Happy Easter!!

I hope you had a very Happy Easter. Here you are a listening where you can listen to David Cameron wishing a happy Easter to all the British families. 

Here is a challenge for you: 

1- Listen to it without subtitles.

2- Listen to it again with English subtitles and try to check what you understood in the first listening you did.

Good luck!!

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.

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