SHARE

An Electronic Magazine by Omar Villarreal and Marina Kirac (c)

Year 2 Number 44 December 9th 2000

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being SHARED.

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Dear SHARERS,

The year is coming to an end but for most of us there are still three busy weeks ahead. Academic activity slowly diminishing but the need to start getting everything ready for the end-of-year celebrations and holidays quickly looming in the horizon.

To open this issue of SHARE (there won´t be one next week as both of us are sitting for two difficult exams) we chose this message from Liliana Arana de Martinez from 9 de Julio in the province of Buenos Aires, martinezedgardo@infovia.com.ar

Dear Omar and Marina,

Throughout this -sometimes tiring year, you have kept me company with your magazine. I can only say "Thank you" for all the ideas, advice and understanding.

I wanted to share this poem by Frank McGarry with you. It's called "Sharing Things"

The squirrels and the blue-tits share the birdhouse,

The seagulls share the meadow with the sheep.

The carrion-crows and kestrels share the tree-tops,

The badgers share their sett to go to sleep.

The ramblers share the pathways with retrievers

Who take their owners with them on their strolls.

The tourists share the local with the locals,

On the green the bowlers share a game of bowls.

To share is not to lose a thing, to share is purely gain.

To share a joy increases it, the opposite with pain.

Sharing is togetherness, sharing is sublime;

To share a meal, to share a joke, or just to share some time.

Thank you Liliana, Thank you all of you , dear SHARERS for keeping each other company.

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In SHARE 44

1.- These things I wish for you.

2.- No more fees for Licenciaturas ?

3.- World Wide Words: "Right as Rain".

4.- At SEA agian.

5.- Everybody & Co..

6.- Teorías Contemporáneas del Aprendizaje.

7.- Bernieh´s Corner.

8.- A "Serious" Warning from Bernieh.

9.- Adventure Weekend in the Córdoba Hills.

10.-Report on The Power of the Internet for Learning.

11- Business English Training Programme on-line.

12- Erratum.

13.-Faith

14.-Bilingual Education in State Schools in the City of B.A.

15- A Poem for my Friends.

1.- THESE THINGS I WISH FOR YOU

Our dear friend and SHARER, Bethina Viale, sends us this heartwarming message. I know our SHARERS will be able to read between the lines. This is much more than a message for grannies or grandads ( if it was ever intended for

grandparents alone). We read it ourselves and could not help getting a knot in the stomach thinking about all the good things in life that we are missing and making our children miss.

These Things I Wish for You

We tried so hard to make things better for our kids that we made them worse.
For my grandchildren, I'd know better.
I'd really like for them to know about hand-me-down clothes and homemade ice cream and leftover meat loaf. I really would.
My cherished grandson, I hope you learn humility by surviving failure and that you learn to be honest even when no one is looking.
I hope you learn to make your bed and mow the lawn and wash the car -- and I hope nobody gives you a brand-new car when you are sixteen.
It will be good if at least one time you can see a baby calf born and you have a good friend to be with you if you ever have to put your old dog to sleep.
I hope you get a black eye fighting for something you believe in.
I hope you have to share a bedroom with your younger brother. And it is all right to draw a line down the middle of the room, but when he wants to crawl under the covers with you because he's scared, I hope you'll let him.
And when you want to see a Disney movie and your kid brother wants to tag along, I hope you take him.
I hope you have to walk uphill with your friends and that you live in a town where you can do it safely.
If you want a slingshot, I hope your father teaches you how to make one instead of buying one. I hope you learn to dig in the dirt and read books, and when you learn to use computers, you also learn how to add and subtract in your head.
I hope you get razzed by friends when you have your first crush on a girl, and that when you talk back to your mother you learn what Ivory soap tastes like.
May you skin your knee climbing a mountain, burn your hand on the stove and stick your tongue on a frozen flagpole.
I hope you get sick when someone blows smoke in your face. I don't care if you try beer once, but I hope you won't like it.
And if a friend offers you a joint or any drugs, I hope you are smart enough to realize that person is not your friend.
I sure hope you make time to sit on a porch with your grandpa or go fishing with your uncle.
I hope your mother punishes you when you throw a baseball through a neighbor's window, and that she hugs you and kisses you when you give her a plaster of paris mold of your hand.
These things I wish for you -- tough times and disappointment, hard work and ...happiness.

By Lee Pitts

2.- NO MORE FEES FOR LICENCIATURAS?

Q. I have been deputized by a small group of your readers and admirers to ask you a question. What is the meaning and origin of the phrase, 'right as rain'? Is it an aesthetically pleasing but essentially meaningless alliteration, or is 'rain' really correct in some way? [Julane Marx, California]

A. An interesting question. Thank you for mentioning admirers. I'm more doubtful about the deputising: presumably the next stage would have been to get up a posse.
Perhaps surprisingly, there have been expressions starting 'right as ...' since medieval times, always in the sense of something being satisfactory, safe, secure or comfortable. An early example, quoted as a proverb as long ago as 1546, is 'right as a line'. In that, 'right' might have had a literal sense of straightness,
something desirable in a line, but it also clearly has a figurative sense of being correct or acceptable. There's an even older example, from the _Romance of the Rose_ of 1400: "right as an adamant", where an adamant was a lodestone or magnet.
Lots of others have followed in the centuries since. There's 'right as a gun', which appeared in _Prophetess_, one of John Fletcher's plays, in 1622. 'Right as my leg' is also from the seventeenth century - it's in Sir Thomas Urquhart's translation of _Gargantua and Pantagruel_, by Rabelais, published in 1664: "Some were young, quaint, clever, neat, pretty, juicy, tight, brisk, buxom, proper,
kind-hearted, and as right as my leg, to any man's thinking".
There's 'right as a trivet' from the nineteenth century, a trivet being a stand for a pot or kettle placed over an open fire; this may be found in Charles Dickens's _Pickwick Papers_ of 1837: "'I hope you are well, sir.' 'Right as a trivet, sir,' replied Bob Sawyer". About the same time, or a little later, people were saying
that things were 'as right as ninepence', 'as right as a book', 'as right as nails', or 'as right as the bank'.
'Right as rain' is a latecomer to this illustrious collection of curious similes. It may have first appeared at the very end of the nineteenth century, but the first example I can find is from Max Beerbohm's book _Yet Again_ of 1909: "He looked, as himself would undoubtedly have said, 'fit as a fiddle,' or 'right as rain.' His cheeks were rosy, his eyes sparkling". Since then it has almost
completely taken over from the others.
It makes no more sense than the variants it has usurped and is clearly just a play on words (though perhaps there's a lurking idea that rain often comes straight down, in a right line, to use the old sense). But the alliteration was undoubtedly why it was created and has helped its survival. 'As right as ninepence' has had a good run, too, for much the same reason, but that has vanished even in Britain since we decimalised the coinage and since ninepence stopped being worth very much.

SEA is a non-profit association of English Language Schools from all over the country. Its main aim is to defend the rights and advancement of the cause of the private schools, institutes and centres for the teaching of English (enseñanza no-oficial) in our country. More information on the meeting or on how to join the

association can be requested from :

Schools of English Association

Avda. Córdoba 435 3ro. "B", Buenos Aires
Tel/Fax: (011) 4311-1033 - E-mail: beckett@sion.com

5.- EVERYBODY & CO.

Dear Omar and Marina:
I'm Laura Rostan, from Rosario. First of all, I'd like to thank you both for keeping in touch with your cheerful and helpful shares. I really enjoy reading them all, then I print them and SHARE them with other fellow teachers from one of the schools where I work.We are eager to put everything on practice.
Last but not least, I want to SHARE a well-known piece of writing. It's a story about four people: Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody.

There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it.
Everybody was sure Somebody would do it.
Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.
Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job.
Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realised that Everybody
wouldn't do it.
It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when actually Nobody asked Anybody.

Thanks for your sharing once again.
A huge double hug,
Laura.

Aires of special relevance to teachers in the metropolitan area, we will reproduce in an abridged form the report we received from Ing. Eduardo Cosso, Agencia de Noticias Educativas - Secretaría de Extensión Universitaria, Cultura y Comunicación Social del Rectorado de la Universidad Tecnológica Nacional on 7th December. The report is based on news published in Clarín, La Nación, Página 12 y BAH:

"Clases bilingües en 12 escuelas publicas de la Capital

Casi 900 alumnos de primer grado tendrán materias en español y en otro
idioma. Podrá ser inglés, francés, italiano o portugués.
La vicejefa de Gobierno, Cecilia Felgueras, y el secretario de Educación, Daniel Filmus, presentaron ayer el programa acompañados de otros funcionarios del área y de representantes del British Council, del gobierno de Québec (Canadá) y de las embajadas de Brasil, Italia, Francia y Portugal. "Las escuelas están ubicadas en barrios cuya población tiene muchas dificultades para acceder a la enseñanza de otra lengua. Esta es una experiencia pedagógica muy importante, una apuesta a favor de la escuela pública y un nuevo impulso a la tradición multilingüe de la educación porteña", comentó Filmus....
Después de presentar el programa, el secretario de Educación convocó a los
profesores de idiomas que estén interesados en dar clases. (a anotarse) en las sedes de los distritos escolares los días 12, 13 y 14 de este mes. Además de los requisitos establecidos por el Estatuto del Docente, los profesores tendrán que superar una entrevista personal. Y aceptar actividades intensivas de capacitación durante febrero.
Los maestros del segundo idioma darán tres horas-cátedra por día de lunes a
jueves y los viernes se reunirán para evaluar la experiencia."