THURSDAY 28 JULY 2016

When you don't know or don't remember a word, you may need to explain what you mean in other words. This skill is useful in cases of misunderstandings. For this reason it is also an important element of English language exams.

You may know the game 'Taboo'. Playing this game can help you practise the skill of paraphrasing. You are given  a word on a card to explain to other players and you must do so without using the words on your card. You can play an online version here.

http://taboogame.net/?

When you do a reading exercise, you should first read the questions and try to explain it in different words. This will help you focus on the words you need to look for in the text. Try the reading exercise on Page 24 of PET Result. Highlight the key words in the questions and the corresponding answer in the text. This will help you to recognize the paraphrasing.

NAME	QUESTION	ANSWER	TEXT
Kaito	Ancient history	F	archaeology
	Two or three days		weekend
	With other people		Work as part of a team
Mario and Lucia	Creative together	D	Drama group
	regularly		On Mondays
	During the day		Between 12 and 2
Olivia	Very busy	A	When you have time
	At home		Online
	Artistic		draw
Michael	job	H	keeper
	Wildlife and nature		Animals, giraffe, cats
	Short course		For a day
	Useful experience		Work with a keeper
Ella	Loves socializing	C	party
	Friends over for dinner		Cook Japanese food
	In the evenings after work		Wednesdays and Fridays from 6pm – 9pm

WEDNESDAY JULY 27 2016

Before an important meeting or conversation, we can imagine what type of words or phrases we will hear, for example if you have an interview you can think about the questions the interviewer can ask you and you can prepare some answers. You can use the same skill for English.

Here you can read some information about how PREDICTION can help you to understand better.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1_B2HZ_bIslV0lLLW1nQnVQTWc/view?usp=sharing

You can try out this skill on listenaminue.com.

http://www.listenaminute.com/a/autumn.html

Before trying the listening gap fill exercise you can guess which words may be missing from the text based on your knowledge of the situation or of grammar and vocabulary.

Then compare your answers with the tape script. You will understand that it is not always neccesary to understand all the words to understand the general sense.

There are some interesting elements in the text including the use of 'such' and the expression 'one of the + superlative adjective + plural noun.

You can practise these structures here.

http://www.englishpage.com/minitutorials/sosuch.html

http://www.azargrammar.com/assets/beginning/BEGTeacher-CreatedWorksheets/Worksheets16/BEGCh16UsingOneOf+Superlative+PluralNoun.pdf

The weather and the seasons is a common conversation subject in Cambridge exams.

You can also learn more words related to weather.

http://esl.about.com/library/vocabulary/blwordgroups_weather.htm

And consider the questions here

http://simpleesl.com/esl-conversation-questions-weather-seasons/

You can practise predicting and then listening on  Page 41 of  PET Result, exercise 1 and 2.