go into a forum which is a public facility to meet for open discussion. They can improve your English writing. For example, we have participated in a joint wiki with the students of Kogarah and Liverpool.
Sometimes you had a wonderful trip and took a lot of fantastic photos. You want to share it to your friends. No problem! You can create a Voicethread. It is program where you do a sideshow of your photos with the recording your comments. For example, you don't know how about Sydney is , you can link to Voicethread. You can get some about Sydney's information , if you are interested in this. You can write your comments. This is useful for your speaking and writing.
Of course, there are a lot of way to improve your English skills, such as Time4english, where you can practise grammar, listening, reading and writing etc. I think the computer can give you a great help.

Melinda

Melinda is a Sydney university student. She is 21 years old. She lives in inner west Sydney. She is a happy girl and she enjoys her life. She had got a lot jobs. For example P.E teaching,dancing teacher,climb leader etc. She likes to travel. She had got two different experiences. In 2004, she finished high school and went to India with her mun, but India didn't give them a good impression. She hated the traffic and the beggars. Then she went to Vietnam with her best school friend. The beautiful view, nice people, weather deep drew her. She liked Vietnam very much. As for future, she hopes to be a university teacher after finished university.

Carmen

Yesterday I read an article about a six-year old girl' s life. I was moved by her calmness and stoicism too. Life is usually hard for some people. We used to see some children help their mother after school. They are happy to face their life. This is a good character. Hard life can temper you. I was reminded of my son. We give him good education, good food, but he usually complains. Why didn't you buy me a game? Today's food is so bad! Why didn't you help me? etc. I usually think how about if he had been born in a poor family.
Maybe I need to let him know true life. How to face his life? This is important for him.

Our excursion

Last Thursday, Andrew took us to Bundeena for an excursion.

That day, I got up early. When I opened the window, it was cloudy and windy. The ground was wet. Oh, my God! It was bad weather. I wanted to give up this trip. The time was 9:00, the sun raised. I was so happy, I could still go on the excursion. I got to Hurstville train station in a hurry at 9:30. When I got onto the platform, I saw Eve had already arrived . She was very happy. She said she had waited for us for a long time. Cindy didn’t come, we met Svetlana at the train station. The train was about 7 minutes late . About 9:52 we got on the train. Andrew, Tony and Summer were already in the train.
The train runned to Crunalla. Maybe today the things weren’t very smoothly. The train was stopped halfway. Andrew told us that we needed to run to the ferry wharf or we would miss the ferry.
There was about 10 minutes walking from the train station to the wharf. The sun was hiding while we got on the ferry. It took a 20 minutes ferry ride away to Bundeena. The weather became cold and it was drizzling , but we were exciting. Bundeena is a very quiet place. No many people walked on the road. You could see some beautiful houses, big trees. Sometimes you could see some parrots jumping between the trees. The air was fresh and the landscape was wonderful. I looked forward to living here one day in the future . According to plans, we went to the beach. The beach wasn’t very big . That day the surf wasn’t very strong . A man was fishing here. We took some photos. After that we started bushwalking . We saw may trees had fallen and died. Marion told us this was effect of a storm. We met heavy rain on the way back. We couldn’t move. The world was grey. It was quiet except for the rain’s voice. We stood and hoped the rain stopped quickly. A few minutes later the sun raised again. We ate lunch at a club.

This was a special trip.

bundeena

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Webquest

1.what is a blog?
A blog is your easy-to-use web site, where you can quickly post thoughts, interact with people, and more.
who writes blogs in our class?
Our teachers and students wriite blogs in our class.
2.What is a podcast?
A podcast is rich media, such as audio or video, distributed via RSS.
What is Patricia's surname?
Patricia's surname is Murdoch.
What does Patricia say is a good idea for ESL students?
ESL student could borrow books before they buy.
How many times was Andrew's house checked in Thailand before he could adopt?
Andrew's house was checked three times in Tailand before he could adopt.
Who records the radio programs in Let's Talk?
ESL students record the radio programs in Let's Talk.
What is the latest radio program about in Let's Talk?
The latest radio program is about dreams.
What other titles can you see?
Student intervies Mercedes.
Who interviews people for Sydney's People Podcast?
A university studentWhat topics are there?
3.What is a wiki?
A Wiki is a database of documents that can be maintained and edited by a large number of people.
How many colleges are involved in our class wiki?
What can we do in the wiki?
4.What is a forum?
A forum is like an electronic bulletin board. You can post messages to it and read messages from other people.
How many topics have we discussed in our forum? 3 topic
How many people have participated in our forum?
5.What is Voicethread?
Voicethread is a place to capture voices.
What can you do with it?
Create a VoiceThread and collect the stories behind your picture.Turn yearbooks , scrapbooks, or photo-albums into VoiceThreads.Capture the voices of an entire group, on a single page.Put your VoiceThead on any blog or web site.
Where is the koala in a Sydney building?
It is in 135-137 Macquarie Street.
What is the name of the student who found the koala?
Marion's student WeiYun
Who has said this: Be careful when you see them (kookaburras), They're not scared of anything? Rosa
6.What is Walk, Run, Swim?
It is a Kogarah Council brochure with information about an event to make people aware of health benefits of exercising.
7.What is the meaning of damper, Adam's Ale, fag & fair go?
'fag & fair go' is aussie slang. Fag means a cigarette. A fair go is a statement you make when someone is not letting you do or say something.
8.What topics cause disagreement between couples? Time4english
9.What is 348 metres high, 3.6 kilometres long and 1.9 kilometres wide?
Uluru
10.Complete these sentences with the right article:

The cars use a lot of petrol.
A people next door are very friendly.

11.The monitor of the computer should be .Learning about technology and good posture ergonomics,ect
A at elbow level b.at eyes level c. clean

My hometown

I came from China, my hometown is Hangzhou which is the capital of Zhejiang provice. It's close to Shanghai. It only takes less than 2 hours to reach Shanghai.

Hangzhou is one of China's most important tourist spots. There are 20 million domestic and foreign tourists who visit it every year. The West Lake is famous in the world. There is the Great Canal from Beijing to Hangzhou. It is the earliest and longest man-made waterway in the world. This was also an important transport in ancient time.

Hangzhou is a relaxing city. If you like food, you can taste a lot of delicious food. There are plenty of very good quality restaurants. However if you come to have a trip, it can give you a very big surprise and you will be delighted. This is a beautiful and magnificent city.

walk run swim

Last week I read Walk Run Swim. This was an event to raise the funds for a CT SIM Radiotheraphy Simulator for the Centre at the St George Hospital. It took on 29 July 2007.
I haven't taken part in an event like this, but I think it is good for everyone. In China, every year there are a lot of children who can't go to school, because they are poor, and some people have no enough money to get medical, so I think this is significant. If I can help people who need my help, I'm very hapy.

Holiday

This May my son had a holiday. We decided to take a trip, we had never been to Canberra, so we thought we would like to visit the capital of Australia.

The day was sunny. We got up early and had breakfast. About 8 am, some friends came to my home to pick us up, then the two families, six people, drove to Canberra. My friend's son is four years old. He was a cute boy and was very excited. He talked all the way. After three and a half hours, we arrived in Canberra. My friend had reserved a hotel, so we went to the hotel first. We had a rest at the hotel and ate lunch at KFC.

After that we went to visit Parliament House. Parliament House was built in 1988. It is a magnificent building. We went in the door, the security staff were controlling access, our bags had to go through the security screen. We put our phones, keys etc. into a basket, then we went through the security door. It was like the airport controls. We went upstairs. There is a gallery which displayed a lot of photos of previous prime ministers. We went ahead and visited the House of Representatives and the Senate. This is the government meeting place. A lot of things were done here. Finally about 4:45pm, we left Parliament House and went back to the hotel.

The next day, we came back to Sydney. We were tired, but we were happy. This trip taught me many things.

Music

This is my favorite music, do you want to hear?

Lisa's photos

My first time in Australia was a warm day in October 2005. Although I stayed here just ten days, I was very happy. Australia made a deep impression on me.

If someone is the same as me, same hair, same face, she looks like me in the mirror, I feel this is a wonderful thing. My younger sisters were born on the same day , they are twins.

They are not identical twins, because they were different, they had different faces, they got dressed differently. I always think they are the same as each other, I think it is fun. But if someone had the same character as me, I would feel her emotions, but we couldn't leave each other, we would cry and laugh together, we'd do everything together, I'd feel happy, but I'd feel sad too. If someone could share everything with me, this would be a good thing, but I would lose my freedom. I need to have my own space, I need to have my secrecy, if I lost them, I wouldn't know how to face my life, so I think this is a terrible thing.

Last July I came to Australia. When I went out of the airport I felt it was cold, because it was summer in China while the weather was hot and humid, and that day here it was rainy and windy, but I like Australia, the weather was good,not very cold, it might be minus 40 degrees in winter in China. On a sunny weekend, we went to Bondi Beach, there was a blue and very very clear sky, the view was wonderful,I liked sea and the blue sea water, some people were swimming, some people were sitting under the sun, some children were playing with the ball, they were relaxing.Australia people are kind and easy going, sometimes we lost the way, they usually helped us, I like it here. Australia traffic was better then in China, the people were polite.