Tag Archives: vocabulary

Word of the Day: to Lose Weight

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Never have  I seen so many people around me trying to lose some weight . Spring must be the season when we realize there is no way we will be able to  hide our love handles (excess fat around the hips and buttocks, sometimes also called saddle bags– I imagine they are called  this way  when they are  big and ugly) .

Anyway, when it is not summertime and you’re not looking your best, you can always use this funny tool  to make you look thinner, even though you haven’t bothered to go on a diet to lose a bit of weight or go to the gym to sweat off your excess of baggage in the treadmill.

The tool I was telling you about is called slimpic.com and with only a few clicks, you can make yourself or someone in your pictures gain or lose weight (the point  here is losing weight, we don’t need to go to the Internet searching for tools to make us look uglier, do we?).

Me, before and with 10kgs less! if only it were so easy!

Word of the day : To get drunk and the like

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I’ve been away for a short school trip and that’s the reason why I haven’t been posting for a week.

Though in my forties, this one has been my first school trip,ever. My father was not a big fan of school trips and me and my sisters were never allowed to go; we were sent to Great Britain or France  instead, to study the language under the wings of some religious institution or other. What he didn’t know is that, even under their watchful eyes,  I had my fair share of unpleasant and pleasant (if you know what I mean) experiences.

And, in this school trip, and as a teacher, my role was trying that my students didn’t experience any unpleasant things, which they might think were pleasant enough to try. But, unfortunately, I caught two students red-handed trying to smuggle alcohol into their bedrooms. Pity, they were kept in detention and couldn’t enjoy the disco!

In English as in any other language there are countless alternatives to the traditional to get drunk

So, let’s imagine that you and your friends decide to go out on a bender/binge or maybe  go pub crawling or bar hopping to get drunk and after two or three beers you are a bit tipsy (slightly drunk) because you challenged one of your friends you could drink him under the table (drink more than him without getting drunk)and then you realized you could not hold your drink (drink without getting drunk) and that  he drinks like a fish. So,  you decide to go home but your friends decide to  go on drinking and after two hours they are loaded /wasted/gone/slushed/hammered/legless/plastered or pissed  and one of them starts to puke/spew/gag/chunder/barf, which is quite disgusting.

You phone your friend in the morning and find out he can’t even talk to you because he’s got the worst hangover and needs to take an alka-setzer and get some more sleep.

Do you know any other expressions ?

A Word on Grammar: The Same

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This has been the most common mistake in my students’ essays this term.

 Gays should have the same opportunities than heterosexual couples.

♥ We use the same as   or the same…+noun+ … as before a noun or pronoun.

Gays couples should have the same opportunities as heterosexual couples.

I’d like to visit Australia one day, just the same as you.

♥ We use the same that before a clause (subject+verb)

He was wearing the same clothes that he’d had on the day before.

I hope it helps you!

Ready-made lessons : lessonstream.org

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I have to admit, it’s more like a confession though, that very often I post about some sites that, I am fairly certain, are not very useful  to my students. The reason behind these posts is that by having them published and organised into categories in my blog I make sure they are always handy and never lost to me.
Today’s post is not for you, dear learners(forgive my selfishness), but for us, English teachers.
This site lessonstream.org, is a great site for ready-made lessons. I’ve been following Jamie Keddie ‘s blog   http://www.jamiekeddie.com/ for  while and knew that he was planning to create a new site with new and old- edited material. And Wow! The site is just great and very creative. I love it!
So far there are 44 ready-made lesson you can browse by Language Level, Learner Type, Time, Main Activity ( Dictation: Running Dictation, Dictogloss, Picture Dictation, Speaking, Gap-filling, Collocations, writing…), Language Aims ( adjectives, tenses, passive…)Topic ( Money, school, jokes, love, food..) and Materials