Expressing Agreement and Disagreement

Here you have some links with a collection of expressions. Go to these pages:

• http://www.englishclub.com/speaking/agreeing-disagreeing-expressions.htm
• a long page:http://www.myenglishpages.com/site_php_files/communication-lesson-agreement-disagreement.php#.UqhGiPTuLh4
• from BBC Learning English: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/business/talkingbusiness/unit2meetings/3agreedisagree.shtml 

Comparative and Superlative Forms

Although we've already seen this grammar point in class, let's see some links to practise and to get a clear idea. The links are:

• a simple one to start with: http://www.eflnet.com/tutorials/advcompsup.php
• an American page but quite clear: http://www.learnamericanenglishonline.com/Yellow%20Level/Y22_Comparative_Adverbs.html
• this site is for English children so the level of grammar is rather high: http://www.k12reader.com/comparative-adverbs/

Interested in personality?

In the previous lesson we dealt with personality. Here you have some information about your Chinese zodiac, so you can see if it works with you. Go to this link and then click on your sign; click here.

Here you have another test in which you should use vocabulary related to personality; click here

Impoving your writing

I've just found a link with some help for writing. The author is a teacher called Jennifer, who has a blog and a webpage for learning English, and I think it's worth a visit but be patient because it takes time to see all the videos. If you are interested, go to this link by clicking here

Another long, deep explanation about how to write in English is in the following site but I think it's a bit difficult for your level of English but it's useful if you need to write in English for academic purposes or for business; click here

This last web page has quite a lot of information about rules for writing (spelling, capital letters, etc) but it's rather extended but if you are interested here you have the link

Don't worry too much about these links; they are here to help you. But remember it's better to write little by little, hand out compositions regularly and keep them to see what mistakes are the most common ones when you write and try to avoid them.

Remember I'm there, in clas,s to help you so ask me as much as you like or you need.
See you!

Conditionals in songs

Conditional sentences are very dificult to be used so why don't you try to do it funnier using music? Here you have some examples as a karaoke but once you can understand it go to the official (or without lyrics) and try to recognise the words again:

·        What if – Coldplay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbACFMBufhk 2nd type+could

·        What if – Ashly Tisdale: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKFvxxrN08&feature=fvwrel conditionals (1^st-2^nd)

·        What if - Kate Winslet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsMo8UuB8XQ 2nd type conditional

Once you’ve tried a couple of times these versions with lyrics, try the official video without words, like the official one of the actress Kate Winslet and you’ll see how well you can understand the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=_vId_4r925o

Here you have a similar chart to the one I wrote on the board (from this site on the internet:http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/grammar/if.htm) :

type	if clause	main clause
0-general conditional I-possible conditional	Simple Present	will-future (or Modal + infinitive) or present
II- improbable or hypothetical conditional	Simple Past	would + infinitive * (simple conditional)
III- impossible conditional (regrets)	Past Perfect	would + have + past participle * (perfect conditional)

If you want to practise with conditionals, here you have some explanations with exercises to do:

exercise 1      exercise 2        exercise 3
These exercises are a bit funnier; go to this link for first conditional and here for second conditional

Countable and uncountable. Quantifiers (NI1)

If you want to practise with countable and uncountable nouns, go to these pages to practise:

• http://esl.about.com/od/grammarlessons/a/l_countable.htm
• http://www.esl-lounge.com/student/grammar/2g41-quantifiers-gap-fill.php
• http://www.learn4good.com/languages/evrd_grammar/quantifier.htm
• http://www.englishclub.com/esl-quizzes/grammar-3-quantifiers.htm

Present perfect simple and continuous

We have been working with present perfect and present perfect continuous. Here you have some exercises to work with:

• FOR/SINCE: click here    or   here
• Present perfect: grammar explanation here
• Present perfect continuous: explanation and exercise
• Present perfect simple/present perfect continuous: explanation and exercises at the end. Other exercises are here  and here

How to practise reading skills

Reading is a usuful tool to improve your vocabulary, to fix grammar structures and to enrich your English. Here you have some web pages for reading; have a look and choose the level which matches better with yours.

• http://www.englishclub.com/reading/short-stories.htm : dialogues with current English. It has exercises and there are different levels.

• http://www.manythings.org/e/reading.html :a very singular page with a lot of readings, from signals to original short stories (with mp3) and much more. Quite interesting and complete. American English.

• http://www.world-english.org/stories.htm :original short stories. Not very appealing because they are word documents, without audio or exercises.

• http://www.short-stories.co.uk/: a list of short stories in original British English, without audio.

• http://www.miguelmllop.com/stories/: it’s a list of short stories for reading. There is another page with a list of reading comprehension exercises: http://www.miguelmllop.com/practice/intermediate/readingcomprehension/readingcompindex.htm

• http://www.eslflow.com/readinglessonplans.html : a page with a lot of materials for reading. Links with newspapers, short stories, etc. You can also find worksheets and exercises.

I hope you'll find enough to read. Try to be constant with your reading and use the audio after reading the text, not before.

See you in class!

Listening News

If you want to develop your listening skills here you have a link with a lot of listenings and with exercises. You can practise with both accents, American and British English; click here

There is also another page for learning English through the news in BBC Learning English; it's quite good for increasing your vocabulary. You have the piece of news with the words and with the audio so you can also practise listening comprehension; click here

If you prefer American English here you have a similar page for learning English called Voice of America. To go to the general page click here but I recommend to go to the news so click here

To finish with and if you are interested in knowing what's going on in the world, here you have a page with many links to newspapers and news; click here

See you in class!

That's English!: unit 3

This unit es about Life in Future. Here you have a summary about the use of future tenses. 

• FUTURE TENSES:

• I’m having dinner with Kim --- arrangements, for sure; connected to Spanish present tense; the present simple is also used for future but only when it's something fixed like the train leaves at 7 pm
• I’m going to have dinner with Kim --- plans, intention, quite sure predictions

I want to have dinner with Kim

• I’ll have dinner with Kim --- a possibility, predictions, sudden decisions
  
  
  If you want to work with these tenses you can use these exercises: 
  
  
  exercise 1 exercise 2 exercise 3 exercise 4 
  
  
  
  
  Here you have a link with a lot of materials; click here 

  
  

  To finish with, here you have two songs we saw in class about future:

  
  

  When I'm 64 by The Beatles and Everybody wanna live your life by Mika
   
  
  

Increasing vocabulary

Here you are the exercises we did in class about adjectives ending in -ed or -ing. The exercise we did is here if you want to do it again on your own; click HERE. If you need more practice, here you are some more exercises:

• exercise 1   exercise 2    exercise 3

We also worked with vocabulary of food so here you are some exercises:

• list of food  -  an exercise to work with your children - list with drawings

Coming back to school!

Hello everybody! Here we are again after holidays. Are you eager to start? I am! It'll be nice to see you again or to meet new students. 

This shool year we are going to use this blog to do some practice or for further info about the topics we're dealing with at class. Let me tell you I have intermediate students in both programmes, the official one and  That's English!  Although I'll indicate which students should use each post in this blog the rest of the students are welcome to use it as well.

But let's start with something nicer... at least for me. Here you are a really good song with lyrics to refresh your English. I hope you'll enjoy it. Click HERE

See you at class!

That's English! Module 6 - unit 1: Expressing preferences+ expressing likes and dislikes

In unit 1 the topic is about holiday and the grammar prompt is expressing preferences with structures such as:

• prefer + -ing form or + to+ infinitive 
•  would raher + infinitive (without to)

To get a clearer idea, go to this link for further info and click here for practice and here or here

About likes and dislikes, this is a topic we usually have among the ones of the first level and we don't revise later, but we should. Let's have a look to these two videos to see this topic and check it is not so easy as we could think:

• expressing likes
• expressing dislikes

Pay attention to the relationship with verbs followed by -ING form. In this group you can find: like, dislike, hate, fancy, feel like, adore, love, enjoy or the expression don't mind.

I hope you'll find this useful. See you in class!

Going shopping

I know this sounds ridiculous but sometimes we don't revise typical situations we are supposed to have learnt and we don't improve them properly. I'd like you to have a look to these videos to see and check what you already know and what you can improve by adding expressions, vocabulary or just taking into account that this is American English instead of British. Here you have the links:

• buying shoes; click here
• buying clothes; click here
• some common expressions; click here

Anyway, I hope it'll be useful.
See you in class!

An interesting link to work with

One of my students gave me this link to work with videos, music, and so on in English. It is graded so you can choose what you need. I hope it'll be useful. See you.
http://www.multimedia-english.com/contenidos/busqueda

No longer, any longer and still - SO/SUCH .... THAT

The other day in the class of That's English! for intermediate level we saw these forms. Here you have some exercises to practise:

• No longer (with possitive verbs), any longer (with negative ones) and still (when you keep on with the same situation): exercise 1     exercise 2   
• We only saw the form she's so tall that se could play basketball, but there is another possibility with such; here you have a tutorial and at the end you'll find exercises. Click here 
•  If you want to visit this old post of my other blog about conditionals, you should go to this link
•  A student asked me where she could find more exercises about cloze test and here you have a good link with different topics and levels; click here

Just to finish with, here you have the video for the song If I were a rich man; go to this link

See you next week!

British versus American English (module 7-unit 2)

Here you are some practice to see the difference between American and British English. Although the text we use is British, the influence of American English is getting more and more spread all over the world, especially thanks to the internet. Let's have a look the main differences:

• Vocabulary: here you have an exercise with a list of words. Click here
• This is a list of exercises with both kinds of English. Go to this page
• The British Council has this exercise with a link. Click here
• This last link is pretty complete. Click this

If you want to practise with listening, here you have some links:

• this a video about both pronunciations and vocabulary. Your can click here or click  here
• this one is about vocabulary connected to cars 
• this is about the difference in general with a person showing the principal differences. Click here

Just for fun, here you have two more videos about American and British English; they are rather difficult but I think they worth a visit:

• Eddy Izzard's video
• Hugh Laurie's video

English language

This information will be helpful for That's English! students of module 7 - unit1. Here you have some information about English as a language:

• history of English: click here
• this link is about history as well, from the BBC
• this is a video about RP pronunciation: click here

See you in class!

Using YouTube to learn English

Here you have some videos to learn English. Some are series, some others are just for pleasure or funny and some others are for learning English especifically. Here you have some examples:

• Just for fun: what would happen if your friends acted as dogs or cats? Click here for the answer.
• For learning English: apart from the video bar you already have on the blog, you can find some people who have their own classes on the internet. Some examples:

1. Learning English with Misterduncan: watch this simple lesson about greetings but there are lots of lessons. He even has a channel for his videos.
2. Learning English with Jennifer: an American teacher with interessting vieos like this one about pronunciation of vowel sounds. There are loads of videos about grammar, pronunciation and so on.

There are plenty of videos in Youtube. You'll be able to find many if you use the topic or the tense and you add +ESL (English as a Second Language) on your serching.

See you!