READING COMPREHENSION + SPEAKING (3º)

READING : Chinese New Year

Vocabulary :
take place (tener lugar)
last is a verb in this text. It means "durar"
relatives is a kind of "false friend". It means "parientes/familiares/personas de una familia"
wish is a verb in the text. It means "desear"
blossom is an uncountable noun in the text. It means "flores"
to get rid of is an expression that means "deshacerse de"


TEXT:
Chinese New Year takes place in January or February and lasts for fifteen days. During the festival people visit their family, remember dead relatives and wish for good luck. Before New Year’s Eve people decorate their homes with red decorations and blossom, and buy new clothes. They also clean their houses to get rid of bad luck. On New Year’s Eve many families have a banquet together and the most popular dish is fish. On New Year’s Day children are given red envelopes containing money. The festival ends with fireworks and a lantern festival. People come to see the brightly-coloured lanterns, lion dances and dragon dances.


Read the text again and answer the questions.

1 How long is the Chinese New Year festival?
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2 What do people decorate their homes with?
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3 Why do they clean their homes?
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4 What do people do on New Year’s Eve?
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5 What happens on New Year’s Day?
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6 How does the festival end?
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7 What do most people eat on New Year's Eve in your country? (Three lines minimum)
__________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________


Look at a Chinese calendar.
There are twelve animals. Look at the characteristics for each animal. Underline the one negative characteristic for each animal.
Rat generous, gets angry easily, ambitious

Horse selfish, hardworking, intelligent

Ox demanding, cheerful, good with hands

Sheep artistic, pessimistic, stylish

Tiger brave, sensitive, unpredictable

Monkey intelligent, successful, materialistic

Rabbit easily upset, talented, friendly

Rooster arrogant, honest, good decision maker

Dragon popular, lots of fun, bossy

Dog loyal, dedicated, says bad things about people

Snake romantic, sensible, mean with money

Pig bad-tempered, funny, happy

Speaking:

Questions (Oral Test)

With the information given and some extra information that you'll get from the Internet. Here are some questions about this topic:

1 - When were you born?
2 - Which animal are you? Why?
3 - Do you agree with the characteristics of your animal? Why?/Why not?
4 - Yes/No questions of the type "Are Horses intelligent?"/Is successful a negative characteristic?
5 - In your opinion, which is the best animal? Why?
Possible answers to the questions:

Question 1 - You can say "I was born on the.......of........". Complete the first blank with an ordinal number . Just in case you have forgotten them, click HERE to revise. In the second blank you must give the month and the year. For instance: "I was born on the twenty-fourth of March, nineteen ninety-eight".
Question 2 - You can say "I'm a/an......". Put here the name of the animal. Explain why saying something like " Because the Chinese zodiac signs are based on the year of birth" or "Because I found it out using the widget / gadget on the right of the blog" ("find out=averiguar" "I found it out=Lo averigüé" / "widget/gadget=chisme, artilugio") or "I used a chart to find it out" ("chart=lista")
Question 3 - You can use the short answer "Yes, I do/No, I don't" or "I completely agree/I don't agree at all/Only with some of them" for the first part of the question and in the second part you must give reasons saying "Because....are....and I am quite/very....." include here here opposite adjectives, we can use the wordreference.com dictionary to look them up, click HERE or "Because....are...., and I'm the........person in the world", include here the names of the animals for the first space, followed by a positive adjective and its superlative or "Because I'm....and....but I'm not...., I am very...."include here two adjectives of an animal and the third one with its opposite. Here are some examples:
I don't agree at all, because horses are hardworking and I'm very lazy
I don't agree at all, because rats are ambitious and generous and I'm very modest and mean
I completely agree, because tigers are brave and I'm the bravest person in the world
I completely agree, because dragons are popular and bossy and I'm the most popular and bossiest person in the world
Only with some some of them, because I am romantic and sensible but I'm not mean with money, I'm quite generous
Only with some of them, because I'm artistic and stylish but I'm not pessimistic at all, I'm very optimistic
Question 4 - Give short answers: Yes, they are, No, they can't, Yes, it is...
Question 5 - You can say "In my opinion,/ I think that the best animals are the....because they have the best characteristics", include here the animals. For example:
I think that the best animals are the roosters, because they have the best characteristics
In my opinion, the best animals are the dogs, because I like their characteristics a lot
In my opinion the best animal is the snake because mother/father/ is a snake and he/she's the most important person in the world for me