Harry Potter

What can you tell me of this character, the book or its writer? What's the connection with Edinburgh? and with Wales?

To start with, Harry Potter is a series of fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. It is well known in all the world, it is a very successful novel. The first novel was published on 26th June in 1997 and its name was Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Since then, six more novels have been published, the latest one was published in 2007. It is one of the best seller novels in the world.

The main character of the novel is Harry Potter, who is an orphan boy that hopes to be a wizard. He is admitted to a school of magic in Hogwarts, where he can learn spells and charms and he likes riding a broom. The plot of the story is about the struggle between Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort, who had killed Harry Potter’s parents.

Creating an avatar of yourself

An avatar is a personalized graphical illustration that represents a computer user. It is usually represented in two-dimensional form, but it can also be represented in a three-dimensional form in some games. They are used in blog, forums, games, social networks…

One of the earliest avatars was created in 1979 in a computer game whose name was Avatar, it is a role-playing computer game. Since then, a lot of people have created their own avatar to play in computer games, they create it to preserve their identity. If you don’t want anybody to see a personal photo of you, you have the opportunity of using an avatar.

Christmas shopping

Christmas is a good period to go shopping since we often give our friends or family some presents as we celebrate the arrival of Santa Claus and of the Three Wise Men. We also like to receive many presents so that it is probably the moment of the year in which people spend more money. There are several points to consider.

On the one hand, there are families that love spending money at this season because they want to decorate their house or they want to give a lot of presents to their children and family. These families may think that spending money on gifts is the best way to make children happy, but it is a big problem because children will get used to having many present the following years. Furthermore, there are some kids that are used to being given very expensive gifts.

Are mobile phones really suitable for children?

In the latest few years, more and more children ask their parents to buy them a mobile phone for their birthday or as a Christmas present. It is probably because they see their parents or friends using them for several hours, they don’t have the necessity of having a mobile phone at their age. However, mobiles phones have advantages and disadvantages.

On the one hand, mobiles phones won’t be useful for children unless their parents control the time that their children spend with it or what they are using it for. For example, parents shouldn’t allow them to play on the mobile phones for hours since they could get addicted to them and they would rather prefer to spend the time in front of the screen than going out with friends and doing some exercise. As a consequence, they will have health problems like obesity or eye problems.

Games help mental health

In our time, most teenagers like playing video games with friends or family and they probably don’t know that there are some video games which can improve mental health. It is such good news! However, not all games help your mental health since there are so many types of games.

On the one hand, games like Tetris have proved that people who had an accident which affected their mental health have recovered thanks to this game. These people played during a quarter of hour when they were at hospital, but they also read the newspaper or watched TV. Why does this game improve our health? It is because you need to use your mind to find what is the best place to let the block down in a short time.

Any couch potatoes around?

What is a couch potato? It is a person who spend a lot of time watching television because they are probably addicted to it. And as a consequence they don’t have an active life since they prefer to stay at home regarding series or films rather than going out with friends to do any exercise.

This people usually are very lazy as they don’t want to do anything, they only want to lie on the sofa for all the day. They can easily have health problems such as obesity because they don’t want to play any sport, which is a good way to get fitter since you have fun as you can play with friends at the same time that you are doing physical exercise. They probably don’t do sport since they have never practice any sports and they think it is boring.

Writing 5 FCE

1-In your English class you have been talking about the importance of team work. Now your English teacher has asked you to write an essay.

Write an essay using all the notes and give reasons for your point of view.

There are times when it is better to do things with other people and times when it is better to be on your own. I’m going to write about team work.

Firstly, team work has a great importance at school. We often have to do projects at school and teachers give us the opportunity of doing it in groups. It has some advantages, for instance, we can divide the work. On the contrary, sometimes there is a person who doesn’t want to do anything and he prejudices the group. If the group works together, it will finish the work sooner.

Secondly, team work is such a necessary thing in sports like football, basketball or even in athletics. In this sports, all the team needs to be united and helps each other to achieve victory. In contrast, there are sports in which you play alone and you don’t depend on anyone so that you have the whole responsibility.

In addition, team work can help you to be more sociable or to lose your shame. If you are very shy, team work may change your mind since you will have to talk with the group and have a good relationship in order to succeed. I think team work is useful if all the group works together.