Tag Archives: fun

English Phlegm

Funny Stuff,

A few years ago an English family, holidaying in Scotland, came upon a small country house while they were walking one day, and they thought that it would be an enchanting place to spend the following summer. They inquired who the owner was, and it turned out to be the local vicar, who they asked to show them the property. Having looked it over, they were so impressed by its situation that they agreed to rent it.

Once back in England, they sat down to go through the details one by one, and suddenly realised that they haven’t seen the WC. They decided to write to the vicar and inquire about this fixture in these terms:

“Dear Vicar,
A few weeks ago we decided to rent your property in the coming holidays. However, we omitted to ask you about one particular detail. Would you be so kind as to let us know exactly where the W.C is situated since we didn’t notice it during our visit”.

They closed the letter in the usual way and posted it. When the vicar read it, he didn’t recognise the abbreviation “W.C”, but thought it must refer to a chapel of his religion called WELLS CHAPEL, and so answered as follows:

“Dear Madam,
I am delighted to inform you about the place you refer to. It is a mere seven miles from the house, rather a nuisance if you go on foot. Some of the locals go by bus and they usually arrive in time. There is room for 200 people comfortably seated and a further 1oo standing. There is air-conditioning to prevent suffocation. The children all sit together and sing during the ceremony. A sheet of paper is given to each person as he or she enters, but if these run out people can share them. The sheets should, however be given in as one leaves, so that they may be used in other ceremonies. Photographers frequently capture different moments of the event and their work is published in the “Society Page” of the local paper, so that the readers may see their neighbours at such natural function”.

The English family decided to spend the summer elsewhere, because the property didn’t come up to the required standard.

Improving writing skills

Writing, , , , ,

This is an activity I’m going to do tomorrow with my intermediate students and I thought someone might find it useful. It can be done to revise vocabulary and make students write, a skill we often neglect in class. By including visual aid I have made the role of the teacher seem less important and therefore encouraged autonomous learning.

In this activity we will be revising vocabulary, mainly phrasal verbs with “turn” and verbs followed by infinitive or/and -ing.

How to do it:
Ask students to work in pairs and give each pair a blank sheet of paper. Tell students they are going to use their imagination to write a dialogue .Give students a situation they can start with (for ex two flatmates talking about their plans for the weekend; their names Christina and George). The aim of the exercise is to build up a dialogue using the prompt you display in the photopeach slideshow. Once they have written their sentence containing the prompt they have to pass their paper to the students on the left who must continue the story using the next prompt. Sometimes an additional sentence will be necessary to transition form one idea to the next.
Collect their dialogues and stick them on the walls of the class for everybody to read

Revising – Using Prompts to Revise Vocabulary on PhotoPeach

Click here to see a sample of the dialogue. I wasn’t very inspired!

If Jesus taught my students

Funny Stuff,

Then Jesus took his disciples up the mountain, and gathering them
about him, he taught them, saying:
“Blessed are the poor.
“Blessed are the hungry.
“Blessed are those who mourn.
“Blessed are the oppressed. . . . ”

Then Simon Peter said, “Do we have to write this down?”
And Andrew said, “Are we supposed to know this?”
And James said, “I don’t have papyrus with me.”
And Philip said, “Will we have a test on this?”
And Bartholomew said, “Do we have to turn this in?”
And John said, “The other disciples didn’t have to learn this.”
And Matthew said, “Can I be excused?”
And Judas said, “What does this have to do with the real world?”

Then one of the Pharisees who was present asked to see Jesus’ lesson
plan and inquired: “Is this lesson aligned with state standards? Does
it address multiple intelligences? Where are your objectives in the
cognitive domain?”

And Jesus wept.

From webenglishteacher.com

Road to Grammar

Grammar, Vocabulary, , , ,

Road to Grammar is a great site to practise grammar and vocabulary. One of the best things about this site, in my opinion, is that if you choose the wrong answer in the quiz  and you click on NOTES, it provides  a note explaining why your answer is correct or incorrect.
Apart from these quizzes there’s a section that I love called Games. My favourite one is called FLUENT and it allows two students to play. Be careful if you choose to play, it’s kind of addictive!
I also recommend trying the Extra Practice section and the Downloads, which has some great PDFs for students and teachers. And last but not least, there’s a section called Road to Grammar JR dedicated to young learners