B2.1 - Narrative tenses

In lesson 3A we are working with narrative tenses. The tenses we saw are simple past, past continuous and past perfect, used for telling a story, an anecdote or something that happened to you.
There are many exercises to practise with them and here you are some of them:

• a short story talking about a personal experience: click here
• this is another text in order to use narrative tenses: click here
• and another one: click here
• these are very similar exercises but past perfect continuous is included: click here and here

As I told you in class, it's very important to practise with pronunciation for past, not only with irregular verbs but regular -ED ending as well. Here you are a very interesting link with some information about this topic: click here

If you want to practise with phrasals, here you are some exercises:

• exercise 1: you can choose the level and then go further to improve your knowledge
• a video to explain phrasal verbs: click here
• this other video talks about phrasal versus prepositional verbs: click here and this is another example

As this lesson is about relationships, here you are a funny video with informal English with phrasal verbs which are not the ones you're used to:

• To gross out - to pick on you - to hang out - to find out

To watch the video about to have a crush on somebody song children, click here 

Hope this will be helpful. 

Happy Halloween (31st October)

If you want to know about Halloween, here you are the link to wikipedia: click here. Another posibility is to hear (or read) this introduction (especially for NI1) to the topic: click here. Here you have some funny activities just in case you are interested in the topic:

INTERMEDIATE LEVEL:

• a short video with vocabulary of the topic; click here or this one
• a video about the history of Halloween: click here and also here

ADVANCE LEVEL:

• some idioms about "dead": click here
• if you want to know something about this festivity related to history, go to this link or to this alternative one
• this link is rather difficult but it's quite interesting, with ghost stories and videos with the text below, so you can use them for both reading and for listening; click here

This is an exercise of listening. Although they say it is for advanced students, there is a simpler version. Have a try and click here.

If you have children, there are lots of sites on the internet to get ideas. These are a couple of them:

• http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/category/topics/halloween : a page for learning English for children.
• http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/halloween: a page for activities and crafts with children
• these are very simple songs for children: click here or here. This song is with a skeleton but it helps children to revise parts of the body; click here
• some jokes about Halloween: click here

But Halloween is famous for its parties, which are not only for kids but also for adults. If you are thinking of organising a party you might visit these sites:

• For adults: you have this or this
• For kids: this is one and this is another one

I hope to be helpful for all of you. Have fun and enjoy Halloween!

Preparing and writing stories for Halloween

One of the most typical things in Halloween is to tell horror stories, something scary, spooky. Sometimes the story is really short, like the ones you can find on this site, but if you really like this sort of stories here you have a page which includes many of this kind; click here

There is going to be a competition of scary tales in class. If you want to take part, write a spooky story no longer than 150-200 words. Here you have some help to do it:

• a PDF with questions to help you with the story: click here
• this is another link with steps to be followed while to write your spooky story: click here

Good luck for everybody!

B2.1 - Present perfect simple and continuous

Let's practise these forms we've already seen in class with some exercises:

• write the correct form: here you have a long explanation of grammar and an exercise with 15 sentences to fill in with the correct form.
• this video is worth a visit: it's a native teacher explaining with examples the difference among different verbal forms related to present and past. You'll like it. Pay attention to the fact that this teacher has a lot of videos on YouTube about gammar, vocabulary, etc.
• some more exercises
• on this page you can find some exercises at the bottom. Try to do them to practise.

I hope you'll enjoy doing these exercises. See you in class.

B2.1 - Work

In unit 2 we dealt with job interviews and we saw 2 videos in class but there are more as you can see:

• Some tips to be successful in a job interview: click here
• This video is about soft skills: click here

You also have these listening exercises to practise: click here for the first one and this is the other one

B2.1 - unit 2: Present Perfec and Past Simple

Present Perfect

• it focuses on the result of the action and this result happens in the present time: I've already eaten, thank you.
• the reference of time is not precised and it usually means up to now: I've seen that fillm many times; I think I've seen you before.
• this tense usually goes with expressions like 
• EVER/NEVER;
• ALREADY/YET
• JUST
• FOR and SINCE.

Present Perfect Continuous

This is a tense that also connects past actions with the present time but it has the idea of a continuous action. For Spanish speakers it's very easy to translate to the expression "llevo haciendo eso durante/desde hace mucho tiempo" like in this example: I've been living here since 1998.

To see a further explanation you can go to this link; at the bottom of the plage you'll find some exercises like the one we did in class: click here

To practise with the use of FOR and SINCE go to this link

Past Simple

• it focuses on the past action; it's usually referred to memories or past events. The refence of time is quite clear so it goes with expressions such as : 
• (time)___ AGO; 
• LAST ____ ; 
• IN ___  ; 
• WHEN ____ , 
• YESTERDAY

Here you can find some useful links to practise with these tenses but the best way is to do it speaking:

• exercise 1     exercise 2  (explanation and exercise)    exercise 3    exercise 4

Remember how useful it's to refresh your knowledge of irregular verbs from time to time. As we did in class, you can do it in these ways, if you fancy:

• Alphabetical order: say as manu verbs as possible starting with letter...
• According to the pattern of the verb:
• A - A - A (the easiest pattern)
• A - B - B (the most frequent)
• A - B - C (mind the pronunciation!)
• A - B - A (not many)
• Topics:
• daily routines
• money
• learning
• senses

Listening practice

Here you are some exercises to work with:

• Inside Google's office: click here
• A filling the gaps exercise: look at this video
• Not exactly the topic but another kind of activity: click here