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Preparation

Reading text

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So cool to read about everyone's home tradition they miss the most! I'm from England but I've been living in the States for five years and the thing I miss the most is Bonfire Night on November 5th.

The best thing about Bonfire Night is the fireworks, oh, and the bonfires! … and the history behind it. Basically, Guy Fawkes and his friends tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament and kill King James I. They nearly did it too – they hired a room under the House of Parliament and filled it with explosives. But someone told the royal palace. The authorities found Guy Fawkes in the room guarding the explosives, and he was sentenced to torture and death.

So it's a tradition that celebrates the fact that the king survived. It also means people don't forget what happens if you plot against your country. There's a kind of poem about it that starts 'Remember, remember the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot.' That's why we build a 'guy' – a life-size model of Guy Fawkes – and burn it on the bonfire. Pretty dark and horrible when you think about it!

Tips

  1. It's nice to start by saying something that shows you have read other people's posts.
  2. In a class forum you can be quite informal.
  3. In informal writing you can sometimes miss out the beginning of a phrase:
    So cool to read about everyone's home tradition ...
  4. Remember, in a forum you are part of a long conversation with a lot of other people so they might ask you questions.

Discussion

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Average: 4.5 (44 votes)

Submitted by Fzt_abidin on Thu, 16/06/2022 - 15:03

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I find that it is charming to read about your different traditions. I am from Mardin which is a city in Turkey and we have a variety of traditions. One of these is Newroz. we celebrate Newroz every year on the 21 March. Although celebrations vary, people generally gather together to welcome the coming of spring; they wear traditional Kurdish-colored clothes, dance together, light fires, and dance around and jump over the bonfire. Newroz is considered the most important festival in Kurdish culture.

Submitted by Alegpl on Sat, 11/06/2022 - 20:53

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Really nice to read and learn about the traditions of other countries and to enhance our general culture. I'm from Cuba and although many traditions have weakened during the last decades, there are some others that have survived so far: one of them is the one called "Cañonazo de las Nueve" or Nine O'Clock Cannonade. This is a curious tradition that is kept everyday in the city of Havana, the capital city. It turns out that during the colonial period, under the Spanish rule, the city of Havana was protected by a long wall that divided the city into two parts and forced people to pass through one of the few gates it offered for transit. Every night at nine o'clock the gates had to be closed until the next day early in the morning. To announce both to people and gates guards the precise moment the gates had to be closed, a loud cannonade was shot every night and the transit through the wall got blocked until the next day. Nowadays, the wall doesn't exist any more except for a few remainings at some points of the city, but the tradition of the cannonade is still in place and it is shot, like in the old times, from the San Carlos de la Cabaña Fortress. The ceremony of that cannonade is publicly performed by soldiers dressed up like the ones of the eighteenth century and they still shoot the same bronze cannon that was used in those times...

Submitted by marwan297 on Fri, 10/06/2022 - 17:45

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Hello everyone, it's so lovely to read about the traditions and celebrities around the world. I'm from Egypt and we have a lot of traditions and annual events, for example, we celebrate Eid El-Adha and Eid El-iftar, both of them are crowded and everyone gets out to travel or rests, in El-Adha we sacrifice any animal like a buffalo or goat or sheep. and we have also special sweets for the celebration of the birthday of our messenger Mohammed. In addition, we have national holidays like the 6th of October to celebrate or victory against The Zionist entityز

Submitted by mozbek on Tue, 07/06/2022 - 20:06

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hi everyone :)
pleasure to read your country's tradition , by the way ı am from turkey and ı m living in turkey . okey then ı m telling my country's culture. we called it 'hıdırellez' on May 5th every year .we believe that there are two people in this story. one of them Hızır who help the person who need . other is İlyas who judges of seas. in that day hızır and ilyas meet on the ground and that bring us blessing , health , greens. every year.

Submitted by sovantha on Mon, 06/06/2022 - 17:12

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I find that it is so wonderful to read about someone's tradition. I am from Phnom Penh which is the capital city of Cambodia. Cambodia has a lot of amazing traditions. One of them is called Pchum Benh. it is celebrated in October every year. The history behind Pchim Benh is about the sailor who traveled to one of the unknown islands and met a dangerous creature that wanted to eat him. He begged the creature to let him go and he promised them that he would transfer food and meats to the island every year. After that, the creature let him go. The man respect his promise so he ordered to send food and meats there every year from there on. the people started to follow him by sending food too and it began to become our tradition from then to today. People throw out food at Pagoda in October to remind the story of a man and to give out the food to those creatures that they believe from the folktale.

Submitted by AngDor on Wed, 01/06/2022 - 04:12

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Hello everyone, well one of the most iconic traditions in my country is called "La procesión de la Divina Pastora", which it's celebrated every january 14th. It's a procession where people go to a little church in the city of Barquisimeto, attend the mass and then they walk the virgin to the cathedral of Barquisimeto, that procession is the largest one in latin america and is the most crowrded as well, even thought you have to walk several miles from the beginnin of the procession to the end of it, you don`t get tired, is an experience really nice .

Submitted by minhquangtd2 on Tue, 31/05/2022 - 02:51

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Hi everybody! I'm was born and raised in Vietnam. It's really nice for me to tell you about one of the most important festivals in my country, Lunar New Year. It oftens takes place in late Januray or early February. It's in the spring and there are a lot of kinds of plant and flower such as peach flower, kumquat tree,...When Tet comes, we all make our houses more beautiful, we decorate it with colorful flowers, and other staffs. All families gather, tell the others about what have been done throughout the last year and what to do in the next year, and we all make chung cake toghether. I very love this food because it's delicous and traditional.
I love Tet and everyone in my country love Tet too. If you have time, i think you should try to join Tet in Vietnam.

Submitted by EMF_12 on Thu, 26/05/2022 - 18:50

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So happy to be here and see everyone's traditions in different parts of the world. I'm from Peru and the thing I miss the most is a festival called "Festival of Virgen Candelaria" which is celebrated in Puno, one of the highest cities in my country, in the first two weeks of February.
In summary, this religious celebration commemorates the image of Virgen Candelaria to continue protecting the city. Along with it, you can enjoy typical foods and dances. Also, you can go to the church before the procession. Not for anything is considered a World Heritage.
Finally, a wholesome fact is that this virgin comes from Spain and her legacy is distributed in a variety of countries like Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, and others.

Submitted by MCE on Mon, 16/05/2022 - 09:30

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Hi. I couldn't get what kind of practice this text about writing? Given a text and asked questions about it. This is like reading practice isn't it?

Hello MCE,

I see what you mean, but we created this page this way on purpose. One reason is that a good way to learn to write a certain kind of text is to imitate similar texts. In other words, you can use this class forum as a model for writing in a class forum in your life.

The best way to improve your writing is, of course, to write. Since we are a small team and millions of people use our site, however, we aren't able to provide feedback on our users' writing. This is why we don't have any tasks that ask you to write a complete text. The comments section is a place you can contribute your texts, but we aren't able to correct them.

Also, note that between the model text and the tasks, there are some tips. These tips can help you write a good text.

I hope that makes sense.

All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team