A Man’s Best Friend

Students' Corner,

Sent by Maria Pardo

A species of animals I’m interested in are dogs.I love all kinds of dogs. When I go out and meet a dog we both usually connect immediately. Dogs don’t speak but we look at each other and we communicate just by means of a look . I prefer dogs to cats. Cats are usually selfish and dogs are very generous. When a family moves, cats prefer to stay at the old house whereas dogs prefer to leave with the family.


Sometimes we can see homeless people in the cities with the only company of a dog. This animal never abandons his owner even if the owner has got nothing, not even food. They are absolutely faithful. People say that the dog is a man’s best friend and I completely agree with that. They help people that feel very isolated especially the elderly and sick . I totally disagree with people who abandon animals mainly in summer when they go on holidays.

I have had four dogs in my life. The last one was Pinky. I adored him. He wasn’t a pedigree animal but he was for me the most beautiful animal in the world. He had a lot of white fur and a silky coat. He was small and had enormous brown eyes. He was slow and a little bit quiet. When someone arrived home, Pinky used to bark with strength to let us know and used to move his tail.
Unfortunately, Pinky died last year in July because of his age. He was thirteen years old.

Resources: Fancy doing a dictation?

Audio, In the Computer Room, Listening, Resources, , ,

I want to show you this wonderful site to practise listening and spelling
How does it work?

1. Go to http://www.listen-and-write.com/
2. Register: Don’t worry. It is free
3. Choose your level. I would say for advanced learners , start with level 14
4. And then it is fairly simple. .You just listen to parts of a sentence and then have to type in the words of the sentence to a text field which only allows the words if they are correct. You are able to listen over and over again and also get some help by setting the activity to auto complete the words as you type them in .

Hope you enjoy it 😉

Some help with the Speaking Test … or not?

Funny Stuff, Listening, , ,

I think we all feel very much the same about oral tests, they are really stressful. I m not that old to have forgotten the ones I did while training to become a teacher facing, more often than not, a three member board of unsympathetic professors jumping at their chance to make you feel utterly miserable. They were my personal crossing of the Rubicon or, at least, this is how they are stored in my memory.
Having said that much, you all have to see the necessity of these tests or rather you don’t, but this is, I am afraid, not open to discussion. What I wanted to show you is that everybody gets nervous when they have to answer a question in public; moreover, if they cannot use their native language, which would be your case , But.. Miss South Carolina is American, isn’t she?

Well, she did what some students do when they are not very confident. She learnt, by heart, an answer she thought might suit every possible question and so, when asked one that didn’t quite fit in with this answer she struggled to make it fit. Unfortunately , ….
The only two coherent utterances are:

1. The judge’s question : Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can’t locate the US on a world map. Why do you think this is?
2. Miss south Carolina’s final sentence: …so we’ll be able to build up our future for our children.

Fancy watching it?

And now the hilarious explanation Jimmy Kimmel gives analysing her words on a blackboard.