That's English! - Module 9 - Unit 1: Time Goes By

In this unit we're going to work with idioms and expressions related to TIME. To start with you may go to this link with the most typical expressions and teh translation into Spanish: click here. However, I'm more interested in this link as it deals with idioms or idiomatic phrases: click here.
If you want to read an article about time, go to this link.
About the possible activities to do in class, here you have:
ACTIVITY 1
Answer these questions and compare your comments with your partner(s)

• When do you lose track of time?
• Do you ever feel that time is running out? Think of an example
• In which situations do you feel that time drags on and on?
• Discuss with your partner(s) ehen you'd like time to just stand still
• In which situations does time fly for you? When does it go really slowly?

ACTIVITY 2

On page 17 there is a good exercise to speak about how to manage your time, especially if you are a clock-watcher. If you've done this quiz, talk about the results: if you agree, what you do to better your time management, ways to improve it and so on.

ACTIVITY 3
Tell a story to your partner about a strange or unusual experience you had. Then swap roles and ask questions to get more details.

WRITING ACTIVITY
Use the previous activity and write the story taking into account the prompts given in exercise 7a and 7b in your book.

NI1 - 1B: Family Life

The topic of this lesson is family so we should revise the vocabulary. To do so, here you are a link for family members with the translation of every member into Spanish (click here) and here you are to do exercises
About the vocabulary of personality, here you are some pages to revise: click here with drawings and here with despcriptions and an example sentence.
This is a page for future tenses: click here and this is another one with a video: click here
Here you are a reading about how families have changed in UK, if you are interested in the topic: click here
This is the link for the song we saw in this lesson, Our House by Madness; but I prefer this one talkining about the generation gap: Father and Son by Cat Stevens, and this is a funny video about brotherhood: My Brother Taught Me How to Swim by Gravity Falls

NA1- 3B: Incredibly Short Stories

In this lesson a web page is mentioned and if you are interested in reading some more really short stories here you are the link: fiftywordstories.com
But you might prefer something a bit different, with audio included. In that case you can use this link with many titles and many are for free: http://www.learnoutloud.com/Catalog
Apart from this, we've been working with adverbs and adverbial phrases. Here you have some links just in case you want to work with them.

• a long list but without grammar explanation: click here
• a good explanation and clear list but with no exercises: click here

Welcome to this new year!

Hello everybody!
Sorry for starting with the entries of the blog so late but I`ve been really busy.
Here we are this new year (2015-2016) so special for us. We are celebrating the 25th anniversary of our school and we want you to join us in the celebration.
A new year means new projects, new goals, new activities and so on, and that sounds appealing, doesn't it? But not everything is new. We still have the same textbooks as the ones we used the previous year; however, we will introduce new things to make it more interesting and to make it look different.
This video is a good summary of what we want to do this year:

Here you are a welcome present: a song by Radical Face. Click here
Looking forward to seeing you in class!

Holidays!

What's on? Are you enjoying your holiday? I hope so but as we usually have more free time during this wornderful period, why don't you try to improve your English?

This entry is to give you some tips about what you might do on holiday and how to spend some of your free time improving your English. Here you have some tips for the four skills:

READING - There are many texts on the internet to practise and you should try to read some books, texts or news to increase your vocabulary, to reinforce your grammar and to see models for your own writing. Here you are some useful links:

• NA1: you should use ofiginal versions or high level readings in order to improve your standards
• here you have American short stories with mp3; click here
• if you like sciences this is a link with short stories related to science: click here 
• NI1: you can find short texts here
• very short readings: http://www.rong-chang.com/qa2/
• quite easy but the stories have audio: http://www.eslyes.com

LISTENING

• NI1: some pages are
• from British Council: learnenglishteen
• many short listenings but not clear level: 5minuteenglish

WRITING

• For both levels: I've found this link but I don't know yet how it works, to be honest. Sounds good ands it's worth a try; http://lang-8.com/
• NA1: here you can find some tips for improving your formal writing, in particular for papers at university but also useful for learning English; click here
• NI1 (but also NA1): this is a page with recommendations about how to improve your writing. It has a lot of useful information; click here

SPEAKING

• This is page for improving your speaking skills similar to the one of writing; click here
• Speak as much as possible: meeting people (on holiday there are many more chances of doing it); use general topics and say your opinion about it or use the examples of That's English! in this same blog if you like; record your speaking with your computer, your mobile..., and use songs or readings with CD for practising by imitation.

If you want to practice with general exams you could go to these links: 

• NI1: http://www.examenglish.com/CEFR/b2.htm
• NA1: http://www.examenglish.com/CEFR/C1.htm

I hope this will be useful for all of you and for those who have to sit the exam in September, check your grades at CENTROSNET, at the EOI page and your dates for the exams. See you at school in September! Hve fun!

NI1 - Preparing the final exam

One of my colleagues at school has a really good bloog and he has many exercises to revise for the final exam. The link is here
If you want to practise with some other skills, here you are some tips to help you:

• speaking: the best way is revising the speaking parts on the textbook and you should record your performance to see what problems you have: speed, entonation, vocabulary, gaps, etc.
• writing: mind the topic, write a short draft to organise your ideas, pay attention to the structure (introduction - at least 2 main paragraphs - conclusion or ending) - keep in mind variety of structures - last cheking  (read your composition and revise spelling and typical mistakes).
• reading: this link has a lot of reading exercises but go to PET an if you find them easy you can practise with FCE.
• listening: apart from the usual useful links you have, here you are one more; click here and look for your level.

Other exercises we did in class and could help your are:

• say/tell: click here and here
• verbs followed by infinitive or gerund: click here and here

NI1 -Lesson 9B: Quantifiers

We've worked with quantifiers in class. Here you have a couple of pages to work on this topic:
exercise 1    exercise 2    exercise 3
Here you are the funny story of Nobody, Somebody, Everybody and Anybody; click here
This exercise is to see separble and unseparable verbs with particle; click here. But if you want to know the general rule, click here.