Clase digital 5. Apariencia física, personajes famosos

Apariencia física, personajes famosos

Introducción

Hello! I hope you are having a nice day. Welcome to the fifth class of the course. En esta ocasión los temas a tratar son los siguientes: 

Clase 5. Apariencia física, personajes famosos. 

• Verbo be, have/has, have got

Adjetivos calificativos antes de un sustantivo, adjetivos de:

• Altura
• Peso 
• Características especiales
• Cara 
• Cabello
• Partes del cuerpo
• Cambios personales

Describing physical appearance is one of the common topics that you will study since the topic is found in the most used textbooks. To describe physical appearance in English, you need to manage these: Body and face parts, adjectives for physical appearance, verbs be, have and simple present.

We must be really careful when we describe other people’s physical appearance since some descriptions might be considered impolite or offensive to some people. Whether the description is accurate people might take it the wrong way when referring to the height, body shape or size.

Success in this lesson, let´s begin!

Desarrollo del tema

5. Apariencia física, personajes famosos

Verbo “be”

¿Recuerdas el verbo “be”?

Match the beginnings and endings of these phrases about people’s lives.

Which adjectives are opposites?
Which pair of adjectives refer to women and men?
Think of a different way to end the first five phrases.

Como puedes ver otro de los usos que podemos darle al verbo “be” es para hablar la apariencia física:

I’m tall.
You’re short.
She’s medium height.

Pero para hablar de cosas que fueron debemos usar el verbo be en pasado. El verbo be es un verbo irregular, como se puede ver en sus formas en past simple (que se pueden traducir por: yo fui / estuve / era / estaba, tú fuiste / estuviste / eras / estabas, etc.).

Este verbo habla de un estado o una situación (por ejemplo, cómo te sientes), y puede servir para describir las cosas. Cuando lo emplees en pasado necesitas asegurarte de usar las formas que te hemos mostrado en la tabla anterior, y no el infinitivo “be”. Por ejemplo:

• The party was amazing! (¡La fiesta fue increíble!).
• We were really happy! (¡Todos estábamos súper contentos!).

Ya habrás notado que este verbo no funciona como la mayoría de los verbos ingleses, pues al ponerlo en past simple no necesita verbo auxiliar en las oraciones negativas ni en las interrogativas. Es decir, que no hay did or didn’t, ni ningún otro verbo en la frase: solo nuestro querido be en la posición correcta. Por tanto, las oraciones interrogativas son así:

• Were you sad yesterday? (¿Estabas triste ayer?).
• Was it your birthday on Sunday? (¿Fue tu cumpleaños el domingo?).

En ese sentido, apreciamos que posee distintas formas para las distintas personas (aunque en el caso sean dos: was y were), y además es él mismo, no un auxiliar, el que muestra el tiempo verbal. Por ello, cuando te encuentras las formas was y were sabes que casi siempre se refieren a una situación, tiempo o hecho del pasado.

Para reforzar te invito a ver el siguiente video:

Ahora puedes completar los siguientes ejercicios:

1. I ________ in Cancun last spring.
2. We  ________ at school last Saturday we are never there on weekends.
3. Tina________ at home yesterday.
4. He ________ happy with the bad results .
5. Robert and Stan ________Garry’s friends…not any more.
6. You________ very busy on Friday.
7. They ________ in front of the supermarket.
8. I________ in the museum yesterday.
9. She________ in Toluca last month.
10. Jessica and Kimberly ________ late for school.

Have/has, have got

Por otro lado apreciamos que algunas características del cuerpo no se pueden señalar con “be” sino con “have”(tener):

• I have long brown hair.
• She has blue eyes.

When we are talking about possession, relationships, illnesses and characteristics of people or things we can use either have or have got.

The have got forms are more common in an informal style. Have got has the same meaning as have and both are used as present tenses. Note that have got is NOT the present perfect of get. To make questions and negative sentences with have we normally use the auxiliary verb do. 

We use has got in the 3rd person singular (he, she, it), and we use have got with all other persons.

Let´s review the following video:

If you are ready you can do the exercises on:

• HAVE GOT (3) – affirmative and negative

Order of adjectives

Además en este punto ya sabes que en inglés los adjetivos calificativos van antes de un sustantivo:

• The red house
• She has long blond hair.

When more than one adjective comes before a noun, the adjectives are normally in a particular order. Adjectives which describe opinions or attitudes (e.g. amazing) usually come first, before more neutral, factual ones (e.g. red):

She was wearing an amazing red coat. Not: … red amazing coat

If we don’t want to emphasize any one of the adjectives, the most usual sequence of adjectives is:

She is a (1) beautiful, (2) tall, (3) thin,(5) young, (6) black-haired, (7) English woman.

It was made of a (1) strange,(6) green, (8) metallic material.

Para ejercicios sobre el orden de los adjetivos ve a:

• Adjectives – order 1

Como puedes ver existen muchos adjetivos para describir. A continuación, encontrarás varias clasificaciones:

• Altura/Height: Tall, short, medium height, (average, medium) height and build, tiny / huge.
• Peso/Weight: Thin, slim, heavy, anorexic, medium, weigt, fat, robust, stocky, under /(o
• Cabello/ Hair: Short, long, medium length, shoulder-length straight, curly, wavy, red/redhead, brown, blonde, dark, bald, grey, brunette, blue/green/brown eyes, shoulder-length, high-lights, fringe, pony-tail, bald, balding, dyed.

Características especiales/Special features:

Plump, scarred, freckled, spotty, spiky, piercing, sparkling eyes, look like, to look great, attractive / unattractive, handsome, good looking, ugly, pretty, cute, beautiful, young, old.

You can use all this vocabulary to make descriptions. Can you describe someone you know? For example: My father is tall and thin. He has brown eyes and grey hair.

Partes del cuerpo/Body parts

Head, arm, eye, eyebrow, belly, stomach, leg, breast, thumb, finger, elbow, fist, finger, foot (plural: feet), ankle, buttocks, hair, hand, wrist. hip, knee, upper arm, thigh, bottom, back, bone, underarm, forearm, lower leg, shoulder, waist, calf (plural: calves), nail(s), chest, toe.

Cara/Face

Chin, cheek(s), eyes, eyebrow(s), eyelash(es), scar, mustache, beard, wrinkle, braces, freckles, mole, ear, mouth, nose. forehead, tooth (teeth). head, nostril, lip, neck.

For exercises on the face and body parts go to:

• English Exercises > body exercises

It is important to know that certain actions are made with a specific part of the body. Match the verbs on the left with the words on the right. 

Cambios personales/Personal changes

Lose weight, put on weight, get a tattoo, pierce your ears, get a perm, dye your hair, grow a beard, cut your hair, grow your hair, go bald, get a nose job, facelifting, liposuction, go on a diet, tummy tuck, tanning.

Let´s practice and see if you can describe a person:

Personajes famosos

Podemos resumir todo el contenido de esta clase al tratar de describir a un personaje conocido, leamos la siguiente descripción:

Kylie Kristen Jenner was born in Los Angeles on August 10, 1997, she is an American media personality, socialite, model, and businesswoman. She stars in reality television series Keeping Up with the Kardashians since 2007 and she is the founder and owner of the cosmetic company Kylie Cosmetics.

As model, she is cute, she has plumped lips and a seductive body with a big scar in the back of one of her legs. Although when it comes to height, she is somewhat short. She has a height of 5 ft 6 in or 168 cm, and a body weighs 63 kg or 139 pounds.

Naturally, her hair is black, and her eyes are dark brown, but she likes to dye her hair often with several colors. At the age of 16, she first dyed her hair in blue, and since then, she can’t control to dye her hair. Kylie Jenner’s preoccupation with oversized lips has transformed the reality star young brunette into a lip mogul. From being deliberately mysterious about a lip augmentation to creating “lip kits”, Kylie is as big on lips as her big sister Kim is on her booty.

Everything you need to know about Kylie Jenner in 2023!!!

• What is the most relevant characteristic on Kylie?
• Is there a personal change you will like to have? Why?

Conclusión

Remember that in descriptions you use verb “be” and others “ have”. Practice in the following:

• Appearance

It’s also important to keep in mind that Have got (have/has + got) is used to talk mainly about possessions or personal attributes. 

You have reached the end of the class. Congratulations! All you have to do to complete this session is to complete Consignas 9 and 10. 

Good luck!

Fuentes de información

• Smith, S. (2018). El pasado del verbo to be en inglés
• BBC(SF) Have and have got