myskypeenglishteacher

Wednesday, 14 February 2018

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.

Friday, 2 February 2018

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

Tuesday, 30 January 2018

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

Thursday, 25 January 2018

WEDNESDAY 24 JANUARY 2018

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

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/

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