Merry Christmas to all! Digital story of the Nativity

Hello everyone!

I post this entry to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I hope you make the most of these days, find time to relax, switch off, spend time with the family, travel, and start the New Year with renewed energy!

I guess (and hope!) you all know the history of Christmas. Last year around these dates I found this digital version of the story on the Internet and I wanted to share it with you. It's so good!



I would also like you to find some time to revise English (watch films, series; check links on the blog; read, etc.). Remember also that on the 16th we have the test of Dracula. When we come back from Christmas Leah will do an activity with you to remember the main events in the book (that is what will be on the test, not specific details).

See you on the 9th January then! :)

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Future continuous and future perfect

Hello everyone!

Well, the first term seems to be coming to an end!

On our last days of class we finished correcting a few exercises that were lagging behind. We did a mock test so that you could have an idea of what to expect in the one we do tomorrow, and it also helped you learn some useful vocabulary, collocations and prepositions.

We also corrected the photocopy about future tenses. It was pretty much of a revision, but there were two new things: the future continuous and the future perfect.

Exercises 1 and 2: Future continuous I and II
Exercises 3 and 4: will vs. present simple; will vs. will be +ing (future simple vs. future continuous)
Exercise 5: Future perfect

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Listening "going shopping"

Good morning everyone!

Last week we revised the past continuous: you had to write 5 times and ask your partner what s/he was doing at that time.

• - What were you doing at 8.45 in the morning yesterday?
• - I was going to work.

After that we watched a video from the BBC where a journalist visited Barcelona. It was an original video (not adapted), but you did the activities very well! Congratulations! :)

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Reporting verbs / newspaper articles

Hello everyone!

Last week we finished correcting the handout on Reported Speech and we learnt the use of some reporting verbs. Remember that each verb is different, so you have to learn them separately.

I found this document from the University of Adelaide (Australia), where you have a wide array of verbs classified according to their meaning and whether they're weak, neutral or strong. On the second page they tell you which ones are followed by a preposition, -ing or a that-clause:
Reporting Verbs

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Strange jobs; /g/ vs. /d3/

Hello everyone!

How's the weekend going? Last week we had three days of class: Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On Monday we did a short activity to guess the meaning of some jobs (midwife, masseuse, tailor, plumber and trashman) and then we did a listening about some people with some very strange jobs! Then we did an exercise about word-formation with the suffixes -ion, -or, -ant, -er and -ment.

Finally, we listened to three different conversations where people had to apologise, give reasons and finally make a promise: I'm sorry I can't meet you tonight because I have to work, but I'll see you next Saturday. You practised these expressions with Leah on Wednesday.

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Some learning tips...!

STUDY ENGLISH EVERY DAY

How many English words can I learn per day?

10 English words or phrases per day aren’t too many, are they? Just give it a try. You will find that you can learn them in next to no time.

So why not take a little time each day (Monday to Friday) to learn 10 new words?

Use the weekend to revise what you have learned during the past week(s). This way you’ll enrich your English vocabulary by 50 new words per week. (That’s 200 new English words after a month!)

Little strokes fell big oaks

• LEARN ENGLISH THROUGH READING

Read English texts as often as you can.

This could be the news, short stories or novels, texts from your textbook or ego4u. Choose an interesting text that is not too difficult for you (otherwise it wouldn’t be fun).

Don’t look up every word which is new to you – even without a dictionary you will understand a lot. Just concentrate on what you do understand and try to find out the rest by intelligent guessing. That works rather well, especially if you are interested in the topic. If you are a football fanatic for example, you probably won’t have problems understanding an English text about football. On the other hand, someone who is better in English than you but not interested in football will have more problems understanding the same text.

Do also watch the news in your native language and try to find English news to some of the topics. Even if you don't understand every word in the English text, you will get the message as you already know what the text is about.

Read between the lines

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