Sunday, 30 October 2016

26 October 2016 18/20

What are the questions you can ask someone when you meet them for the first time?

1. Are you married?

2. What  is your name / surname / nationality / address / telephone number / postcode?

Where are you from?

How old are you?

Here we have two different types of questions

1. Questions that require the answer yes / no
2. Questions that require more information in the answer

For type 1. we just invert the subject and the verb.

You are married - affirmative
Are you married - question

Remember to repeat the verb in the answer

Yes I am

No I am not

For type 2. add the question word first

Where are you from?

You can practice these forms using a great grammar book, Essential Grammar in Use

http://vk.com/doc8069473_207129479?hash=94cd970d0d980ac461&dl=5a539c9622c51a9bc2



26 OCTOBER 2016 16/18

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 listenminute.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.


Here you can the worksheets we used.


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

See here for more


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



Use these discussion questions to think about your experience of travelling



Monday, 24 October 2016

24 0ctober 2016 - 18 - 20

Last lesson we looked at some fixed phrases to use when we have our lesson or when you meet someone for the first time.

But that is the easy part. After that you need to continue the conversation. A good way to do that is to ask questions on personal information. The exercises here can help you learn some important words and questions.

https://sirteachenglish.wikispaces.com/file/view/M01_LPD_WKS_GLB_5650_PDA.pdf

You may have to spell or ask for the spelling of some words. To do this you can use the police or international alphabet.

http://www.englishgratis.com/1/risorse/corsodibase/0-scheda-spellingtelefono.htm

Here are some common acronyms

http://reallifeglobal.com/acronyms/

Can you spell them?

Here are some tips for reading website and email addresses

http://www.londonschool.com/language-talk/language-tips/signs-and-symbols/






24 0CTOBER 2016 16- 18

A good way to continue a conversation is to ask questions. We listened to two conversations to find examples of subjects to talk about when you first meet someone.


Here is the tapescript for the audio file


Ask me for a copy of the audio file.

We added more questions and then practised asking familiar questions.

Answering familiar questions are the part of the Cambridge speaking tests.

Revise the grammar in this grammar book, Units 2 + 7


Listening is very difficult. On English club you can find many dictation exercises that start from short phrases and questions. These can help you to understand the difference between how words are pronounced and how they are written.

https://www.englishclub.com/listening/dictations-short.htm

Englishclub also has some excellent information on pronunciation



19 OCTOBER 2016 - 16 - 18

Italian and English are two very different languages, so is a good idea to recognise phrases that mother tongue people use in certain situations and copy them, just like children do. This is the best way to sound natural and avoid translation. To start we looked at some expressions that you can learn by heart to use automatically when we meet for our lessons

Try to match the questions to the answers

1. Good afternoon
2. Sorry I'm late
3. I'm...
4. Come in
5..Have seat
6. Thank you
7. How are you?
8.  Goodbye
9. See you later
10. Have a good evening


A. See you
B. Don't worry
C. Thank you
D. You're welcome
E. You too
F. Nice to meet you
G. I'm fine thanks
H. Thank you
I. Good afternoon
J. Bye

For more phrases to use in Social situations, see here

http://yasemintasbasi.jimdo.com/english-resources/social-expressions/

To introduce yourself, use 'I'm ....' and 'Nice to meet you'.

You can also learn these phrases by watching TV in English. Look at these clips. How do they introduce others?

https://youtu.be/NeEJhW0_gqA

To learn more phrases to use when you meet someone for the first time see here



Here you can listen to some phrases - https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1_B2HZ_bIslbnJJQTI4VXAxWTg/edit?usp=sharing







17 OCTOBER 2016






Welcome to our course. I am sure we will do a good job together.

You can find the Initial Test we did here

 http://www2.klett.de/sixcms/media.php/229/EnglishUnlimited_All_TeachersGuide_EB.pdf

 It is important to listen to and read English as much as possible.
Here are some useful websites for practising.

www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish
www.breakingnewsenglish.com
www.listenaminute.com
www.esllab.com
http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/
http://www.manythings.org/
www.elllo.org
http://www.englishclub.com/learn-english.htm
www.englishpage.com


Here you can find a very useful grammar book

Here is the elementary version

https://vk.com/doc8069473_202956457?hash=5ce925651868f7ad3c&dl=aa922cf229371819a9

and here is the intermediate version

https://vk.com/doc8069473_207129479?hash=94cd970d0d980ac461&
 dl=5a539c9622c51a9bc2