Culture's project

For this subject, we had to do a project about something related to the British or American culture and my group and I decided to deal with serial killers. My part of the work was Jack the Ripper and his investigation, so I'm going to talk a bit about him.

Jack the Ripper, also known as “the Whitechapel Murderer” and “Leather Apron”, is a notorious unidentified serial killer whose victims were female prostitutes who lived and worked in Whitechapel in 1888. Its name, “Jack the Ripper”, comes from a letter written by someone who claimed to be the murderer. There were four letters supposedly from the murderer. One of them, “From Hell”, contained half of a human kidney from one of the victims.

Up to 1891, there were eleven brutal murders in Whitechapel but the police investigation was unable to connect all of them to Jack. The most likely to be connected were the “canonical five” who were Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly, all of them mutilated except Elizabeth.

The murders were never solved and the legends surrounding Jack the Ripper became a mixture of folklore, research and pseudohistory. The study and analysis of the Ripper cases is called “ripperology”. There are more than one hundred theories about his identity and he has inspired many works of fiction.

New Year

I wanted to wish you all a Happy New Year and good luck with the exams :)

Christmas time

First of all, I wanna start this post wishing a Merry Christmas to all my readers.

It is finally Christmas time and with that comes the parties, the family time and the presents. But once you are at university, Christmas also means studying for January exams.
My holidays started in a good way. I could meet my friends and go out but I quickly realized that I had to study and that's when my holidays finished. I'm spending the whole day studying and that is not what you are supposed to do at Christmas.
Anyway, I still hope to find sometime to hang out with my friends and family, and, of course, the special days are to relax and I don't usually study much those days.
Don't get too stressed!

Love changes everything

Jaxon was laying on the sofa after a wild night. He had been drinking, dancing and taking drugs all night. He's just a 19-year-old guy who has a difficult life. His parents died when he was fourteen and he had to live with his grand parents. His friends think that he will never change, that he will never find love.

One day a teenage girl appeared in his house. She was with his best friend, Ryan, and she was crying. Ryan was feeling guilty. He didn't realize that a girl was walking down the street when he shot that guy, and now he didn't know what to do with her. Jaxon would have shouted at Ryan if the girl hadn't been so pretty. He had never seen a girl like her before. He stood up and walked towards her. "What happened?" Jaxon asked to Ryan. "She saw it" Ryan answered. Jaxon understood his friend and took the girl's hand. While he was looking at her eyes, he said "I'll take care of her, I promise". And he did. He made her promise that she wouldn't say anything and he started dating her. I he hadn't met her, he wouldn't have left drugs, wild parties and bad habits.

In conclusion, love changed his life.

Environment

Nowadays, people are really concerned about the environment but it is true that not everyone does something to save the planet. Young people are normally more aware of the risks of polluting thanks to the talks given at high schools.

We all know about air pollution because it is something that we see every day. You can see the vehicles exhaust fumes when people drive. We all use pollution products and fossil fuels every day.

Unfortunately, today’s world is full of energy stations, chemical waste, and light pollution. The ones who cause this, which are the factories, are the only ones who can stop it but as it costs a lot of money the do not do it and the keep polluting the environment.

I use to recycle everyday and so does the people around me. We are all aware of the risks of not doing it so we separate the rubbish. Apart of recycling, we try to save water and electricity as for the environment as for economics.

Punctuation

Put in semicolons, colons, dashes, quotation marks, Italics (use an underline), and parentheses where ever they are needed in the following sentences

1. The men in question, Harold Keene, Jim Peterson, and Gerald Greene, deserve awards.

2. Several countries participated in the airlift: Italy, Belgium, France, and Luxembourg.

3. "Only one course was open to us: surrender," -said the ex-major, "and we did.

4. Judge Carswell, later to be nominated for the Supreme Court, had ruled against civil rights.

5. In last week's New Yorker, one of my favorite magazines, I enjoyed reading Leland's article "How Not to Go Camping."

6. "Yes," -Jim said -"I'll be home by ten".

7. There was only one thing to do, study till dawn.

8. Montaigne wrote the following: "A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself."

9. The following are the primary colors: red, blue, and yellow.

10. Arriving on the 8:10 plane were Liz Brooks, my old roommate; her husband; and Tim, their son.

11. When the teacher commented that her spelling was poor, Lynn replied,  -"All the members of my family are poor spellers. Why not me?"

12. He used the phrase "you know" so often that I finally said -"No, I don't know."

13. The automobile dealer handled three makes of cars: Volkswagens, Porsches, and Mercedes Benz.
 
14. Though Phil said he would arrive on the 9:19 flight, he came instead on the 10:36 flight.

15. "Whoever thought,"- said Helen -"that Jack would be elected class president?"

16. In baseball, a "show boat" is a man who shows off.

17. The minister quoted Isaiah 5:21 in last Sunday's sermon.

18. There was a very interesting article entitled "The New Rage for Folk Singing" in last Sunday's New York Times newspaper.

19. "Whoever is elected secretary of the club--Ashley, or Chandra, or Aisha--must be prepared to do a great deal of work," -said Jumita, the previous secretary.

20. Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) caused a great controversy when it appeared.

21. We had a great time in France – the kids really enjoyed it.

22. Some people work best in the mornings; others do better in the evenings.

23. What are you doing next weekend?

24. Mother had to go into hospital: she had heart problems.

25. Did you understand why I was upset?

26. It is a fine idea; let us hope that it is going to work.

27. We will be arriving on Monday morning – at least, I think so.

28. A textbook can be a ‘wall’ between teacher and class.

29. The girl’s father sat in a corner.

30. In the words of Murphy’s Law: ‘Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.’

My future

When I finish my Bachelor’s Degree in English Studies I want to work abroad as a Lecturer to gain some experience being a teacher. I’ve always wanted to be so but lately, I’ve been thinking about working in a publishing house as an editor. Also, I wanted to specialise in editorial translation in case I end up working as an editor. It is very probable that I give it a go at least for a year and if I don’t like it I will prepare for the public examinations to be a teacher.

Fortunately, I have some talent for English and I am experienced at talking it so it is pretty easy for me. I think I won’t have to change my route because I am doing what I love and thanks to my parent’s financial support I am going to be able to study it properly.

Being professional is not easy. The first thing you need is being mature and that can be pretty difficult sometimes. Also, you will need to take risks to be able to start you way up in the career ladder and earn more money. Moreover, you will have to work collaboratively to develop projects. And what is absolutely essential is to love your work and do whatever you need to do to enjoy it and do it the best you can. That’s the best top tips I can think of.

As everyone, I have a few weak points that I should improve. One of them is that I don’t have enough patience to work in groups and I don’t have confidence in the others either so I need to revise all their work. Also, I have to improve my listening because, although I don’t have much problem, I would like to understand everything and that’s one of my main aims.