2NB Famous

https://www.usingenglish.com/comprehension/10.html

C1 Hitting Back At Trump's Executive Order, Starbucks CEO Vows To Hire 10,000 Refugees

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is adding his voice to those who are alarmed and upset by President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration

"We are in business to inspire and nurture the human spirit, one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time – whether that neighborhood is in a Red State or a Blue State; a Christian country or a Muslim country; a divided nation or a united nation. That will not change."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2017/01/29/hitting-back-at-trumps-executive-order-starbucks-ceo-vows-to-hire-10000-refugees/#bbad9236846c

C1 Body Idioms

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/theteacher/2009/03/090306_teacher_body_eye.shtml

2 NB Words in the News

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/wordsinthenews/

C1 Comparison with as... as

http://www.english-test.net/esl/learn/english/grammar/ae020/esl-test.php

2NB Present Continuous

. We use the present continuous tense to talk about the present:

• for something that is happening at the moment of speaking:

I’m just leaving work. I’ll be home in an hour.
Please be quiet. The children are sleeping.

http://www.teachya.com/grammar/elementary/present_continuous.php

C1 Would you consider cosmestic surgery?

Plastic surgery is defined as a surgical specialty dedicated to reconstruction of facial and body defects due to birth disorders, trauma, burns, and disease. Plastic surgery is intended to correct dysfunctional areas of the body and is reconstructive in nature.

The procedures, techniques, and principles of cosmetic surgery are entirely focused on enhancing a patient’s appearance. Improving aesthetic appeal, symmetry, and proportion are the key goals. Cosmetic surgery can be performed on all areas of the head, neck, and body. Because the treated areas function properly, cosmetic surgery is elective.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b082966z

C1 An interview with Scott Carney

It's not very often that you crack open a book to find a giant warning label hitting you in the face. But there it is right in the front of Scott Carney's latest work.

http://www.npr.org/2017/01/08/508765671/what-doesnt-kill-us-invites-practical-medical-benefits

2ºNB Trains and Travel (listening)

http://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/skills/listening-skills-practice/trains-and-travel

C1 The Sharing Economy

‘Sharing” is one of the most rhetorically abused virtues of the age. First we had the euphemism “file-sharing”, for duplicating and uploading copies of albums or films to the internet. Well, you can’t share what isn’t yours in the first place. (If I pilfer money from a bank and give it to my friends, I might plead that I was just “money-sharing”, but I am more likely to be convicted of robbery.) And now we supposedly have a “sharing economy”, the most-often cited two examples of which – Uber and Airbnb – are giant corporations pursuing monopoly power and fighting governments the world over. What exactly is being shared here, and in whose interest?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/02/whats-yours-is-mine-against-the-sharing-economy-tom-slee-review

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01yvy31

'Spat on and ignored': what I've learned from a month sleeping rough in London

Medical student James Beavis spent his Christmas on the streets of the UK capital, to raise money for – and try to better understand – this marginalised community. His conclusion? ‘Society has dehumanised homeless people’

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jan/06/what-learned-sleeping-rough-london

Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schulz

Kathryn Schulz proposes that once we find ourselves in the wrong, we should be optimistic. To be wrong, after all, is to depart from the facts into creativity, to become artists in our own lives. Error may feel like despair, but it is more akin to hope: "We get things wrong because we have an enduring confidence in our own minds; and we face up to that wrongness in the faith that, having learned something, we will get it right next time."

https://www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong?language=en#t-3756

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/aug/28/being-wrong-kathryn-schulz-review