Category Archives: Listening

Bridget Jones’s New Year’s Resolutions: Lesson Plan

Lesson Plan: Advanced, Listening, , , , , ,

2015  is about to wave goodbye. A new year is starting to blossom and I’m planning to dedicate it my full attention. For a start, I’ve made some New Year’s Resolutions which ,unfortunately, I won’t be sharing with you… I apologize!! …and you, have you made any? Do you want to share them with me or are they too personal, maybe?
Well, for my first class with my advanced students, I’ve thought that a nice way to link last year with this new one would be this video from Bridget Jones’s Diary, one of my favourite chick flicks. If you’ve seen or read Bridget Jones’s Diary, you’ll know it starts out with her New Year’s resolutions: lists of things she will and won’t do. These are some of them
I Will Not
Waste money on exotic underwear since pointless as have no boyfriend.
Fall for any of the following: alcoholics, workaholics, commitment phobics, chauvinists, freeloaders, perverts.
Have crushes on men, but instead form relationships based on mature assessment of character.
I Will
Go to gym three times a week not merely to buy sandwich.
Learn to program video.
Give all clothes which have not worn for two years or more to homeless.
Not go out every night but stay in and read books and listen to classical music.

Watch the video and then if you feel like going for the whole lesson I have prepared for my students,  you’ll find it here . My gratitude to Jeffrey Hill, who gave me the idea.
By the way, the soundtrack is one of my favourites!!

[flashvideo filename=https://www.cristinacabal.com/videos/bridget.flv /]

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Weird Hotels: Lesson Plan

Funny Stuff, Lesson Plan: Pre-Intermediate, Listening, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Have you planned your summer holidays yet? Are you in the mood for something different? Weird and even wacky? Are you tired of the conventional hotels everybody goes to? Have a look at these photographs.

These are some of the weirdest hotels you will ever see. But don’t hold your breath …some of them are very expensive and most of them are fully booked for this summer; so I guess, it must definitely be an experience for some people  sleeping in one of those but, trust me on this… you won’t find me there!

Given the chance I don’t know whether it‘d be easy to choose one of them to spend a nice relaxing holidays. I guess you think it would be a rush of adrenaline sleeping in a cabin hanging from a slender tree but I know for sure I wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink waiting for the branch to crack.

And an underwater hotel… are they paying me???

In my humble opinion, the Survival Pod Hotel in The Hague, this orange alien-shaped thing, seems to invite people to choose to die if the option is living in these claustrophobic capsules. Can’t imagine having to pay for it!

Some other picturesque pictures show the Das Park Hotel, Ottensheim in Austria and I have to admit that, at least, it has been cheap to build. The idea is that you sleep inside a piece of concrete sewage pipe and guess what?? This is cheap …’cause you pay only what you think they are worth!!

As for me, I’ve always felt an attraction for luxurious hotels where the service is impeccable, the views from the balcony breathtaking, the place a haven of peace and relaxation and the bed as comfortable as a bed should be. I  don’t want to spend the night killing cockroaches or freezing to death just to have the time of my life, thank you very much.

Anway, why this post on Weird hotels?  ’cause my students are about to study this lesson and I came across some of these pictures while looking for different things on the web. I prepared a lesson about hotels this morning, which I thought I’d share with you. So, if you are interested, and you’re not one of my Pre-Intermediate students (we’ll be doing this lesson on Monday, God willing!) Click here .

If you are one of my pre-intermediate students and still want to do something about hotels, you can click here and listen to this postcast about Weird Hotels.

And then watch this video… but don’t expect it to help you with your English!!!



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Listen a minute

Audio, Listening, Resources, , , , , ,

That’s the name of this superb website for pre-intermediate students to practise listening

and this is what they promise. This site is still growing  and at the moment of publishing this post you could only  find alphabetically-listed topic- based activities going  from A to H. That’s it, you can find listenings about Airports and Harry Potter  but don’t try Vegetarians yet.

You can do the quizzes about the listening on line and it also gives you some writing ideas. What’s more,  you don’t even need to register. It’s completely free!!

One  minute a day… that’s all they are asking and in return… you’ll be passing your listening tests with flying colours.

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Some help with pronunciation

General, In the Computer Room, Listening, Reading, Resources

I know some of you, dear readers, have problems with English pronunciation. No wonder!!! English pronunciation is , arguably, unpredictable. Maybe some of you won’t agree with me that much if you have never experienced the frustration of not being understood but if you don’t believe me , read this article I published last year https://www.cristinacabal.com/?p=295 where I challenged my advanced students to read it without mistakes … the prize? Not taking the final oral test.Actually, the title of the post was I am feeling generous . Only one of them accepted the challenge,( dear Mario I hope you’re reading this ) and I still take my hat off to him (what a hard slog it must’ve been looking up all the words ) but he only managed to read two paragraphs and this, with some mistakes.
Anyway , some of you have been asking me how to improve pronunciation. I advised you to borrow books from the library with audio to listen and read along and here I’m going to show another nice way to improve pronunciation should you get tired of reading in the traditional way. This comes from a well-known site where there are plenty of things to do, should you have some time to spare.

Â

If  you want to do some more go to http://www.manythings.org/listen/ and help yourself.

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Working with “work”

Lesson Plan: Advanced, Listening, Resources, Students' Corner, The English language, , , , ,

and so that’s it, “literally”. In the advanced level we’ve been working with the semantic field “Work” .

This is the pdf with all the work-related expressions and collocations  you helped me build on the blackboard and also the exercises created with your own contributions. Thanks to you all!!

I also nicked and adapted from the Internet some tips about Job Interviews. I’m afraid I can’t name the source as I did it a long time ago and it was never my intention to get it published. My sincere apology !

There are also two video-based activities. The first one from an outside source www.eslvideo.com, which I highly recommend,  and the second one  created by me.

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