UNIT 4
Crossing
The Athlantic
By Photography. Creative Commons.
Conditional III
Paco had dreamt of this journey before. If he
hadn’t won the lottery, he would have travelled anyway
to the U.S.A. He had travelled along some European
countries and now Paco expected to find a different
way of life and discover lots of new adventures, people
and culture.
Paco was afraid of not being able to travel to the USA
because the Airport Authorities had cancelled some
flights and others were delayed because of bad
weather conditions. But, at last, his flight bound to
New York took off and he was really happy when the
plane was in the air.
American and British English
Differences between American English and British English include
pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary (lexis), spelling, punctuation,
idioms, formatting of dates and numbers, and so on, although the
differences in written and most spoken grammar structure tend to be
much more minor than those of other aspects of the language in terms of
mutual intelligibility. A small number of words have completely
different meanings between the two dialects or are even unknown or
not used in one of the dialects. One particular contribution towards
formalizing these differences came from Noah Webster, who wrote the first
American dictionary (published 1828) with the intention of showing that
people in the United States spoke a different dialect from Britain, much
like a regional accent.
While there are certainly many more varieties of English, American
and British English are the two varieties that are taught in most
English as a Secondary Language programs. Generally, it is agreed
that no one version is correct. However, there are certainly preferences in
use.
The Passive Voice
 The passive voice in English is composed of two elements:
the correct form of the verb 'to be' + the past participle of the verb in question:
We can use the passive in any tense. To make different tenses we change the
verb to be:
Present simple: The information is sent to our main office
Present continuous: The house is being painted
Past simple: My bike was stolen
Past continuous: I felt as if I was being followed
Present Perfect: Three people have been robbed
Past perfect: I knew why I had been chosen
Future simple: You'll be told in advance
Going-to future: Who's going to be invited?
Modal verbs: The house should be cleaned
You might have been hurt
 We use the passive voice:
- When the person who performed the action is unknown or irrelevant
- You want to be vague about who is responsible
- You want to emphasize the person or thing that receive the action
The Mass Media: The Press
Newspapers are usually divided into two main categories: quality
press and popular press.
Quality press is also known as broadsheet papers, which are large
format newspapers that report news in depth, often with serious
tone and higher level language. News is dominated by national and
international events, politics, business, with less emphasis on
celebrities and gossip.
A very simple definition of tabloids (popular press) came from the
British journalist John Ryan, who said that a tabloid is a journalistic
product that primarily deals with three S’s: scandal, sex and
sports
An opinion essay
An opinion essay is a formal piece of essay writing which
presents the author's point of view on a particular subject
supported by reasons and examples. The writer tries to
convince the readers that his/her point of view is correct.
A successful opinion essay should have:
♦ The introduction (a topic sentence) where the topic and the
author's opinion are stated clearly.
♦ The main body where viewpoints supported by reasons are
presented in several paragraphs.
♦ The conclusion where the main points of the essay are
summarized and the author's opinion is restated in other
words. It can offer a solution or recommendation.