My Crafty side: Popsicle bracelets

My Crafty Side

This is a new section I am starting today in this blog. I’ve always liked to store ideas for DIY projects although , to be honest with you, very often it remained a project beacuse  I either  lacked the time to do it or I entirely forgot about it.

Being this a blog dedicated to the learning of the English language , I still find that this new section doesn’t deviate from its main aim as you’ll have to read in English with the added bonus of having some fun while doing something you might enjoy .

Today , we will do bracelets with Popsicle ,(which are “los palos de nuestros polos de hielo”). I hope you like this new section and ,as the idea is not mine  ,I’ll just publish the photo and link you to the blog where you’ll find the post. There you go!

Source Suzy Artsy Crafty Sitcom .Click here to read more

When your computer is loaded with Malware

freeware,

Malware, short for malicious software, consists of programming (code, scripts, active content, and other software) designed to disrupt or deny operation, gather information that leads to loss of privacy or exploitation, gain unauthorized access to system resources, and other abusive behavior. The expression is a general term used by computer professionals to mean a variety of forms of hostile, intrusive, or annoying software or program code.(source Wikipedia)

I’ve been using a programme called Malwarebytes Antimalware for about three years and it has never failed me. So if you are having problems with your computer, I highly recommend you download this free yet effective spyware and virus-removal tool.

Lesson Plan: Retelling an article using Word Clouds

Create your own stuff, In the Computer Room, Lesson Plan: Intermediate, Speaking, , , ,

This is a lesson I did with my upper-intermediate students in the computer room and I thought it might be useful to some teachers. The main idea is to retell a text you have previously worked with in class. This is important as  otherwise the task of retelling might be a bit  difficult for weaker students. This is how I did it.

♣ First, for homework, I asked students to reread the text several times .

♣ Then, in the computer room, I asked students to form groups of 3 or 4  and divided the text according to the number of students in each group .

♣ Now, individually and  using the website Word it Out, which is a word cloud generator, I asked them to select the key words in their texts, type them in Word It Out and generate the word cloud. If two words need to be together, it is easy with this generator. Imagine “suffer from”, you only need to insert _ between the two words and they’ll be kept together in the cloud.

♣ Students in groups again, retell the story with the help of the generated  word clouds.

I especially liked this exercise as students get a lot of fun out of it and they collaborate every step of the way. Here are the word clouds generated by a group. I hope you find it useful!

Word of the Day: To text

Word of the Day, ,

Who said we cannot learn a new word and have a good laugh at the same time? The word to learn today is “to text” which means “to send a  written  message to someone using a mobile phone”.  For ex. She texted me when she arrived.

Before you proceed to read the message in the picture, let me be honest with you. The word to be taught here should have been  “crotch“ , but I know my mum would disapprove if I started the post saying I was going to teach you a word  meaning “the area between your legs where they join your body“.  And now, straight for the laugh! 😉

The Translator: a funny sketch

Funny Stuff, Phonetics, , ,

Have you ever wondered how we sound to speakers of other languages when we speak our native language? Some languages are easy to imitate, as for example the Italian language or the German one but I would never have guessed how a Spanish speaking native sounds to the rest of the world.

While I was in Malta, and to introduce some intonation issues, we were shown this video. It was so funny that I ended up crying with laughter. At the end I was probably only paying attention to faces rather than to the mimicking of accents. I highly recommend you watch the video until the end as it only gets better.

In this video the British Sketch comedian, Katherine Tate, volunteers to translate into seven different languages. Hilarious! And I hope nobody takes offence.