FRIDAY FEBRUARY 16 2018

We learnt some words for talking about education on Page 28 of PET Result.
You can put the words into different sub categories as we did before with the holidays and travel words.
A good way to learn new words is to practise describing a photo.

When describing a photo you can think of different elements.

You can find them here.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1_B2HZ_bIsleU15QlFXakhKSFE/view?usp=sharing

To learn how to talk about position in a photograph see this document, pages 3 and 4

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1_B2HZ_bIslMUNSTUZkc2lwcms/view?usp=sharing

For more information on how to describe a photo see PET Result Page 28, Speaking exercises 1 to 3.

You describe what the people are wearing, what they are holding and what they are doing. You can use the present continuous., formed by 

am/is/are (not)  + verb +  ing

The students are doing research.
One boy is raising his hand.

Try the Grammar exercises on the Present simple and present continuous on Page 27 of PET Result.

We can also use the present continuous to talk about tendencies in society, when things increase, decrease or stay the same.

See here for more examples.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1_B2HZ_bIslZllEaXhZWDR5bzQ/view?usp=sharing

Use these pictures to describe other trends in society.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1_B2HZ_bIslTno2RlJPcXQ5VFk/view?usp=sharing

For homework try the writing exercise on Page 29.

WEDNESDAY 14 FEBRUARY 2018

There are couples or sets of words that we usually put together like 'fast food' or 'science fiction'. Knowing these can help you to sound more natural in English.

For more information see here

Collocations | EnglishClub

Breakingnewsenglish.com. is a website that everyday publishes an article about something in the news - current affairs, the environment, culture. There are many exercises that can help you learn new words and expressions and very useful to prepare for the PET and FCE exams.

You can find the article here

https://breakingnewsenglish.com/1405/140513-teenagers.html

Scroll down and look for the PHRASE MATCH that can help you to learn the new words in the article.

It is important to know many different ways of saying the same thing for the Cambride exams, because you need to paraphrase questions to find the answers easier.

Some words just naturally go together, like for example fast food, some verbs are followed by prepositions and the next exercise Phrase match can help you with that.

One exercise on the site, Language cloze, is typical in both the PET and the FCE exams.

There is a test with some gaps and you have to chose the right word to complete the phrase.

It is a good idea to follow this method.

1. First read the text and think what word you would use to fill the gap.

2. Read the options and choose the answer that correspons most to yours.

Practise more here

http://www.flo-joe.co.uk/preliminaryenglish/vocabulary/pet-collocations.htm

FRIDAY 9 FEBRUARY 2018

Today we talked about different free time activities and the best way to do them and chose the most appropriate solution for people with different needs. This is a good way to practise giving opinions, agreeing and disagreeing, focusing on relevant information in a text, skimming and scanning and paraphrasing.

We started with the Lead in exercise on Page 24 of PET Result.

To do this exercise it can be useful to know some fixed phrases for giving your opinion, agreeing and disagreeing.

You can find some phrases here

http://www.vocabulary.cl/Lists/Opinions.htm

An alternative to the Cambridge exams are Trinity. The Trinity GESE is a speaking exam, so it can be a good way to start if you haven't done any exams in the past.

At B2 level, there is a part where the examiner explains a situation or problem and you have to ask questions to understand the situation better and then make comments.

An example is this

In this task, I’ll start by telling you something. You’ll have to ask me questions to find out more information and make comments. It’s your responsibility to maintain the conversation. Are you ready?

My friend and I would like to do a hobby together in our free time, but are finding it difficult to agree on what to do.

You can find more examples here

http://www.trinitycollege.com/site/?id=3108

Then we did a reading exercise in PET Result on Page 25 on Adult Education. This exercise corresponds to the second part of the reading test.

WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 7 2017

Today we just did lots of practice for speaking! Ask me for the worksheets and for another book for exam practice!

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 2 2017

Today we did a true or false exercise about a holiday in Thailand.

To do this kind of exercise it is a good idea to first underline the key words in the text and think of synonyms and antonyms, that is words that express a similar or an opposite meaning. Then you can look for these words in the text.

Thinking about synonyms, or paraphrasing is a good way to explain the meaning of an unknown word but is  also very important in the Cambridge exams and a good way to expand your vocabulary.

http://esl.about.com/od/learningtechniques/a/Synonyms-Antonyms-ESL.htm

We applied the same technique for listening.

Ask me for the audio files and transcripts for the book.

WEDNESDAY 31 2018

How do you learn new words?

To improve your English it is important to learn new words. To remember new words it is important to be organised. Putting words into categories according to subject or word type can help you to find the words again, and memorize them through word association.

Try to put these words into categories and then add more words to each category.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1_B2HZ_bIsleURIQlM2SUI0SG8/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1_B2HZ_bIslWVBYbzZkRlpGRW8/view?usp=sharing

You can do this in a list form or in a more visual way, like this example with travel.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1_B2HZ_bIslazd5c1ZFX0pTN0k/view?usp=sharing

We did an example together with the subject 'Holidays and Travel'.

For the PET exam there is are lists of vocabulary that you should know. You can find them here.

http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/images/84669-vocabulary-list.pdf

For FCE and other exams, there is no list, but the following books can help you to increase your vocabulary in some common areas.

PET - https://ymerleksi.wikispaces.com/file/view/Check+your+vocab+for+PET+Book.pdf

FCE - http://vk.com/doc243798239_300780464 

CAE - http://www.e4thai.com/e4e/images/pdf/Test%20Your...Vocabulary%204%20(Upper-Inter%20to%20CAE)%20-%2049p.pdf

IELTS - http://www.ycdc.gov.mm/download.php?pdffile=ebook-13

Here you can find a vocabulary list per CEFR level.

http://www.englishprofile.org/wordlists

FRIDAY 26 JANUARY

Listening can be the most difficult skill. It is important to practice as much as possible.

A great website to help you with this is listenaminute.com

On this website you can find 500 small texts in conversational English. These texts can help you to improve your pronunciation and identify common words and phrases that mother tongue natives use. Learning and copying these can both help you to sound more natural in English.

In the lesson we looked at one the texts about travelling.

http://www.listenaminute.com/t/travelling.html

Here you can the worksheets we used.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1_B2HZ_bIslTGNaUVpfUEttTWM/view?usp=sharing

In the text we looked at you can find many verbs expressing likes and dislikes. 

See here for more

http://www.myenglishpages.com/site_php_files/communication-lesson-likes-dislikes.php

You can also mark the text to remember some important aspects of pronunciation, in particular word stress and sentence stress. For more information on this see

https://www.englishclub.com/pronunciation/

Use these discussion questions to think about your experience of travelling

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1_B2HZ_bIsldG9tbzJXQkRCMHM/view?usp=sharing