Reported speech “He asked me not to eat him”

We discussed in the class Grammar Rules "Reported speech".

As a general rule we understood that when we change direct speech to reported speech we need to change tenses back in time.

However, when we started to discuss about expression: “He asked me not to eat him”, we were confused because it is out of general rule and it is reported speech.  

This interesting discussion occured during Christina's class in online school amilingo.com on 28th February 2016

Marga's Reading Lounge 27/02/2016

Class material:

*** Tree Fighters ***

Cheryl: So, who are some of the people who are fighting to protect these trees besides you as an environmental scientist?

Nick: Well, in Tasmania, the first green political party was developed, so yeah, they obviously want to protect the forests a lot, and have big protests, tie themselves to trees. Sit up in trees to protect the trees.

Cheryl: People actually still do that? Tie themselves to trees?

Nick: Oh, everyday in Tasmania.

Cheryl: Oh, really?

Nick: It's a big issue. A very big issue.

Cheryl: That's interesting. I once heard of a girl who lived in a tree for a month because she wanted to stop the deforestation company or people from taking down that tree, so she lived up there and she had people bring her supplies but she never came down.

Nick: That happens in Tasmania as well. There's people today which are up in trees, maybe up to fifty which permanently live up in trees.

Cheryl: Wow!

Nick: Yeah, so. I don't know how they do it.

Cheryl: That's kind of crazy ... So Nick, from the companies point of view, playing the devil's advocate here, I think they provide jobs for all the people who are working to make trees into paper. What do you think they have to say about that?

Nick: Well, it's true, they do provide jobs, and some cities, some small towns do rely on logging industry to provide jobs and support the shops in the place, but ...

Cheryl: But!

Nick: But! Yeah. So tourism is a very big industry in Tasmania, and maybe the logging industry takes away tourists jobs as well, because it makes certain areas not useful for tourism anymore, not very pretty.

Cheryl: Yeah, your right. If the whole forest is missing, I guess nobody would really want to go and look at anything.

Nick: Yeah, there're some really beautiful spots in Tasmania which have been many tarnished a little by the logging industry.

English: Jon-Eric's Hot Topics

Marga’s Reading Lounge (February 6, 2016)

English class: Training listening skills in tandem (December 27, 2015, teacher Brittany Briggs, verbling.com)

I highlighted a training of listening in this class because:

• The script of this video was written by our teacher, Britanny
• This video challenged our listening skills, it was very difficult to understand whole script.

It might be as an exercise for people who are reading this post to practice listening this video, here is the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2QvA-hklUw

English class: Representing Yourself In The Court (January 2, 2015, teacher Simon D. Yates, verbling.com)

The task of watching video before class was to choose a role for play in the class. The video was about representing yourself in the court and the list of roles was:

1. facilitator - who helps to participate in process, in that case who organizes show;
2. litigant - person who is interested in court's result;
3. professor - who leads the non-profit organization for helping people represent them-self in the court;
4. layer or advocate.

The main part of the class was organized as a radio-show where the facilitator gave to other participators possibilities to express their opinion about self-representation in the court.

Useful vocabulary:

I was out of options;

legal fees;

crusader following your goal  ;

I'm a layer, I'm gonna clean you up.

Our teacher, Simon, made this class very dynamical restricting the time of each speeches. 

Productive teacher's methods:

Playing video before discussion;

Giving role for each student from video;

Good time-management during the class.

English: Writing. Plan Your Russian Vacation.

Task: Your friend is moving to your country and has never been there before. Write a letter of advice and suggestions to him/her about the transition.

Hi Tom,

You asked me FOR advice about visiting Russia and I decided to describe a few places which you need to see:  

1. Moscow Kremlin is one of the most historically interesting placeS in the world. Being there YOU CAN SEE old churches AND imagine how russian tzars organised significant events there.

2. Sankt Petersburg is a great city/museum IN THE open air. Try to walk there early morning and you WILL feel THE magnificent atmosphere of this place.

3. Visit a countryside somewhere for instance IN the North of Russia. I’m sure it would be very different from what you saw in your country.

Don’t forget to visit me. We will speak about your journey and discuss about my plans to visit your country next year.

Anatoly

Written for Anatoly’s blog http://item1000.blogspot.com during Audrey Ross’s class.