WEEK 14 17th March - 23rd March 2014

Hi dear students

How are you? Now that you have finished your exams, let’s focus on going on learning a little bit more. We are still on “learning a language”. In previous classes we discussed why it is important to learn a language. In this class we discussed how to learn a language:

going abroad was top-ranked answer, followed by talking, listening and watching films.

We had the continuation of the exercise on word formation. We will go on working more on that.

We did a long listening full of new words about British people learning languages. Do you remember the second most spoken one? Yes, exactly, Polish. I´m posting the link for you to listen to it again. If you click on the link below it will take you to the BBC Learning English page, to see the script and to listen to the audio click on the top right-hand corner (downloads: audio and text). Then you will be able to listen to it again, which I recommend you.

Learn 1000 words

Then we had a quiz: how good are you at language learning ?. All of you had high marks so let’s practise the idea of learning a language and review vocabulary.

HOMEWORK:

1. FINISH THE EXERCISES ON THE EXAM. BRING THEM TO NEXT CLASS.
2. RECORD YOURSELF ON YOUR MOBILE: PRACTISE SAYING THE VERBS IN PAST FROM LAST POST.
3. GO THROUGH THE LISTENING WE HAD IN CLASS, REVIEW NEW VOCABULARY AND EXPRESSIONS.
4. TWO EXERCISES ON WORD FORMATION, CLICK THE FOLLOWING LINK.

WORD FORMATION EXERCISES

WEEK 13 10th - 16th March 2014

Hello students,

How are you?

Today we have missed Samuel, I hope to see you in next session. Good luck with your exams, guys.

Let’s review what we have seen in the class today.

We have seen the tests and I hope you have learned from them. As homework we have to take the test again and see if we can understand the difference between future continuous, perfect and perfect continuous.

We went on with the topic: “learning a foreign language”, we read some quotations and decided which was the one we agree most and we discussed them. We have some micromoments in which you, students, built on each other’s responses, I loved and love that, it was really interesting how you defended your opinions. Well done.

We have talked about the reasons of learning a foreign language: we have to decide about the order of some statements given. Sergio and Mario did it pretty quick. You agree with each other’s order of importance. We talked about the difference between being “knowledgeable” and “wise”. It was an interesting discussion.

We also had a look on word formation, doing an exercise in which you had to decide which word was the correct one and how to form it from the roots given. We will have to do more exercises on word formation, it will help you to enrich your vocabulary.

I pointed out the importance of phonetics and we have seen in detail how to pronounce the /t/, /d/ /id/ in past. We saw the difference between voiced and unvoiced consonants and we had a pronouncing session of past regular verbs. We also did the exercise I posted on the last blog. We also saw some common verbs and their difference in pronunciation: “walk”, “work”; “love”, “laugh”.

I’m posting you a link in which you can actually listen to the correct sound and link it to the phoneme: 

phonemic chart

We end up with a game in which you have to pick the correct ending to a given starter to review some modals: ought to, need to, should, shouldn’t and structures like “want to”

I hope you have a good week, good luck with your exams. See you next Monday.

WEEK 12 3rd - 9th March 2014

Hello students,

How are you? 

Today we have seen some new traveling compounds and also “normal” adjective with extreme ones:

Hot-boiling

Big-enormous, gigantic

Nice-delicious

Small-tiny

Tired-exhausted

Cold-freezing

Bad-awful

Dirty-filthy

Old-ancient

And some more, then we had the opposites, just to review some vocabulary.

We corrected homework: rephrasing sentences with comparatives. We stopped at the structure: the more you pay attention in class, the more you should learn. We will see this structure next class.

Then, we have a test to review what we have learned through last month, in February and also I wanted to make sure you went through all we have seen in class.

We have started a new lesson: “learning a foreign language” we talked about “why it is important to learn a foreign language?” and we have seen how to express purpose through an infinitive: “You learn a language to communicate with others.”

We had some examples with /-t/, /-d/ and /-id/ in past simple. We pronounced some regular verbs and you will have some exercises to practise: 

FIRST EXERCISE.

Place these verbs in the right column and bring it to next class:

helped, stuffed, laughed, missed, fished, marched, objected, looked, fixed, diced, stayed, grabbed, exited, hugged, saved, oozed, pleased, lied, freed, honored, peeled, signed, resumed, breathed, massaged, decided, tasted,

/-t/,                                                            /-d/                                                              /-id/

SECOND EXERCISE.

Record yourself in your mobile phone. The topic today is your everyday life in past to practise the regular endings.

THIRD EXERCISE

Try the exercise on word formation on the page about “learning a foreign language”.

FOURTH EXERCISE

Check this video on the pronunciation of regular verbs in past simple: regular past simple and please pronounce the verbs with the video.

Hope you have a nice week!!!, see you on Monday!!!!

Sonia