Happy Christmas!

Here you are one of my favourite's this Christmas! I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Our Eighth Session (17 December 2014)

First of all, I would like to say sorry again for starting a bit late last Wednesday (we'll make up the time in May).

For those who couldn't make it (no pudisteis venir) I'll tell you what we did:

1- We described our favourite objects and I really enjoyed doing this with you. We'll continue working on this after Christmas. 

2- We explained what a review is. Remember that's a kind of crítica of a book, film, play, etc. Have a look at what I gave you in class and you'll be able to do your own review.

3- We ate popcorn and watched "Love Actually" (I hope you don't hate it now, J.C.) hehe. Remember that I sent you the film and now you can watched it at home with English subtitles.

Well, I wish you a very happy Christmas. I'll see you on the 7th of January.

Don't forget your English! ;)

Interesting post

If you have problems with prepositions (IN, ON, AT), here you are an interesting chart you may find useful for your future compositions.

American English at State

Our Seventh Session (10 December 2014)

Hi folks, here you are a brief summary about what we did last Wednesday.

1- We corrected the exam we sat the week before. Congratulations! Although it was a pop quiz, you all succeeded: Well done! :)

2- We listened to a listening taken from the Preliminary English Test (PET-B1). I'll send you the listening to practise at home.

3- We asked each other some questions about the listening. Writing the questions was the most difficult part of the task. (You should continue doing it at home).

4- We created our own interview and tried to discover our classmate's hobbies. We were speaking English for more than half an hour. WOW!

Have a nice week and see you on Wednesday.

Our Sixth Session (3 December 2014)

After our week off we came back ready to start speaking English almost like a native speaker! :O

1- We listened to a listening taken from the Preliminary English Test (PET-B1). We found it a bit difficult, but it was fine (it was our first time). The clue to improve our listening is practising, practising and practising (as I'm always saying). PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT!

2- We corrected our homework and explained at the same time the Present Perfect Simple and the Past Simple (page 19 of our textbook).

3- We watched again the second part of "Tom and his family": Skateboarding, and did some exercises.

We learnt how to use: this, that, these and those.

4- We learnt different ways to express our feelings about something using these words:

like - love - hate - can't stand (remember that you have to use a noun or a verb-ing after these verbs).

5- We took a very interesting test (at least for me). Are you ready to start Unit 2? We'll see tomorrow.

26 November 2014

Remember we don't have English class next Wednesday (26 November)!

¡Recordad que el próximo miércoles 26 de noviembre no hay clase!

Enjoy your week ;) I recommend you to study everything we have learnt so far.

The keep calm-o-matic

¡A ponerse las pilas! :)

Our Fifth Session (19 November 2014)

I really enjoyed this special session with you because we learnt some basic structures in English:

1- We corrected our homework (exercise 5 and 6 on page 12).

2- We learnt what an action and a state verb is. We did exercise 9 and 11 on page 13. 

3- Do you know when do we use the present simple and the present continuous? If you don't, just check page 19 on your book. You can practise it doing this short exercise:

Below are some sentences that should be in the present tense. Choose the more appropriate of each of the two options to complete the sentences.

1) Dave _________________ The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald at school this term.
(is reading / reads)

2) He ________________ his novel for the last week.
(is reading / has been reading)

3) She _______________ reading every night before bed.
(has enjoyed / enjoys)

4) She _____________ reading all her life.
(is loving / has loved)

MOMBOOKS (2011)

Maybe it's a bit difficult for you but you can try your luck.

4- We explained frequency adverbs:

Always-Usually-Normally-Often-Sometimes-Seldom-Hardly ever-Rarely-Never

We use them before the main verb except for the verb "to be".

5- We asked our classmates some questions using the present simple and the present continuous. In this game Student A had to guess Student B's questions and the other way round. 

6-We corrected exercise 3 on page 153 and explained how to write formal and informal letters. If you want to remember everything we did, you just need to have a look at the page about letters I sent you some weeks ago.

7- We watched the second part of the video "Tom and his family". Skateboarding.

That's all folks!

Answers: 1) is reading, 2) has been reading, 3) enjoys, 4) has loved

Our Fourth Session (12 November 2014)

Hi folks! You've worked quite hard so far. We could check that correcting our homework.

1- We started speaking about your interests while we practised some eco-questions (do you?/really?/seriously?, etc.). We played a quick game: you had to start asking questions and the last two people left speaking were the winners (fortunately, nobody finished their conversations till I said "time up").

2- We spoke about cultural misunderstandings.

3- We learnt some new vocabulary: dependable, encouraging, generous, jealous, kind-hearted, mean, pleasant, selfish, sulky and upbeat. Keep on practising it!

4- We commented on the first episode of How I met your mother:

• We created a mind map about weddings and relationships. You can create your own mind map to remember new vocabulary or add more words to this one:

You can create your own mind map here:http://mindmapfree.com/

• We found some synonyms for the word "idiot".
• Speak out! We pretended that we all were strangers and wanted to start a conversation:

           -Have you met Ted?

           -What do you do?

5- We watched the video "It's all about me: Tom and his family". We practised our listening and speaking, too. 

Cambridge University Press

Hope you enjoyed the lesson.

Have a nice week!

Our Third Session (5 November 2014)

This is our third week! Time flies...

1- We started recapping on pronouns:

Source: http://dalicetrost.com/writing-tip-23-684

2- We corrected our exercises (homework) and practised our speaking asking the questions taken from exercise 2 on page 8.

3- We listened to a conversation (page 8) and then we checked the audioscripts. It can't be any easier!

4- We worked with auxiliary verbs on page 9 and practised eco-questions.

5- We spoke a bit about the first episode of How I met your mother and gave you some homework to do at home. I'm sure you will realise that you can find a wide range of vocabulary and grammar while you are enjoying TV series (sitcom).

6- Do you like The Beatles? I swear you will if you really want to learn English (they are the best!!)

Remember that our first topic is FRIENDS. This first song is perfect for improving our listening. 

You had to watch the video carefully because we had to put in order what was happening in each scene. (Remember I previously gave you a list of sentences describing the video clip). 

Ana Belén and Juan made a good team, they had a pretty good performance!

After watching activity: filling the gaps. Maybe you didn't know what the lyrcis were about and I personally think that they are marvellous. Here you are a video with the lyrics to fill in your song. Next week we'll focus on the meaning :)

Have a nice weekend!

Happy Halloween

Do you know everything about Halloween? Here you are some interesting readings and videos to learn a bit more about this event which is becoming more and more fashionable in our culture. 



Where does Halloween come from?

You can also know the History of the Jack-O-Lantern and see great sculptors making Halloween pumpkins:




And... if you have children, I recommend you to play this video at the end of the page and sing with them!

Ghost and witches, skeletons too, Halloween night is scary for you! ♫♪♫♪♫♪ 

Happy Halloween!

Our Second Session (29 October 2014)

Let's go with our second session and don't forget to bring your homework!

1- How many expressions can you find to say "estar embarazada" in English? We found out that there are a lot!

2- Our first fear is SPEAKING. Something we can do to overcome this fear is practising our English pronunciation. Let's do the next exercise. We'll count the number of syllables in each word and use a ditionary to decide whether the primary stress in the words we have underlined is on the first, second or third syllable.

TOPIC 1: FRIENDS

3- After "breaking the ice" we tried to remember as many words as possible from exercise 2 on page 7 (keep in mind that our textbook is "New Total English Intermediate". We had 10 seconds to learn by heart all these words: acquaintance, best friend, boss, classmate, close friend, colleague, ex-girlfriend, father-in-law, friend of a friend, husband, stepmother, stranger, old friend and team-mate.

Then I defined 7 of those words in a certain order and they had to write the words I was defining in the same order I was pronouncing them. To do so we used our mini-white boards. Paqui and José Carlos were the winners! CONGRATS!

4- We wrote our own name in the centre of a piece of paper. Then we had to choose a maximum of six family and friend's names. We wrote close friends or family near our own name and other names further away (New Total English, 2011). They interviewed each other to find out who were the people in their classmate's paper.

5- Choose two adjectives to describe one of those names. Try not to be cruel with your in-laws:

e.g. I get on really well with my boss. He's very funny and outgoing.

6- Do youw know all these hobbies? 

• Snowkiting (be careful with the pronunciation)
• T'ai chi
• Juggling
• Astronomy
• Sudoku
• Hiking or trekking (Raúl's hobby)
• Baking

7- Do you want to know my "secret hobby"? Try to ask as many accurate Y/N questions as you can. Remember that Y/N-Q are different to Wh-Q (where, what, who, why, when, how...) 

e.g.Do you use any tools? / Do you practise your hobby at home?

Writing picture books is my passion. Photo taken from Maríán Lario Ilustración

8- Time to listen to native English! Who's Pete's best friend? We know that Eva's best friend is very different from her. They met on the bus and she has a great sense of humour.

9- After having our first experience with a real listening we discovered that we should practise our English more often. That's why we decided to watch a TV series called "How I met your mother" in Ororo.tv. Thus, we can continue widening our friendship and family vocabulary.

Our First Session (22 October 2014)

Dear students,

How are you? You are more than welcome to come and visit our new "classroom". This blog has been made to remember everything we do on Wednesday afternoons: Learning English, of course! So, if you missed one lesson, don't worry, here you can see what we did and practise at home the activities we propose.

1- What are your fears? Some of you said that you were afraid of speaking and listening to English. CONGRATULATIONS! You came just to the right place!

2- Ask me everything you would like to know about myself. It's your chance, don't miss it. I remember questions such as "Are you married?" or " How old are you?"

3- Now it's your turn. You have to think about different questions to ask your mates. Easy-Peasy!

4- We are not shy anymore. Everybody met everyone so let's focus on the importance of giving a good speech. I now, big step... but these are just the bricks of our house. To do so we watched a video from the BBC. We learnt about the relevance of presenting a topic in an interesting way and how to produce your own speech when discussing and listening.

Presenting:
- What about? Who? (audience).
- Visual aids are welcome.

Discussing and listening:
- Be considerate.
- Be positive.
- Be balanced.

Speaking and listening tasks

5- We did the test at the end of the activity and we checked what we learnt. It may seem difficult to understand, but we only need PRACTICE, PRACTICE AND PRACTICE.

6- We had doubts sometimes. When this happens we can look them up in: Macmillan Dictionary

7- Did you know the concept "time capsule"? Now, you do. We decided to create our own time capsule, but instead of choosing some objects to put inside, we wrote our fears about English? I imagine some of you are afraid of speaking and listening. However, we'll open our time capsule (we made that with an empty bottle of water) on the very last day. I'm sure all your fears will have dissapeared by that time.

That's all folks! 

Relevant links to bear in mind:
   

• Burlington Speech Trainer (BST)
• Bachillerato 2 Activities
• 6 Minutes English