Tag Archives: vocabulary

Picture Description: Homes 2

Picture Description, Speaking, , , , , ,

In this post you’ll find some  material to practise describing two pictures about Houses/Rooms in a House. There is some useful vocabulary  and expressions as well as  two different sets of pictures  with some questions that might give you some ideas of what you need to talk about in this part of the exam. Remember that you’ll  need to practise describing , comparing and giving opinion . Download the pdf here

To see an example of two students doing this exercise, go to Pictures Description Homes : Part 1. 

For further practice, visit the Picture Description Section in this blog.

Step1. Study this vocabulary and expressions before you start describing.   Useful Expressions:

  • It is too expensive for me to rent/buy a house
  • decorate in my own taste
  • a place of my own
  • live on my own
  • can’t afford to rent
  •  crowded with furniture
  • the room is airy and light

Special Attention to Prepositions:

  • live in a city/the country
  • live on the outskirts of a city
  • live on the north coast
  • live on the second floor

Types of Houses

  • a detached house
  • a semidetached house
  • terraced houses
  • cottage
  • bungalo
  • block of flats
  • a motor house
  • skyscraper
  • a mansion
  • a house boat

Step 2. Practice 1: Describe, compare and give opinion Some ideas to help you:

  • What are the advantages and disadvantages of living in a house or a flat?
  • How many different homes have you lived in? Which did you prefer?
  • What do you think about people keeping big dogs in flats?
  • What is your relationship with your neighbours?
  • What is your general feeling about the architecture in your local area?

  Step 2. Practice 2: Describe, compare and give opinion   Some ideas to help you:

  • Do you have a lot of decorations in your home or is it bare?
  • What would you say the decoration style of your home is?
  • What would your ideal house or apartment look like?
  • Is your home clean? Are you a very organized person?

 

Feeding your Own Newspaper with the News you Want to Read

Create your own stuff, freeware, Reading, , , , , ,

Isn’t that what everybody would like? Isn’t it a good reason to read every day? In this post I am sharing with you a wonderful tool that is basically a newsreader with wonderful customizable features. The idea is to encourage students to read every day  the things they like to read about.

The benefits  of reading when  learning a language are many and  nobody can deny that. When you read you:

– acquire new vocabulary in a natural way

-learn to infer meanings

-learn to punctuate

-write better

-speak better

– learn  the grammar in context

We, as teachers, tend to ask our students to read mainly graded books or the texts in their textbook. We certainly feel confident  our students won’t be struggling to understand or won’t get demotivated because they cannot easily grasp the meaning of the words.

On the other hand, I firmly believe we need to show our students how to develop strategies to encourage autonomous learning. It is essential if we want our students to keep improving when the course finishes.

Whenever a student asks me, “Are there any compulsory books to read this term?” I never fail to remember the 50 or 60 books I had to read if I wanted to have a chance at passing some certain subjects at university. I used to be keen on reading but having to compulsorily read, I would say “swallow”  those books chosen by somebody else turned me, for some years, into someone who would refrain from  getting close to a bookshop, let alone a library.

For this reason, I never choose the books my students have to read. We go to the school library together and  choose the ones they find most appealing from their level section.  I encourage them to read regularly, every  day if possible, and not to use the dictionary every single time they don’t know a word, as this would discourage them. Instead, I ask them to try to guess the meaning  and only use the dictionary if it blocks comprehension or it appears frequently in the book.

Reading books is Ok, but what about magazines, blogs, newspapers… In this post, I would like  to share with  you   a tool  to motivate students to read every day and the key to motivation is READING WHAT THEY LIKE.

The tool I use is called FEEDLY . It ‘s for me the best way to organise and read my favourite sites on the Internet. It’s mainly a newsreader and it’s highly addictive. Everything on the same place with a very nice layout.  Imagine Feedly as a newspaper with only the news you are interested in. You feed Feedly with online sites that interest you.In this sense I recommend my students to feed it with a variety of sites including news, fashion, cooking, IT, learning languages …etc and why not, gossip.

Feedly is customizable and the only thing you need to do is Click on Add content, paste the url of the blog or site you want to have in your newspaper. Can I suggest you try adding this blog and this other one  🙂 to get started?

 

 

 

If you want to know more about how  Feedly works, here is a very visual tutorial here .

Are there any sites or blogs you would recommend? Please, let me know

 

Lesson Plan: Cities,Towns and Villages

Lesson Plan: Intermediate, Listening, Vocabulary, , , , , , ,

This is a lesson for Intermediate students (B1).

Hopefully, at the end of this lesson you’ll have learnt useful vocabulary to talk about a city/town/ village you like, you’ll be able to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of living in the city or the countryside and you’ll be able to understand people talking about it.

What’s your hometown like?
Are you happy with the city/town/village you live in? What are some of the pros and cons?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of living in the coutryside or in a town

These are some common questions  in oral exams. Before reading any further, think about how you coud best answer these questions. Try really hard. Imagine you’re taking the real test.

Ok! Now!!! Do you have all the words you need or, are there things you couldn’t say because you didn’t have the right words? If this is the case, then go on reading, this post is for you.

Below you’ll find some ideas to help you get started.

Mapa Mental creado con ExamTime por cristina.cabal

 

Now, watch these two short videos and answer the questions below. The first one is about the advantages and disadvantages of living in a big city and the second about the advantages and disadvantages of living in a small town ( could also be applied to living in the countryside)

Video 1. Advantages and disadvantages of living in a big city

Speaker 1. What’s the disadvantage he mentions?

Speaker 2. What are the disadvantages he mentions?

Speaker 3. What is, in his opinion, the main advantage? What two disadvantages does he mention?

Speaker 4. What’s the huge advantage cities have compared to rural areas?

Speaker 5.  What’s, according to this speaker, the main advantage?

Answers here

Video 2. Advantages and disadvantages of living in a small town (could be applied to the countryside)

Speaker 1. What’s the advantage and the disadvantage he mentions?

Speaker 2. What does he say about the pace of life in small towns?

Speaker 3. What’s the advantage and the disadvantage he mentions?

Speaker 4. For him, what’s the advantage and the disadvantage  of living in a small town?

Speaker 5. What does he say happens in small towns?

 Answers here

♥By the way, do you know the difference between a city and a town???

A city is larger than a town and it has a cathedral 🙂 , at least in the UK

Now, do you think you can describe your hometown? Can you talk about your favourite city? Can you talk about the advantages and disadvantages of living in a city or in the countryside? Hope you can!

 

Lesson Plan: Dating , Family and Friends

Lesson Plan: Intermediate, Listening, Speaking, Vocabulary, Writing, , , , , , , , ,
Level: Intermediate
Topic: Dating, Family and Friends
Aim: To develop all four skills – listening, reading, writing and speaking .

Has our lifestyle changed so much that it has affected the way we socialise, date and  communicate with our family? Here is a nice visual lesson plan to talk about these issues TASK 1 Look at the picture below. Which of these adjectives would you use to describe the picture? Give reasons

Awesome   disgusting   funny   unreal   pornographic  sexist

romantic   interesting     unusual      provocative     depressing

Can you think of any more adjectives?

Task 2.  Introducing &Revising Vocabulary :   Dictogloss.

(Dictogloss technique here )

As I normally have large classes I have written two texts containing the target language so I will divide the class into two groups and I’ll dictate the texts in turns, following the dictogloss technique. Texts will be then written on the board or /and a copy of the texts handed out.

Vocabulary Handout 

TASK 3 SPEAKING

Has traditional dating become a thing of the past? Look at the pictures below showing different ways of dating. In pairs, discuss which ones you prefer, which ones you wouldn’t mind trying and which ones you would never try, giving reasons to support your opinion.

TASK 4. LISTENING: What makes for a good friend.  See on youtube

Time to improve your listening abilities. This time we are going to listen for specific vocabulary. Ready?

Listen to a man talking about  What Makes a Good Friend and fill in the spaces in the exercise embedded below.

 

 

 

TASK 5 . SPEAKING: A CLOSE FRIEND. Think of one of your close friends. In pairs, ask and answer these questions

  • How long have you known him?
  • Where did you meet?
  • Do you get on well? What do you have in common?
  • Do you ever argue? What about?
  • How often do you see each other?
  • How do you keep in touch? Have you ever lost touch? Why?

TASK 6. SPEAKING.

Students sit facing each other using the speed-dating technique. Some students remain seated during the whole event ( in real speed dating, women remain seated). When the bell rings, students sit across from another student and they use their questions to start a conversation. They need to keep on talking for 3 minutes. Then a bell rings and “men” need to stand up and move to their right to start a new conversation with a different partner and the whole process is repeated again. Instead of a  bell so I use a Class Timer (here).

Display with the OHP, on the whiteboard, the pictures with the questions and ask students to talk about the question on the picture for about three minutes. When the time’s up,  students change partners and a new picture is displayed.

I have created this slideshow with Google Sites.

 

TASK  5 Writing. Choose any of the questions in the exercise above and write an essay making sure you use the vocabulary you have learnt in this lesson. Do you need some inspiration? See what other students have written  here, here, here and here

I hope you’ve enjoyed the lesson!!

Six Wonderful Sites to Help you Write, Speak and Sound Better

Dictionaries, Phonetics, Resources, Speaking, Writing, Writing skill, , , ,

I’m not a native speaker. Even though I read, write, work and I would almost dare say live  and dream in  English, I haven’t learned the language from birth and sometimes have moments of self-doubt. These websites I am going to share in this post have been an invaluable help.

Blog de Cristina is also on Facebook. FOLLOW IT!

 

♥Howjsay  and Forvo: The world’s largest dictionaries of English Pronunciation

How often have you come across a proper name you had no clue how to pronounce and you desperately needed to know the  correct standard  pronunciation of or perhaps  a variant pronunciation of this word?  Let’s say you want to know the pronunciation of the word “selion”. You go to the most important online dictionaries offering pronunciation, but the word you’re looking up is not there and you suddenly begin to panic. At this stage you can do three things: panic, pretend you know how to pronounce it ( you just know how to sound British, no problem there) or look up the word in any of these two amazing sites that have saved my skin countless times.

♥Linguee

We all know how difficult it is to write, even more in a foreign language. More often than not we look up words in dictionaries only to find that it offers so many possibilities for the translation of the word that  we don’t know which one to choose for the context we need. In fact, sometimes it doesn’t help us at all but makes things more complicated as we don’t know which word to use to mean what we want to express and we end up completely frustrated. Here, Linguee can help us as it is a bilingual dictionary but  in context

♥Phraseup

Sometimes we know what we want to write, the sentence is phrased in our mind, but we can’t figure out some of the words we need. This is where phraseup*comes in. It assists you with writing, by suggesting possible combinations to fill-in the words you can’t remember. Each suggestion is accompanied by definitions, synonyms and translations to other languages.
Imagine you know there is an expression containing the words ” take” and “granted” but you have forgotten what goes in the middle, PhraseUp can help you here, too. Just type the words that you remember and put an asterisk * where you want the application to insert something. Very useful, isn’t it?

Or maybe  you want to use the verb+preposition combination “cope with” but you are just not sure which words it collocates with, just type it in PhraseUp and options will be provided.

♥Ozdic.com

I have been using ozdic.com for years and this is a dictionary I cannot live without. It is not any dictionary, it also help you to sound more natural when speaking or writing in English. Let’s  say you don’t know the preposition that collocates with the verb “insist”, or which adverbs sound  more natural with this verb; let’s imagine you need to use the word “idea” but you have no clue what adjective to use  apart from the overused “good “. Go to the dictionary now, this is just a sample of what you’ll find : bright, brilliant, clever, excellent,, marvellous | valuable, worthwhile | exciting, inspirational, interesting, stimulating | constructive, positive | absurd, bad, mistaken, ridiculous | , crazy, mad, outlandish, wild | half-baked | ambitious, big, grand.

The dictionary contains over 150,000 collocations for nearly 9,000 headwords and it is based on the 100 million word British National Corpus.

♥Text2Phonetics 

It is a wonderful tool that can save a lot of time if you need to transcribe something. I have tried it with small texts (two or three lines) and it’s incredible! You will be able to  pronounce a whole text perfectly .
Just paste the text you want to transcribe and click the Transcribe Button to get the transcription.