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.

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. 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

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.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1_B2HZ_bIslS2h4V01BdFNySnc/view?usp=sharing

Here is the tapescript for the audio file

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1_B2HZ_bIslclcxMG5ScVNzUVU/view?usp=sharing

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

https://psv4.vk.me/c521512/u539443/docs/87be530ae9c2/Essential_Grammar_in_Use_by_Raymond_Murphy_Ed2.pdf?extra=w46Xldkh803pJpA618V0EJseNNBLpEFu5eiMzV8B3AZH61GpZoxhgiHt9-BVrS0_I6KJhTiZYoV8GgLMBFYRmMoEZdh4PnyUq50dVyQY

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

https://www.englishclub.com/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

Greetings power point - https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1_B2HZ_bIslamZwNkx2MGhoVDA/edit?usp=sharing

Greetings worksheet - https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1_B2HZ_bIslR0d4WDd4TW1JZlk/edit?usp=sharing

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

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.