Haiku by Felipe

I am a good person
the book is very nice
I work slowly.


That is a nice car
I love the flowers
you're a good footballer.

Living in the city is a bit difficult
I need a good job
summer is a very nice station.


Felipe Ramirez Bautista is from Mexico. He was born in Ometepee, Guerrero, near Acapulco, and moved to the United States at the age of 21.  He started working in the fields as a child to help his parents, and he has worked very hard to give a better life for his family. He is studying at New York Language Center, and he is very disciplined.  He thinks that New York Language Center teachers teach very well. He invites you to study at this school.

Accessories & Body Art in Early Civilization

Jin Feng at the American Museum of Natural History with classmates from NYLC. 

by Jin Feng

Although nowadays we have totally different cultures from each other, our ancestors had unbelievably common interests in accessories and body arts. We can discover that from the exhibition about human origins and cultures. Not matter where they were from, Africa or Asia, America or the Pacific, before they wore clothes and wrote history, they already started to make holes in their nose, earlobes, cheeks, under lips, and any place else on their body. They wore masks, necklaces, earrings, rings, bangles, belts, headgear, etc. made of bird’s feathers, animal’s bones, shells, seeds, stones and wood.

A tiramisù recipe from scratch!

Annamaria is sprinkling the finishing touches on her Tiramisù during our small
birthday party for Eliana in the TOEFL class. She shares her recipe below!

by Annamaria Malvolti

I would like to share with you a little history of tiramisù. In Italy, we have a lot of amazing desserts, but tiramisù is the one that is famous around the world as the most delicious and fancy Italian dessert. Its origin has been claimed by different Italian regions. However, it was "born" in 1970 in Treviso, in the north of Italy, from an idea of putting together simple and nutritious ingredients. Do you know what tiramisù means? It literally means "lift me up". Figuratively, it means "make me happy" or cheer me up.

These are the ingredients that we need to serve 8 people:

In EUROPEAN UNITS:
400 grams of ladyfingers
6 eggs
1 cup of espresso or coffee
120 grams of sugar
500 grams of authentic Italian mascarpone cheese
unsweetened cocoa powder

Two trays of tiramisù for Eliana's birthday!

IN AMERICAN UNITS:
400 grams of ladyfingers
6 eggs
1 cup of espresso of coffee
10 tbsp of sugar
2 1/3 cups of authentic Italian mascarpone
unsweetened cocoa powder

UTENSILS:
2 large glass bowls
1 whisk
1 soft spatula
1 deep pan casserole dish or aluminum tray for less formal occasions
colander

Now, let's get cracking and make it from scratch!

PREPARATION:

First of all, crack and separate 6 eggs, and put the yolks in one large glass bowl. Add half the sugar to the yolks and beat with a whisk until the sugar is completely dissolved. Now it is time to add the mascarpone cheese and stir it in till we have a creamy mixture of mascarpone and sugar.

In the other bowl, beat the egg whites vigorously with the rest of the sugar until it forms stiff peaks or a thick, white consistency. The result should be a white foamy mass. Now, delicately put the white foam into the bowl with the mascarpone mixture and gently mix everything together. (Remember, beating the egg whites with the sugar briskly is essential to end up with a dense consistency.)

My last days in New York

Selin hanging on to the U.S. flag in Brooklyn with her friend, Zeynep.

by Selin Tekin

Last Monday was my first whole day at home. Normally, I have really good reasons to go out, but since that day, I couldn’t find any reason to head into the city, so I decided to study for the TOEFL. First, I woke up and decided to prepare breakfast. After that, I listened to music, then I watched a sitcom. Before I knew it,  it was already 5 pm, and I decided to run in a park near our house. When I got back home, I went shopping with my cousin. As you can see, I did everything except study and the next days continued like this.

Actually, I want to talk about the one day that was different--last Saturday. First I decided to see my old classmates, and we had dinner together. Then we went to a bar to have a drink and talk about my last days here. After the bar, we wanted to go to one of our friends' birthday party in Hudson Terrace. Actually, I definitely hate nightclubs and I always say no to parties, but this time was one of my good friends' birthday and I felt obligated to go.

Problems with directions & prepositions

Selin (center) with some friends experiencing their first Holi festival in Queens. 

by Selin Tekin
TOEFL Preparation Class

These are text messages that led up to my first Holi experience.

The day before the event:
     Chris:  I can’t come tonight. There is a concert in Bushwick that I really want to see later tonight.
     Me: Ok. See you later.

Four hours later:
     Chris: Tomorrow is “Holi” in Queens.
     Me:  What is Holi?
     Chris: Indian festival where people throw colored powder at each other in a park
     (As usual, I didn’t pay attention to the details in the text.)
     Me: Seems nice. Ok I will ask my friend if she wants to see Brooklyn. We are gonna go to Brooklyn. But if she wants to see Holi we’ll go there.
     Chris: Don’t wear nice clothes!!!
     (Again I didn’t pay much attention to the text.)

The next day:
     Chris: Hey!!  You coming to Holi?
     Me:  Yes we’ll be at Port Authority at 1 pm. Seems as if we’ll be late.
     Chris: Ok take your time. We can meet at Singh’s Roti Shop. On Liberty Avenue. Last stop on the A train. A train to Lefferts Boulevard.

Writing creatively with new vocabulary

This exercise lets students write creatively using vocabulary learned and practiced in class.

by David Sanchez Redondo
TOEFL Preparation Class

A boring summer evening is the best time to rethink your life or start a new hobby. That was what Jane should have thought before opening her umpteenth can of beer. She did not even make a SUBTLE gesture of getting up from the sofa when the telephone rang, suspecting it would be her mother as it usually is every evening. The TACTICS she usually used not to speak to her were very KEEN, but deep inside she felt guilty. A few years ago, when her father passed away, she ABRUPTLY changed her personality.

Her relationships were DEBILITATING, too. She was always elusive with people and everybody thought that she was doing illicit things. Now and then, Sofia, her best friend, would try to ELICIT from her what was happening in her mind, but without success. Definitely, she had lost her SPONTANEITY and the happy personality that used to characterize her.

SUBTLE - present but not obvious
TACTIC - strategy
KEEN - sharp; strong
ABRUPTLY - happening suddenly
DEBILITATING - weakening
ELICIT - draw out; extract information
SPONTANEITY - acting without planning

Will there be fewer cars in the future?

In this independent essay for the TOEFL iBT, the writer has to agree or disagree with the statement: In twenty years, there will be fewer cars in use than there are today.

by David Sanchez Redondo
TOEFL Preparation Class

In my point of view there will be fewer cars due to two reasons. First, people will use more public transportation, or we will use more bikes or other kinds of transportation. The other reason is we will run out of oil.

Let’s start with the first reason. Most people, especially in big cities, would say that buying a car is their last option. It is expensive and there are a lot of traffic jams. This change will be noticed less in small cities obviously because there is not a good system of transportation like in big cities. Another reason that there will be fewer cars is the fact that people will use more bikes. It is a good option as long as the cities are adapted for this. London and Amsterdam are good examples of such cities. I think they are the cities of the future, and many cities look up to them. In any case, the more people take care of themselves, the more they will accept this idea.

The other reason is the limited amount of crude oil. It is well-known that someday we will run out of oil.  No doubt that when technology keeps advancing quickly, many things will be affected; one of them is cars. Realizing the fact that twenty years is not far from now (we won’t have cars flying around the cities yet).  Nevertheless, there will be an important change in this industry. Hybrids or electrics will be the cars of the future. However, because all of them will be expensive, families will only be the ones who can afford them, and each family will only be able to buy one car.

In conclusion, imagining cities with fewer cars in the next twenty years is utopist, but we do not have to lose hope. Instead, we can keep visualizing that having three or four cars for every family will indeed disappear for a better, cleaner world.

Practicing collocations

This is a creative-writing assignment to practice verb-noun collocations.

Homer is going to celebrate getting his new job at Trader Joe’s. He used to earn a living composing music in the subway. However, he allowed himself to be influenced by people who told him that he had to realize music wasn’t his future even though he thought he had already achieved great success.

by David Sanchez Redondo
TOEFL preparation class