UPDATE: Talking to my favorite storyteller

As some of you might know (hard not to, since I keep talking about it), I've had the distinct honor of doing an hourlong phone interview with Peter S. Beagle, author of The Last Unicorn, for my little Internet radio show. The German translation was picked up (in two parts) by Corona magazine, which you can download for free
h e r e and h e r e.
The English original, on the other hand, can be found
r i g h t  h e r e.
UPDATE: The whole show is now available for streaming on MixCloud!
Photo: Tachyon Publications

That Yoda Guy

If you're in 10th grade or up and had me as your English teacher, chances are you've worked on that listening comprehension exercise where I used excerpts from my first interview with Mr. Nick Maley, "the guy who built Yoda"... The whole radio show is now available for streaming on Mixcloud, so check it out if you're interested: https://www.mixcloud.com/startracks/star-tracks-episode-12/

White Horses Could Not Drag Me Away...

...and as you can see, there's always some song connected to everything. Seriously, I just wanted to direct your attention towards my German blog where I've just published a little report on the White Horse Theatre's latest visit to our school. It's in German, but Google Translate's getting better and better, so why not give it a shot?
https://herrweese.blogspot.com/2019/06/die-story-vom-weien-pferd.html

Free Nelson Mandela

A true classic and - at least for me - "ear-worm", as we call them in German.

Prince "Ironheart"

Dear readers, let me show you a book I think you should read (because it has to do with our English lessons):"Prince Valiant - in the days of King Arthur", by Hal Foster. The comics show real history & legends in wonderful pictures, like Arthur‘s castle of Camelot. They tell you how Valiant meets and becomes one of the Knights of the Round Table. King Arthur and his famous wizard Merlin are always there, too. And you can learn about life back then, for example about hunting in winter. If this looks interesting, just buy one of the comic books – I promise it'll be good!

(...and if all this sounds familiar to you, it''s because that was what you should have written in today's test :) )

Samples from the German edition (some of which I used in the test) can be found here: http://www.bocola.de/programm/prinz-eisenherz-hal-foster--gesamtausgabe/

Mr. Weese is on Facebook

..but I'm afraid teachers are asked by the ministry not to accept current students as "friends" in their private profile, which I tend to agree with... There is, however, a page for my radio show at https://www.facebook.com/StarTracksRadio and for my author/journalist alter ego (in German) at https://www.facebook.com/WeeseWrites - I'd be happy if you "liked" one of those instead ;) Thank you!

Listening Exercises: Podcasts in English

If y'all want to practise listening comprehension a little, have a look at
http://www.podcastsinenglish.com
where you'll find exercises on different skill levels.

The one from the test that I used in class  (topic: "cities") is at https://podcastsinenglish.com/pages/level1.shtml#city (direct download: https://traffic.libsyn.com/podcastsinenglish/city.mp3)

Al's ABC

From "Quantum Leap", for 5a. Have fun practicing the alphabet ;) - I still do, every time.

An Inspector ...Sings?!

Well, not quite. Someone called "Mr. Bruff" put a little song on YouTube in which he uses important quotes from AIC as song lyrics - check it out here:

Indirect Speech, Reloaded

Dear 7c, this one's for you: I didn't entirely make up that Hollywood interview you're just poring over in our test. If you're interested, you can read the whole thing over at my other blog (http://blog.hillvalley.de/2016/05/somnio-travis-milloy-im-interview/) - there's even a German translation ;)