Best greens to play golf in Alicante

Club de Golf Bonalba

Located very near Alicante and next to the Playa de San Juan, it offers stunning sea views and a perfect climate to enjoy the game at any time of year. With 18 holes of par 72, it is an excellent course built on gentle ridges, undulating greens and strategically located lakes. Its complicated design makes Bonalba an interesting and fun challenge for the player, the variety of holes means there is never a dull moment.
The vegetation is typically Mediterranean, full of palm-trees and pines.
Its privileged location on the Alicante coast makes it very convenient when it comes to finding different accommodation options. 6,096 metres.

Alicante Golf

It is located in Playa de San Juan, near Alicante, a modern field, balanced, and designed by Severiano Ballesteros.

The course is a par 72 with six par 3's, six par 4's and six par 5's. The abundance of water features to the field while considerably more difficult route.

It is plain, and rested in all holes let you see the green. There are two curiosities, the first is found in the 9th hole with an s-shaped lake surrounding the green, the initial of the designer, the second Roman ruins are located next to the hole 14 and forcing the player to lift the ball on them to reach the green. 6,057 metres.

Club de Golf El Plantío

El Plantío is a golf course in perfect harmony with the environment. A unique place in Nature that invites you to explore spectacular walks. The careful recruitment of plant brings to an exotic country and a different feeling, making each hole different. It pioneered the use of wastewater for irrigation. Located 3 miles from the town of Alicante it is more urban area and has an 18 hole and one 9 as much to benefit all players, it also has a driving range with covered tees on two surface plants, with capacity for 120 seats. It is an international golf school too.
The 18-hole course is par 72, the 9 is par 3 and it has been planned to build another stretch of 18 holes. 5,883 metres.

Golf & Country La Marquesa

Located 58 kilometres from Alicante by national road 332. It is located in a flat valley surrounded by mountains, the structure of the round alternates between long holes and short ones which are not excessively difficult, which makes any player to enjoy it. The most difficult factor lies in the characteristic layout of the greens, with their attractive and complicated slopes. The course is bordered by streams and lakes, which gives the course excellent views and beautiful scenery.
It is possible that top players find it too easy, but most golfers find it very pleasant and they will enjoy a good walk in a magnificent region. Pines and palm-trees accompany a varied and pleasant journey. A location where the temperature is pleasant in any season. 5,971 metres.

posted by Fernando Molina

Striking headlines

ObamaCare is bad news for Big Pharma
(The Independent - Saturday 15 August 2009)

The LA Forum, the arena that once hosted sell-out Madonna concerts, has been transformed for eight days only into a vast field hospital. In America, the offer of free healthcare is so rare, that news spread rapidly and residents flocked for 36 hours to see the medical staff.

Wikipedia approaches its limits
(The Guardian - Thursday 13.08.09)

The online encyclopedia is about to hit 3 m articles in English - but growth is stalling as "inclusionists" and "deletionists" fight for control.
It is increasingly difficult to enjoy contributing to Wikipedia unless you are part of the site's inner core of editors.

Med, white and blue
(The Independent - Saturday 22 August 2009)

In summer the weather is always perfect in Santorini, or so locals say. But come rain or shine, prepare to be dazzled by its charming towns and a volcanic landscape steeped in Greek myth.

Bribery - the key to better public health

(The Independent)
Financial incentives offered by public health services (425€ to lose weight, 60€ in food vouchers to pregnant women if they stop smoking) prove to be effective.

selected ADVERTS (by Sonia Blaya)

Sales will start ticking over (Swatch)

The sweet smell of success (Chanel)

Get in the mix to produce your own frozen delights (ice-cream makers)

Blogs as a tool to teach English

More and more teachers of English are making their own blogs to use as a complementary resource for their English lessons at school. We all know the web is a fantastic breakthrough for learning foreign languages and let’s face it, students do not learn in the same way as they did ten years ago. We can blame technology or we can use it to our advantage, so why not make the most of it in our lessons?

Teaching effectively is not easy since students are all different and are not interested in the same subjects. In the same way, the environment of students nowadays is not the same as the environment of most teachers. We teachers grew up in a text-based culture but today's students are "digital natives." They have grown up in an environment that has always included computers, the Internet, mobile phones, digital cameras, and MP3 players or iPods. Teachers, on the other hand, are "digital immigrants" and speak digital as a second language. We can no longer, however, teach in the same way. Even though digital may be our second language, as digital immigrants we can become more collaborative in our approach, while learning from the digital natives in our classes.

It is a well-attested fact that ESL students who use computers in the classroom have an added motivation to learn and show remarkable progress. And that is because they feel so at home using technology they can’t stop. They find it hard to open their notebooks or grammar books but sitting at the laptop to do their assignment seems as easy as pie, and really stimulating too. And that is what teaching should be all about_ entertaining when educating and instilling knowledge, as the Enlightened said back in the 18th Century.

Having a blog and sharing information, exercises, videos, songs, etc. is a perfect tool if you are lucky enough to teach at a high-school where students have real access to the internet and are provided with a PC each. In blogs you can find anything related to English, from all kinds of exercises on the four skills (speaking, listening, writing and reading) to really useful podcasts on pronunciation, situational English or specialized language. Lots of blogs provide you with general dictionaries, thesaurus, slang or phrasal verbs dictionaries, as well as translators and pronunciation or visual dictionaries.

· There are blogs aimed at helping teachers of ESL (English as a Second Language) by providing ideas, materials, tutorials, etc. Worksheets, powerpoints, etc are free for teachers to download and use in their classes. Myeslworld.blogspot.com is a good blog to get these resources from. Recursosparaprofesores.blogspot.com is another good example. It gives information about free online courses for teachers, interesting web pages such as The British Council, Google UK , BBC learning website or Bravenet (in the last one you can learn to make your own website)

· Many teachers use their blogs to give students projects to do. They later mark these assignments and post them in the blog, which makes students get more motivated and excited. There are also slideshare or powerpoint presentations on the grammar points studied in class and links to websites where students can practice what they have already studied. In iesplayadearinagaenglishwithlydia.blogspot.com you have a good example. And primary teachers also use blogs for their younger students. Have a look at beatriz_englishteacher.blogspot.com.

· With some blogs and willpower you could actually learn English online, since there are lots of self-study and reference materials. In fabiteacher.blogspot.com they supply a great deal of practice and reference material from all over the web in just one place. You can find you tube videos and podcasts, all kinds of dictionaries and thesaurus, idioms and slang compilations, listening and reading practice from the BBC learning English website and the British Council one , etc. It’s really complete and extraordinarily useful!

· Some other blogs give you plenty of ideas to get proficient in English by using all the means at your hand and on the web. And if you still need us, teachers, you could attend online lesson with Skype, a software videoconference programme thanks to which you needn’t leave your house to be in touch with other people. Get the information at El Blog del Inglés or just click on www.ebpai.com

Sonia Blaya Albert
yourenglishblog.blogia.com