Nice time saver to help you revise vocabulary or to spice up my lessons. ! In ESL Flashcards all the flashcards come in colour and in three different sizes ( one flashcard per page, two per page or nine per page ) and… they are free! Currently there are 968 total images and 2904 total flashcards. Enjoy this great resource!
Welcome to our I Recorded Short Story Contest. Open to all my students until May 31st!
Are you willing to try your hand at writing a short story in English and then reading it? 
This could be your chance to be internationally known; who knows who might be visiting the blog and listening to your stories and , well, you might end up being a well-known writer !!!
Yeah! I know !, Probably too far-fetched ! But ,what is undeniable is that this activity can help you improve writing and pronunciation, and this is what really matters!
As in every single contest of some importance , there are RULES. These are mine:
♥Entries must be in English
♥They must be recorded using the online tool Sound Cloud (Tutorial in Spanish , here)
♥Recording should last up to three minutes
♥Stories must be entirely your own work and must be previously unpublished
♥Only one entry per person
♥There is no set theme
♥Closing submission date: 31st May 13
♥Top three prizes to be determined
♥Winner will be announced the first week of June ,online and in this blog
HOW TO SUBMIT A SHORT STORY
♥First, you need to record yourself using SoundCloud.
♥Then , go to the comments section in this post
♥Write your full name
♥Write the name of your short story
♥In the Share box of your recording Copy/paste the link provided by soundcloud (starts with https)
Good luck !! Some pictures that might inspire you ,below!!!
I got this fantastic idea from the wonderful blog -MCargobe’s Blog-Room- written by a colleague from the EOI Valencia, which I highly recommend if you are willing to practise your English. Click here to see her blog.
Are you running out of time to test your students’ speaking ability? 
Are you a student and looking for an easy-to-use tool to send your teacher your speech? I’ve found the perfect tool for you! It is called SoundCloud and has been around for some time now ,so one can only assume that it is entirely reliable.
Sound Cloud is an amazing site which has a lot of potential for teaching and learning English. What can you do with SoundCloud? You can upload your own audio and you can record yourself. You are then given a unique url and the possibility to embed the audio in your own website or blog.
Why am I so enthusiastic about my students using SoundCloud? Because my students willl be able to send me their recordings and I will be able to correct them by inserting comments about their pronunciation, grammar…. directly into the recording and exactly at the exact second at which the mistake is made.
You need to register but it is completely free up to two hours ; then, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan or delete some of your recordings.
Below I’ve embedded a SoundCloud Recording to tempt you to try this useful tool!
Snow Patrol - You Could Be Happy [HD] by Cristina Cabal
Here’s a tutorial I found on the Internet which clearly explains how to upload and share your recording.
and now, for teachers, here’s a chopped tutorial from Princippia Innovación Educativa, about how to insert comments on a Souncloud Recording.
NewsinEnglish .com is an interesting site that can be very useful for the 
students as part of their autonomous learning and can also be used by teachers in the classroom.
The stories and news are written in three levels: Level 1 for beginners, Level 2 for intermediate students and Level 3 for more advanced students.
How can it be useful to my students?
♥They can listen and read to improve pronunciation
♥They can just Listen as many times as they feel necessary until they can understand all the words
♥They can Listen , make a summary of the story and then check
How can it be useful to me it?
♥As a Listening Comprehension either providing the questions or asking students to summarise the piece of news
♥To improve writing by giving them the story in level 1 and asking them to act out as reporters for NewsinEnglish by writing the same story in level 2.
Some tips for using this site are given here
Still raining!!! you know how it goes… “When the going gets rough , the rough get going!! or “Every cloud has a silver lining!!”
This site is plain fun ! Acapela .tv is a new site that has a lot of potential for the language class.
Choose a real character or a cute cartoon and make him speak. Choose from a range of voices that interpret and read content with meaning and emotion. This text to speech tool is great to do dictations or revise vocabulary among other things.
HOW I’M PLANNING TO USE IT
♥I think it might be funny to divide the class into two groups -the class I have in mind, right now , is a small class of nine students; with larger classes I might need to divide it into three or four groups.
My aim with this activity will be to make sure students revise some vocabulary related to money for their next test. So, the class is divided into two groups. They need to listen to their cartoon speaking, write down the words the character asks them to revise and be able to explain them to the other group. Each character will say the same number of words and you know the rest… don’t you?? A competition , as usual, something that I , a very competitive person, just love.
A nice memory of a former student from Denmark , Patrick, who helped me teach English . Hope you like it, Patrick!
♥My next step will be asking selected students from different courses to do the job. The volunteers will need to go home , register and create a character to revise vocabulary . Obviously, they’ll need to copy the link provided and send it to me so that I can display it when playing the game in class.
What do you think? Will they like it?
.”Better late than never” or so they say.
This booklet with Traditional Recipes from Asturias was written with lots of love by my former students from the bilingual stream at IES Cesar Rodríguez and with great memories of these amazing students I fulfill my promise . I only hope you are still reading this blog, one year later!
I have used the highly recommendable tool issuu . Click to enlarge.
Yes, yes … if you want to know , it is still raining in Asturias. No wonder it is always green!! And though visitors ohh and ahhh over our beautiful landscape and mountains these days we, locals, are a bit fed up with the weather. Monday to Wednesday I’ll be taking 42 students on an English Immersion Camp and this weather is going to spoil all the fun… but … it’s no use crying over what you cannot change.
This little site SoundsEnglish can be quite useful for students wishing to improve their Listening and pronunciation skills .In this site you can get practise at all levels. It has a simple layout and two or three tasks for each listening. To practise pronunciation you can read the tapescript along with the audio.
Hope it is useful!
I wanted to say Happy Tuesday but this weather is really getting me down in the dumps.
You might not believe it but it has been raining nonstop for more than two months now and I feel I need some sun to cheer me up. Added to this is the fact that I’ve been working mornings , afternoons, evenings and also two weekends in a row. Only today, I am quickly writing this post to leave again to go to work .
Anyways, these are two activities I’m planning to use with my Elementary students to practise Comparatives and Superlatives. I found them via BusyTeachers and they are just what I need right now: highly motivating activities which require no preparation . Thank you so much for sharing ,Susan . (see her profile here).
Look Around You Race
Students in groups of four compare students in the classroom.Set a time limit of about 5 minutes and on your signal each group of students should write as many comparative and 
superlative sentences as they can about the people in their classroom.At the end of the time period, have one group share their sentences. If another group has the same sentence as the first group, both groups should cross that statement off their list. Continue until all groups have read all of their statements and any duplicates are eliminated. The group with the most statements remaining wins.
These Are the People in Your Family
Students are given about 10 adjectives that can be used to describe people: hard-working, tall, young, old, funny, intelligent, tall, fat, happy,pretty… Then challenge them to write a sentence using the superlative form of each adjective about a person in their family. 
Once the sentences are completed, each person should write a list of the family members who appeared in their sentences.Students in pairs exchange the lists of people but keep their sentences to themselves. Each person should ask questions about their partner’s family and try to match each person to their superlative adjective. For example, a person might ask, “Is Lucas the oldest person in your family?” The other person should answer with a yes or an explanation. “No, Lucas is only four years old.” Give students time enough to ask each other questions, and then see who in your class figured out the most family member qualities!
And again it’s this time of the year when all my free time goes to preparing and marking exams so I don’t have much time left to dedicate to the blog. To tell you the truth , I don’t feel inspired! I start a sentence , I know I want to say something … but inspiration never comes. So I’ve given up! maybe , next week, I’ll be back to my usual self. Meanwhile , enjoy this site for creating Word Clouds. It is called Tagul .
A very short post to share this tool with you.
ListenToYouTube.com is an online application for converting YouTube flash video to MP3 audio. The service is fast, free, and requires no signup. All you need to do is copy-paste the YouTube URL, and the application will extract the MP3, and give you a link to download the audio file.
