How NOT to Complain?

How I wish I was a better complainer! It's not that I wish to complain more, no. It's all about being confident enough to stand my rights (oh, yes, we DO have consumer protection laws and a good deal of other preservative laws we have no idea about), to complain without filling my speech of displeasure with a good deal of inapropreate "Ums" and "Errs", without losing my temper or forgetting completely how to speak proper language! I realise clearly enough that on learning how to complain properly I will probably make my life more diverse and less stressful.

Picture taken from: http//:hoarbrief.com

Since it may seem obnoxious of me to post real complaint letters aimed at real people here in this blog I have decided to change the names and addresses mentioned in the letter, so that to avoid causing troubles but provide you with some knowledge on how NOT to complain instead.
To tell you the truth, I have never sent any letter of complaint to the company or organisation I was displeased with, yet if I have, it would be a splendid opportunity to bring some positive alterations to my despleased well-being.

Here's my story put into a badly worded complaint letter. Shall we discuss it later on?

A Good-Enough-for-a-Shredder Letter of Complaint

NB: For better quality the letter can be downloaded at floomby.ru

Before you start discussing the letter proposed to you I recommend you get to know the basic tips on writing complaint letters, as in the sample at TheConsumerist.com.

To encourage a discussion I proppose you answer these questions:

• What is the general atmosphere of the letter?
• Does it describe the problem clearly enough?
• Are all the advised structural parts of the letter presented in it?
• How is it possible to be rewritten? What would you change?
• Is there anything you woud leave as it is?
• What cliches of polite addressing/complaing could be found? 

Yours,
the Bad Complainer

P.S. For more reference go to  businessballs.com to read well explained tips on complaint letter writing! Good luck!

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If I Ran a Mall...

Starlite Shopping Mall

If I ran a mall, I would definitely try to make it the best mall one could ever imagine! Not as huge as Harrods (London), perhaps, or West Edmonton Mall (Japan), for I would prefer it to be a shopping centre not a sight for tourists with that avalanche of ridiculous attractions to entertain the visitors!

And have YOU ever thought of an ideal precinct or a shopping centre? If not, then it's high time for you to do your best and think of a perfect mall! Use your imagination, think of your experience!

My Perfect Mall

To work out a project try and answer these easy questions:

• What would the name of your mall be? (Remember: that name is not the least when it comes to dealing with customers)
• Where would it be located? What would it look like? 
• What would it be specialised on? What would be on offer? (goods on stock and department stores)
• Who would  your clients be? (people it is designed for)
• What services and facilities would it have?
• What kind of staff would you hire?
• Will your prices be to-the-level? 
• What ways of payment would it offer?
• What would the working hours be?, etc.

West Edmonton Mall

The project is either a Power Point presentation or a Photo Story (use Movie Maker or PhotoStory 3).

What you need to think of is that you are to interest the others with your project of a mall!

5 Things to Keep in Mind:

1. Grammar (correctness, variety of structures)
2. Vocabulary (correctness, richness and adequacy to the topic)
3. Length (5-7 minutes long to prevent the audience from falling asleep!)
4. Logic, coherency in structure (which means it better have an introductary part as well as a climax and a closing!)
5. Phonetics (intonation, pauses, emphatic stresses when presenting the project orally or on a record to a photostory)

Do not hesitate to ask as many questions as needed to clarify the requirements to the projects of yours! 

Wee Teacher in M1, Poznan (Poland), 2008

Looking forward to your ideas and post! Feel free to post an individual article on the blog or a comment to this post with videos, presentations or links attached!

Best regards, 

Wee Teacher

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Blogs, Diaries and Time Machines

When I started my first blog on LiveJournal.ru I should never have thought that it would turn into something huge (and I don't mean huge mammoths or large pandas on junk food). Well, It actually hasn't turned into anything out-of-the-way, yet it HAS provided me with a good deal of new experience and knowledge that eventually turned to be helpful in both taking up a new hobby and teaching.

But let's start from the very beginning!

Some people (let's take my grandmother, for instance! Oh, what lovely honey cakes she bakes!) might well be unaware of what on Earth the word "blog" means. Believe it or not, but blogs are everywhere! I'll try and prove it now.

Just imagine that your good neighbour has recently created a time machine! "Woohoo", you think, "now that it's been created, I can go to the future to check if I get wrinkled in 30 years without applying to plastic surgery". But take it easy, my friend, we are to travel to the past, not the future, because it was long, long ago that "forefathers of blogs" were run by people. These blogs were known as "diaries".

Yes, that's exactly what a blog is in general understanding of the term. The only thing that differs a blog from a diary is that the latter one is made for others read it on the Web, whilst the first one is written to be never revealed out of the locked drawer in your bed table.

But how does blogging correlate with teaching a language? Oh, there's a great connection in between.

First of all, blogs are being run all over the Globe by people of all races and nationalities, of various views and interests. So, there's always a possibility you can once pop into a wonderful blog of some English-Speaking person on the topic you (or your students) are extremely interested in!

Secondy, blogging or at least reading blogs is much fun for both the reader and the writer, since some (not all..) bloggers appear to be talented writers, gifted interactors or, at least, nice people to say an akwardly cute "Hey there!" to.

And the third reason is that when a teacher starts blogging for whatever reasons or purposes one follows, he or she reveals his/her personality which is always good for a teacher (we love revealing... I mean.. "boasting" of our knowledge to pupils, right?)

I am not to dwell on the subject of blogging right now, for am planning to post an article of major pros and cons of blogging for teaching purposes a bit later.

What I like in blogging is communication, feedback and self-development (you always have to check your articles more or less properly before posting them on the blog you're running (the same could be said about students, for your blog could be run by them, too) - you don't want your students to find more mistakes in your posts than are made by them in their essays, do you?).

If this post left you even more puzzled than you were beforehand, do not hesistate to ask any question disturbing you! I'd be eager to answer any of them!

Yours,

The Wee Teacher

Picture taken from: tommykovac.blogspot.com

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Collective Bestseller, or A Story to Be Continued

Level of fear has been growing with extremely fast speed.

Somebody knocks on the door. The other moment it's become as quite as in a grave. She goes to the door as the mouse.

No one there.

Life in a solitude makes people shudder from every rustle...

***

Have you ever dreamt of becoming a writer?

Why not you try and offer your own development of the plot?!

You know how to add some more intrigue to catch the reader's attention!

What would your continuation of this story be?

And how would you name the short story?

+ Extra task! Think of the ways to improve what has already been written in the opening paragraph of the story! How would you make the story more... story-like? Would you change anything in the beginning?

Let's make it a collective bestseller!

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Plastic Surgery Beauty

The growing demand for plastic surgery services is determined by various industrial and social factors. Nowadays it is fashionable to be young, healthy and attractive. Society seems to have become obsessed with the fear of getting old.

But if a person feels young and energetic, why he or she must look of their age when they feel like twenty? The decision to make one's appearence match their inner world may have very positive effects allowing the person feel more comfortable, both phisically and emotionaly. When a person isn't satisfied with his or her appearence, he/she locks himself/herself away from the world.

Very often people blame their appearence for theif misfortunes; and hope to change their life by changing their looks. Actually, sometimes people must change themselves but not appearence.

The necessity of operation is determind not by age but by the state of appearence, for example, after a car accident. Plastic surgery returnes him/her former attractiveness.

Anyway, before making the final decision to have the operation done, the person must weight all the possible risks.

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Read My Lips to Know Me Better

Have you ever tried to read one's face? It's not that hard as it seems to be! What you need is to define a person's shape of eyes or eyebrows, check up the width of one's smile and the size of one's nose.

You can try and take up a course on physiognomy to learn how to read people's faces. But there is a simpler way, they say. Just take a look at someone's lips!

Those with full lips are usually responsible and therefore trustworthy. So they are the people you can trust your super-mysterious secrets to. Still, make sure they are trustworthy to you, not to someone else!

People with full lips are also said to be decisive and studious. How true is that? On the other hand, they tend to be extremly bossy and reproaching which makes them unbearable at times, for they enjoy telling others what to do!

However, the majority of them are way too self-centered. It seems, they only care about their own needs and feelings, forgetting about the others.

People with a thin upper lip but a full lower one are believed to be energetic, gregarious and hard-working.

They want to take part in every single event happening around! They can hardly be called "laid back", since their ambition and fearlessness is one of their main charachteristics!

Those who have thin lips are thought to be single-minded and feisty. They are determined to do what they plan and are ready to stand their ground or even argue with those who stand on their way, if necessary. Still, when it comes to their work, they are prudent and foreseeing, as well.

They are not much talkative and prefer to keep their feelings unshown to the others. What's more, they can be rather mean in terms of sharing things or spending money. Just think of Angelina Jolie with her full lips and a number of charity compaigns! Would she be as kind-heared if her lips were twice thinner? Who knows.

There are also people whose lips have down-turning corners. To make the image clear, think of Stallone! Got it now? Good. So, Stallone-style-lipped people are said to be very generous! They would share their one and only T-shirt with you or take a lawn for you in a bank, with no doubt!

They are highly intelligent and gifted and can understand sophisticated things easily. But it doesnt't make them less sensitive... Can you believe that? Is there anyone who saw Stallone crying at Titanic or while nursing a wee kitten with a sore leg?

There's a great variaty of ways to learn a person's character and manners. To foresee one's behaviour you can apply to horoscopes, fortune tellers, simple cross-questioning or torture (the last one is no good though, even for those considered to be involved in witchcraft)!

But whatever you choose to do, try and keep in mind that the best way to find out people's personalities is to communicate with them in close, or sipmly give them money or power.

And what can you say about reading one's face? Have you ever tried doing it?

Do you think one can trust such a way?

Is there any truth about you in these descriptions?

Yours faithfully,

a bad lip-reader.

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From an Ugly Duckling into a Swan

I have known her both personally and professionally for quite a long while. For half a half a century, to be precise. In fact, if my calculating skills serve me right, this is the person the life of whose I am more or less familiar with for at least 24 years 11 months 8 days and 12 hours, or so.

Unfortunately, I do not remember the day we met clearly enough. I must have been way too busy trying to find the way out of my mother's "inner world" which was of great value and significance to me to remember such trifles as the first "Hello". Therefore I can hardly be able to start this narrative description with some touching memories you might have expected from me.

Yet I do remember watching this ugly duckling growing up, so that finally to magically turn into a little white swan, or a goose (Why, I do consider wild geese fairly appetising-looking, that's all).

Oh, what a clumsy child she used to be with that round-shouldered figure of hers! But how curious, gregarious and unassuming has she always been!

She has never been the kind of girl obsessed by silly disires or whims to keep up with the fashion for pink glasses! Neither was she extremely attractive with those two unneatly done plaits of hers, nor with the ponytails framing her pale face. They made her mouth look frighteningly wide and her nose seem much more aquiline than it really was.

Now she's changed. Not that much though. But it's not her tantalising smile or mesmerising voice that's altered. No.

And it's neither her modesty or generousity, nor her sincerity or ambition.

It's her attitude to life, to pride and prejudice, her confidence and self-esteem that have made her a stronger personality. It's her will for professional development and self-improvement. Her desire to help the others and her wish to make people smile.

That's how's been turning into a Swan.

When she loves, she indulges in her feelings. When she studies, she does it with all her diligence. When she has fun, she infects every other person with a cheerful laughter.

She's not come through any plastic surgery to gain self-respect.

She remains being a vertically-challenged self-ironic perfectionist who now teaches English, runs her blog and dreams of an exceptionally loving family with at least three kids and a Sphynx cat that can clean its toilet.

What is new in her is her belief that one can never become a Swan untill he or she believes it possible!

Faithfully yours,

the boastful Duckling named Wee


P.S.  This is the short story told in pictures, as if an online book. See it at SlideShare.net 

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