THE 12 DAYS OF XMAS

And your favorite one!

ROCKIN' AROUND THE XMAS TREE

Hello class!

This is for you to keep on singing!

TELLING THE TIME AND DESCRIBING PEOPLE

In our Real English series we touch on two different points today: how to tell the time in English and how to describe people's personality.

In the first video, several people answer the question What's the time?

Remember we can tell the time analogically or digitally. That way in British English:
8.05 five past eight [analogical] or eight (oh) five [digital]
8.10 ten past eight [analogical] or eight ten [digital]
8.15 (a) quarter past eight [analogical] or eight fifteen [digital]
8.30 half past eight [analogical] or eight thirty [digital]
8.35 twenty-five to nine [analogical] or eight thirty-five [digital]
8.45 (a) quarter to nine [analogical] or eight forty-five [digital]
8.50 ten to nine [analogical] or eight fifty [digital]
9.00 nine o'clock [analogical] or nine [digital]

In American English, after is often used instead of past:
6.10 ten past six (British English) / ten after six (American English)
Exception:
6.30 half past six (British English=American English)

And of or before or till instead of to.
2.35 twenty-five to three (British English / twenty-five of (or before or till) three (American English)

You can watch the same video with subtitles on the Real English site here and do an activity to practise the time on the Real English site here.

The second video helps us to revise some basic questions to find out personal information like What's your name?; Where are you from?; Can you introduce your friends? Yes, this is my daughter.

The video focuses on describing people's personality by answering the question Can you give me two or three adjectives that describe your mother?

Funnily enough, two weeks ago we dealt with descriptions in our Real English series when talking about astrological signs. That day we learnt a number of questions we can use to ask about someone's personality:
What are you like?
What kind of person are you?
Tell me about your personality.
Today we have learnt another question to find out the same information: Can you give me two or three adjectives that describe your mother?

You can watch the same video with subtitles on the Real English site here and do an activity to describe people on the Real English site here.

From My that´s English

XMAS RECIPES

HELLO CLASS!!

Please find some Xmas recipes here to help you for our party! 

Happy cooking!    

                              XMAS RECIPES HERE

PHONE NUMBERS AND PERSONAL QUESTIONS

Good afternoon class!
Please click on  PHONE NUMBERS, EXERCISE 1 and PHONE NUMBERS EXERCISE 2  to practise a bit more your listening skills.

Also, there is a part of the Oxford University Press website with easy dialogues for you to listen and practise. This one is about PERSONAL QUESTIONS.

Have fun!

THE ALPHABET AND SPELLING

HELLO GUYS!

In this installment of Real English videos the alphabet is dealt with. Watch the video to revise how to pronounce the alphabet.

Pay attention to the following:

As the speakers are American, they spell the letter Z as / zi: / and not / zed / as the British do.

The second speaker, Gillian (28"), gives us a very practical way to memorise the alphabet. She recites the alphabet according to the vowel sound the letter has:

/ei/ A H J K
/i:/ B C D E G P T V (Z)
/e/ F L M N S X Z
/ai/ I Y
/əʊ/ O
/u:/ Q U W
/a:/ R

Some of the speakers show a tendency to spell their names in groups of three letters, pausing for a split second to let the listener figure out the word being spelt.

You can watch the same video with subtitles on the Real English web page here.

Real English also provides this video to test our ability to understand words/names being spelt.

Again, you can watch the same video with subtitles on the Real English we page here.

BASIC REAL ENGLISH

Hello class! 

Welcome to the 2012-2013 school year. To start, here is a wonderful website with videos about basic vocabulary: numbers, nationalities, possessives, etc. Enjoy!

http://www.multimedia-english.com/contenidos/listado/basic-real-english

Hi guys!

Here it is at last! Take a look at all the videos. It took so much work! However, it paid off . I hope you 

enjoy them as much as I have!

and the making of...

and the superb work of the secciones!

George and Winifred Seymour

Read the text and complete the chart below with a word from the list you have after the text. Every word can only be used ONCE. There are some words that you do not need to use. Question 0 has been answered as an example.  Key at the bottom!!!

George and Winifred Seymour

George and Winifred Seymour (0) _have__  just won the prize for being the couple with the (1) ______ marriage in Britain. The couple have been married for more (2) ______ 80 years. They (3) ______ when they were teenagers and married in 1920 when George (4) ______ 16 and his girlfriend, Winifred, 17.
The couple have four children, nine grandchildren and 25 great-grandchildren. They have lived in the same village for all of their married life and have never travelled (5) ______. Mr Seymour said, ‘We've (6) ______ to London three times and we went to Birmingham to see my sister once.' His wife added, 'I've never liked trips, I like (7) ______ at home with my family around me. I've never wanted to go very (8) ______.'
Their oldest son, Bertie, 79, said, ‘It's great to see them still alive and so happy together after all (9) ______ years. They have enjoyed good health all their lives: my father worked on a farm all his life and my mother has always worked (10) ______ in the home. They have never smoked and they haven't had (11) ______ wine or beer in their lives. (12) ______ Sunday we are going to give them a great party! A lot of people (13) ______ coming for this celebration. First we are going to church and (14) ______ we are going to have a meal at a hotel.’
Our reporter asked Mrs Seymour what she liked about her marriage and she said, 'I've been very lucky. I saw George was (15) ______ unique man. He was my (16) ______ boyfriend and we've had a very happy marriage.’


A      ARE     HAVE      MET      THAT         ABROAD         BE         HARD         ON         THE       AFTER           BEEN          IS         ONLY        THEN          AN           BEING          KNEW       OLDEST       THESE          ANY       FAR         LONGEST         THAN         WAS






KEY-KEY-KEY-KEY-KEY-KEY-KEY-KEY-KEY-KEY-KEY-KEY


1. LONGEST
2. THAN
3. MET
4. WAS
5. ABROAD
6. BEEN
7. BEING
8. FAR
9. THESE
10. HARD
11. ANY
12. ON
13. ARE
14. THEN
15. A
16. ONLY

YOGA POSES

Hello class!
Please click on the link to look at some yoga poses. Get ready for your yoga workshop! 


http://www.yogacards.com/yoga-pose-cards.html

AWESOME SANDWICHES!

HELLO GUYS, LOOK AT THESE INCREDIBLE SANDWICHES! WEBSITE ON THE BOTTOM. I  CAN´T WAIT TO GET YOUR RECIPES!!!

http://picsonlyforu.blogspot.com.es/2010/09/awesome-sandwiches.html

Best Job | P&G London 2012 Olympic Games Film

This Procter and Gamble commercial intends to honour everything mums do to help their children succeed in life. With the background of the London 2012 Olympics, it shows some of the mothers behind Olympic athletes.

It looks like the perfect way to pay tribute to mums on Mother's Day.

Hi sweetie

It’s time to wake up.

Time to get up baby.

Come on, up you get.

C’mon I’ll make you breakfast.

The hardest job in the world,

is the best job in the world.

Thank you, Mom.

PHONETIC PAIRS

HELLO AGAIN!

THIS IS A FANTASTIC WEBSITE FOR YOU TO PRACTICE PHONETIC PAIRS. YOU JUST NEED
 TO ROLL THE CURSOR OVER THE PICTURES TO HEAR THE SOUNDS.

http://www.shiporsheep.com/

A BIT OF REVISION

Hello people!
I found this wonderful presentation for you to review some of the grammar points you have studied this year so far. I think this helps!

http://www.slideshare.net/laurajim21/revision-elementary-grammar

El blog para aprender inglés: Audios índice

Hello guys! I found this wonderful blog from another teacher of English and she has lots of podcasts that you can download and listen. Scripts are included and also the translations. You do not need to read the translations but they are there.
I hope this is useful!

El blog para aprender inglés: Audios índice:

'via Blog this'

LIPDUB SONG

HELLO GUYS, THIS IS A VIDEO WITH THE SONG THAT WE ARE GOING TO USE FOR THE LIPDUB VIDEO. HAVE A LOOK AT IT AND REMEMBER, WE ARE GOING TO RECORD OUR PART ON MARCH, 26TH, RIGHT AFTER YOUR CLASS. 

I´M SO EXCITED I CAN´T WAIT!

SIMPLE PAST OF REGULAR VERBS

Hello again!

In this video you can review the rules for the pronunciation of the past simple for regular verbs. Good listening practice to help you with your productions. Enjoy!

DANCING QUEEN

Hello my people!
Here you have a really good website to practice your training for St. Patrick´s karaoke. I have selected Abba´s Dancing Queen. You have to write the words in the gaps as you listen to the song. Great practice! Have fun!

http://www.lyricstraining.com/play/7722/abba/dancing_queen 

WHO, WHO´S AND WHOSE

The MacMillan Dictionary language tips are a really helpful learning tool for English language learners. Their weekly tips draw our attention to very specific areas of difficulty in both vocabulary and grammar.

In this tip, they want to show us the difference between who, who's (= who is or who has), whose (=possessive pronoun).

Elearn Language learning also offers some explanations and gives some more examples.

Languageguide.org mainly focuses on the difference between who and whose, but their great asset is that they offer recorded audio files of all the examples.

University of Bristol allows us to do an online exercise to discrimate between Who's or Whose.

UNCHAINED MELODY

Hello class,
please look at this video to check your answers from the exercises we did in class!
Happy St. Valentine's and happy singing!

UNCHAINED MELODY BY THE RIGHTEOUS BROTHERS

CAN AND CAN'T

The pronunciation of can and can't is probably the best 
example of the difficulties of English pronunciation for Spanish people. The pronunciation of this (modal-auxiliary) verb presents these features:

- Pronunciation of  difficult individual sounds / æ / and /ə/ in can, /ɑ:/ in can't.

- Variations in the way the verbs are pronounced, depending on their position in the sentence: We only pronounce can as / kæn / in short answers, or at the end of a sentence or before a pause, or for emphasis:

A: Can you swim? B: Yes, I can. / kæn / (short answer)
A: Can you have it for Friday? B: I think I can, but I need ... / kæn / (before a pause)
A: Sue can't swim, she's too young. B: Of course she can swim. / kæn / (emphasis)
Can you come at six? /kən/
I can run faster than you. /kən/

- Ellision of sounds: the "t" in can't is very often not pronounced; the "a" in can is very often not pronounced when it is pronounced /ə/ .

- Stress: can't is always stressed, so speakers know if a sentence is affirmative or negative because of the stress on can't, not because they hear "t": I can't go (both "can't" and "go" take the stress)
When can is pronounced /kən/ is always unstressed, and the stress falls on the main verb: I can go. (only "go" takes the stress).

For Spanish speakers it is very difficult not to give stress to any words in a sentence, as our language gives the same stress to all the words. Consequently, when we use can in conversation it is sometimes very difficult for listeners to know if the sentence is affirmative (can) or negative (can't).

There are two tricks we can use to pronounce can in an unstressed position:

1) Omit the vowel sound and pronounce can quickly: I can go to the cinema  / ai kn 'gəu /
2) Make can part of the subject, as if they were the same word: I can go to the cinema / aikn 'gəu /

To complete the study of this difficult pronunciation point, you can watch these two videos from Accentworkshop.com. The first one is about the pronunciation of can, and the second about the pronunciation of can't.

MORE PRESENT SIMPLE EXERCISES

Hello guys? How are you doing? I hope you´re having a terrific weekend!

Please click on this link:

http://www.perfect-english-grammar.com/simple-present-exercises.html

to do some more exercises on the present tense. It's good review for your upcoming exam! You can do all of them, except for the last section

EASY CONVERSATIONS

Easy conversations for beginners offers elementary students (Básico 1 and Básico 2) the possibility of listening to dozens of short dialogues on everyday topics. 

The topics include daily life, school life, transportation, entertainment, dating, at the restaurant, sports, safety, travel, jobs, food, shopping, housing, vote and health.

http://www.eslfast.com/easydialogs/index.html

I would like to suggest this way of studying:

• Choose a dialogue.
• Listen to it.
• Look up any words or expressions you don't know.
• Listen to it, paying careful attention to pronunciation, and replaying words and sentences as often as necessary.
• Shadow-read: Try and read at the same pace as the recorded voices.
• Read the dialogue yourself.