Category Archives: General

Word of the day : Win and Beat

General, ,

Do you know the difference between the verbs “win” and “beat”?

Which is correct ..?

  • Real Madrid beat FC Barcelona(by) 3-1
  • Real Madrid won FC Barcelona (by) 3-1

Study the difference .

  • Win/wɪn/, won/wʌn/, won/wʌn/ means to achieve first position and/or  get a prize in a competition or competitive situation. You win a game or a competition
  • Beat/biːt/, beat/biːt/, beaten /ˈbiːtn/ means to defeat or to do better. You beat a person or a team you are playing against

So now, which of the two sentences above is correct? Well done , the first sentence “Real Madrid beat FC Barcelona (by)  3-1 “ is correct

Test yourself with these exercises:

He ___ first prize in the raffle

won

[collapse]

Everybody likes ___ an argument

winning

[collapse]
She has ____ her own record of three minutes ten seconds.

beaten

[collapse]
Spain ___ Belgium by 5-4

beat

[collapse]

He ___ her at tennis

beat

[collapse]
He ___ first place in the competition

won

[collapse]

Thanks for reading! 🙂

Source: Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary

Blog de Cristina is also on facebook 

Most Popular Posts of the Year for Learning and Teaching

General

I would say that 90% of the content in this blog comes from the need to offer my students good  interesting  lessons. I highly value the time and effort it takes for most of them to come to my classes and that’s why I try my best to design lessons packed with engaging content and  interactive activities.

The school year has come to an end and with it, what triggers my inspiration to write posts and design activities. Therefore, and as every single year, this blog is going on holiday and though I might continue sharing old posts on Facebook ( “LIKE” my blog on facebook if you haven’t done it yet :), I won’t be writing any new ones until probably the end of September when I’ll need to start preparing my lessons.

This year has been extremely  rewarding to me professionally speaking .My blog has been shortlisted four times by the British Council (facebook page), lots of my articles have been published and shared on social media sites and the number of visitors to the blog has dramatically increased. OMG!I have even been interviewed for a local newspaper!.

So, a good year it’s been!

These are the most popular posts of the “school” year for both learning and teaching

MOST POPULAR POSTS FOR LEARNERS

♥Tips to score a good mark in the oral exam 

♥Six Wonderful Sites to Help you Write, Speak and Sound Better (shortlisted for the British English blog award)

♥9 Useful Websites to Help you Improve Pronunciation and Listening

♥Confusing Words

♥Some Useful Guidelines and Techniques for Describing Pictures

♥Preparing for Listening: Focus on Distractors.

MOST POPULAR POSTS FOR TEACHERS

♥Lesson Plan: Speaking and Writing about Relationships and Using Indirect Questions (shortlisted for the British English blog award)

♥Teaching diphthongs in an easy way (shortlisted for the British English blog award)

♥Some Nice No-Prep Activities to Practise First Conditional (shortlisted for the British English blog award)

♥Moving Up from ” I Made Tea” to” I made myself a nice, hot sandwich of low-fat blue cheese because I was starving

♥Some Activities to Talk Nonstop Using Comparatives and Superlatives

♥Get Students Out of their Seats with a Lesson on Gender Stereotypes

 ♥Inspiration from Ellen Degeneres Show: Never Have I Ever

That’s all for now! Have a very nice summer! I’ll be back in action sometime in September.

“So grant me this wish and meet me back here in a year
If we still exist….. “Habits” by Maria Mena

Knoword: A Fun Highly Addictive Game to Help you Expand your Vocabulary

General, , , ,

Wanna have some fun with words?

Knoword is a fast-paced word game that helps boost vocabulary and spelling . It is  highly addictive , a lot of fun  and  a game of quick thinking.

How does it work?

Once you hit the LET’S GO button , it gives you a dictionary definition randomly generated  and the first letter of the word you need to guess. You are given a minute to guess the word . If you don’t know , click on the X and you’ll briefly see the word before a new definition is presented to you. Every single time you guess a word , you get an added time bonus (5 seconds) + 20 points  and every time you skip a word -10 points

From the Menu on the right you can choose from three levels of difficulty: Novice, Hotshot and Wizard.

You don’t need to register to play the game although if you do , you can keep track of your statistics.

Seen on Free Technology for Teachers, a blog written by Richard Byrne, which I highly recommend.

Like my Blog? Follow me on Facebook.

Picture Description: Homes 1

General, , , , ,

Resting on your laurels? No way!  Finals are fast approaching!! Time to give your English a final push!

Here you have another example of picture description. This time the theme is Houses.

Remember that in the  Oral Exam you’ll be shown two ( sometimes three) theme-related photographs ( eg types of houses). You’ll be asked to describe and compare them and to talk about them in relation to yourself for a short time (approx 3 min.)

More examples and practise here

 

 

Source: Premium B2