Oral Presentations

When we make an oral presentation the planning time is vital. If you use your time correctly you will be prepared and relaxed for speaking.

In your planning time you will plan:

1. The structure

The structure will always be the same:

• introduction (OR opening paragraph)
• body
• conclusion (OR closing paragraph)

2. The content

The content will vary according to what you are asked to speak about, but alway think about what you are going to say and organise your ideas.

Write key words to help you develop your ideas later. Do not write full sentences, that is a waste of time and they will confuse you when you are speaking.

3. The language

Think about useful vocabulary, expressions, verb tenses, etc. you will need according to what you are going to say.

If you don't know a word, look for a synonym or try to paraphrase it. 
If you don't know how to say something, change your information or omit that part.


For homework you have to talk about your favorite photo. 

Your notes should have an aspect similar to this:



STRUCTURE & IDEAS

Introduction

photo with my husband & daughters

in the swimming pool at Costa Los Gigantes 

Body

long weekend with the family

games with the children in the swimming pool

meal all together

great time

Conclusion

no special place, on my laptop

love it, smiley faces, happy photo, fantastic weekend


USEFUL LANGUAGE

there is/ there are

adjectives to describe the physical appearance

present tenses: past simple & continuous

prepositions of place

The importance of writing

Hello everyone,

This is a quick post about writing to remind you about its importance. 

In class we normally focus on speaking and listening because these are the skills you need the most. However, we cannot overlook the importance of writing.

You normally practise writing at home when you do the grammar activities, answer the reading comprehension questions or when you do a composition. In class we hardly ever write and, when we do, is normally very small things. For this reason you need to write more. You need to find opportunities to learn new things and revise the language you already know and writing is a good method.

Writing gives you a good opportunity to learn new words, revise the words you already know and expand your knowledge of them. Writing also helps you to practise grammar structures and patterns studied at the previous lessons. In addition, the more you practise the better you write. By practising writing your reading, listening and speaking skills also improve.

All the works you hand in are marked and corrected very accurately for you to learn from your mistakes, but sometimes you need to write just for the sake of writing and communicating and this is what you need to do more. It doesn't matter if you make mistakes, it doesn't matter if your text isn't perfect, the simple fact of writing will activate your knowledge and this will help you learn and fix the structures in your brain.

Try to find opportunities to write (and therefore learn):

1. Write your shopping list in English

2. Write your "To do list" in English

3. Text or whatsapp your friends in English

4. Write the comments in our Facebook group in English

5. Write comments to my blog entries (this is particularly useful because you always have a writing sample that you can copy so it's an excellent opportunity to revise the language we've seen in class)

Can you think of other ways of improving your writing?

Do you reckon you will start writing more in English from now on?

English File Third Edition Pre-Intermediate, Oxford

Hi everyone,

Just a quick post to let you know the book we will be using this year, English File Third Edition, Pre-Intermediate, Oxford.

In class we'll mostly use the Student's Book, but you have much more material to work on. 

The textbook comes with a workbook full of activities. I will tell you work on the workbook at home every time we finish a file (unit). 

You also have an Entry Checker to revise the grammar from the previous year, Basic 1 level. Click here to download the audios for the Entry Checker activities. Click here to download the answer keys for the activities so you can correct them at home.

Besides, you have the iTutor, a DVD cointaining all the material you see in class which means if you miss a lesson you can review everything at home and you can even download some of the content.

On top of all the previous material you have Oxford's website which you can visit if you still want supplementary material.

To finish, you have a learning record and a vocabulary calendar so you can follow up your learning progress.


I hope you find all this information useful.



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Back to school

A new school year has just started and I would like to welcome you to the school and to the course. I hope you all had a great summer and are now ready to study English again.

I know it is hard at the beginning, but little by little you will get in the mood of studying.

Remember that in order to benefit from the course you have to:

1. come to class

2. be active in class

3. ask any doubts you may have

4. study at home

5. do your homework

6. practise your English

Try to practise your English with a native speaker, you could try to arrange some kind of language exchange. You could organise a Speaking Club at the EOI in La Orotava among your classmates.

Read and listen as much as you can, it is never enough! When you read and listen to English try to pay attention to the vocabulary and structures you know and try to spot new expressions for you to learn.

Be persistent, work hard and have fun while learning!

Have a nice school year 2015/2016!

See you in class ;-)

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Paraphrasing

We all hesitate when we speak and we all forget words from time to time. What is more, we are not walking dictionaries, therefore there are words we don't know. And this is how it works, speaking a language doesn't mean knowing all its words. It's all about communication, getting your message across. For this reason, if you don't know a word in English, it's not big deal, you have to live with this amount of "not knowing things" and try to look for strategies to express what you want to say. In this case you just have to paraphrase the word you don't know.

You already know how to paraphrase in your own language, when you don't know or don't remember a word you try to explain its meaning using other words. Well, this is what you have to do in English as well, even in your speaking test!! If you don't know a word, don't panick, it's ok, try to find other words to explain its meaning.

Imagine you want to say your husband is a doctor, but you've forgotten the word "doctor". You can say he works in a hospital or that his job is similar to that of a nurse, etc.

Learning with songs

One of my objectives for this school year is to include more songs in my teaching. Sometimes it gets very difficult to include more songs in our lessons because they are packed with content (grammar, vocabulary, listening activities, etc.). However, this blog will help me to make up for the possible lack of music in class.



And you might be asking but "Why is listening to songs going to help me improve my English"???

• Listening to songs in English is something you can do on your own at home. You don't need a teacher for this and this is already and good reason. You can learn at home whenever you want to.

• Listening to music you like is fun. It's a nice activity so it makes learning pleasant and easy.

• Learning can happen naturally. You concentrate on the music and lyrics without paying attention to the language structure.

• Watching videos with lyrics can help you improve your listening skills and your pronunciation.

• You're exposed to a wide variety of language helping you to learn new vocabulary and structures

Remember that you're learning English because you want to and you have to make the experience enjoyable. Listening to English songs and reading the lyrics along with the song is not only a great way to improve your English but a great way to enjoy it.

Below you have "Just the way you are" from Bruno Mars with matches with our topic from Unit 1, describing people.

You already worked the song in class with a gap filling activity, but there is something else you can do at home:

1. Listen to the song without reading the lyrics and try to get the main idea.
2. Listen again and write down the key words.
3. Check your key words with the lyrics and sing along.

When you sing along, pay attention to your pronunciation!

Reacting and asking for more information

When you ask someone a questions and they answer, it is normal to show interest. 

How can he show interest?? Phrases such as 

Really? 

Oh yes? 

Yes, me too, 

Me neither

I know what you mean

You're (so) right!

That can't be true!

You must be joking

will let the other person know that you are interested in what they are saying.

Another strategy is to ask for more information, either with a full question

And what happened then?

So what did you do?

Have you though what you're going to do?

What did she say?

Or with a question word?

Why?

When?

How?

From now on, when you speak think about these strategies to help you show interest in what the other person is saying.

Guessing meaning from context

Reading will give a great opportunity to learn new vocabulary and structures as well as it will help you learn better the vocabulary and structures you've worked with in class.

When you are reading and you find a word or phrase you don't know try to guess the meaning from the context (the other words around it). Think also about what part of speech the unknown word is (e. g. a verb, an adjective, etc. ). Think if you've seen it before in another context or if you can remember having seen it in class. Also think whether it is similar to another word in English, or whether it is similar to a word in your language.

If you still can't work out what the word or phrase means, either ignore it and carry on reading or use a good dictionary to help you.

This last option is what you tend to do, you always look up new words in the dictionary and many times you overuse it. Next time you are going to open your dictionary try to guess the meaning of the unknown word from its context. This is what you already do in your own language without noticing, let's try to do the same in English!

Rome wasn't build in a day

Hi guys,

Today at the beginning of the lesson I played the song Rome wasn't built in a day from Morcheeba. I chose this song in purpose because we were going to do lots of listening practice and were also going to practise pronunciation.

I really like the song and it has a good title to bear in mind while this long learning process lasts because Rome wasn't build in a day ;-)

I hope you like it!

How to improve your listening

Hi everyone,


I thought it is necessary to speak about listening. 

Listening is usually the most difficult skill to master by foreign students. When you speak to native speakers, you don't usually have difficulties talking but the problem arises when they reply, you don't understand... 

You put on the TV to watch an American film or TV series and you don't understand. 

But how come I can speak quite fluently but I am not able to understand a single word I hear??? This is what you normally ask yourselves.

Well, the answer is very simple you don't listen enough. It's hard to accept but it's the truth, in order to be able to understand native speakers you need to practise much much more your listening.

I'll give a clear example. My 2 year-old daughter is starting to speak now, she can put together two or three words now and she can transmit very simple messages related with her needs and priorities. She's now starting to speak, however, she's been able to understand us for more than a year. She does not understand everything completely, but I dare say she understands 80 % of what we say. And when she does not understand she doesn't care, she repeats what we say and laugh and probably next time she will understand what we say.

Why am I talking about my little girl now?? 

She's also learning a language and so are you. In my opinion we should all learn from her if we want to master a foreign language. Babies start listening to the language the will learn before they are able to utter a single word, they listen and listen for around a year and a half before they actually start saying their first words. Then, they start repeating the same words over and over again. They don't miss a chance to show off and let everybody know the new words they have learnt, when they don't understand something, they don't get frustrated or demotivated, instead they repeat what they hear without even understanding what they are saying but they are confident they will pick up the new words and one day will understand them.

So what is the lesson here:

1. Start listening more (and more and more).

2. Don't be demotivated if there are things you don't understand.

3. Learn to live happily with that level of "not knowing and not understanding".

4. Practise the new vocabulary, if you learn it you will be then able to recognise it.

5. Practise pronunciation, if you know how words are pronounced, it will be easier for you to recognise them.

6. Practise your speaking, the more you'll speak the more you'll listen.

7. Have a look at my previous post on strategies for developing listening skills. 

8. Enjoy your learning experience because it can be lots of fun!!

Strategies for Developing Listening Skills

Strategies for Developing Listening Skills

PROBLEM: People talk too fast

Let the speaker know you are not following

Ask for repetition

Ask the person to slow down

Ask for clarification

Rephrase to ensure you have understood

Repeat what you are not sure about

Pay attention to intonation and tone of voice

Focus on question words

Assume that the here and now are relevant

PROBLEM: I am not getting anything out of foreign language TV and movies

Use visual cues

Use your background knowledge

Use information from the segment itself

Determine the genre of the segment

Listen to familiar elements

Listen to familiar-sounding words

Listen to and jot down repeated words and phrases

Learn to recognise numbers

Learn to recognise proper names

PROBLEM: I tend to stop listening when I hear an unfamiliar word or phrase

Concentrate on familiar elements

Keep listening

Rubin & Thompson (1994: 89-90)

Learning Strategies

Learning strategies

FIND YOUR OWN WAY

Discover how you learn best

PLAN

Set Clear Goals

Establish a regular schedule

Plan to learn something new everyday

Assess the difficulty of each task or assignment

MONITOR AND EVALUATE

Pay attention to you learning successes

Pay attention to the learning successes of other

Experiment to determine your modality preference

Notice which strategies work and which don’t

Experiment and note reactions

Rubin & Thomson (1994:59-62)

Writing Test Tips

Whenever you write a composition you have to follow these steps:

1. PLAN your IDEAS (what are you going to write about?)


2. PLAN your LANGUAGE (verbs, adjectives, nouns... which language do you need?

3. PLAN the STRUCTURE (what order are your ideas going to follow?


After these three steps you can write your composition, but remember to answer the questions with the number of words specified.


When you finish writing, REVISE your composition and look for the mistakes you usually make.

Some come mistakes are:

• Final -s third person singular
• Plurals
• Possessive Adjectives
• Articles
• Subjects

Your Christmas Study Guide

A long holiday ahead, but you need to organize yourself to find the time to study English a little bit ;-P

I want to help you so I have made "Your Christmas Study Guide"

1. STUDY

Grammar:

• word order in questions
• present simple
• present continuous
• past simple
• past continuous
• time sequencers
• connectors

Vocabulary:

• verb phrases
• appearance and personality adjectives
• clothes
• prepositions of place
• prepositions of time
• travel vocabulary

How to write an informal email (p. 111 and visit my post on informal letters)

How to write a blog entry (homework)

2. PRACTISE

Reading:

• Read Eight Great American Tales
• Visit my blog and do the reading activities

Writing:

• Write a blog entry (homework)
• Leave comments to my blog entries so you can practise

Listening:

• Listen to the CD Eight Great American Tales
• Do the listening activities on your workbook
• Do the listening activities on my blog

Pronunciation:

• Do the pronunciation activities on your workbook
• Do the pronunciation activities on my blog

Speaking Techniques - Interaction

SPEAKING TECHNIQUES-Interaction

Speaking Techniques - Presentation

SPEAKING TECHNIQUES – Presentation

THE WRITING PROCESS

THE WRITING PROCESS

STEP 1.  (5 min)

Think about what you want to write and how you are going to write it.

Make notes of your ideas and write down the language you might need.

STEP 2.  (5 min)

Organise your ideas.

Plan your writing.

STEP 3.  (20 min)

Write your first draft taking into account your previous notes.

STEP 4.  (5 min)

Check your first draft.

Do not rewrite it, just correct your mistakes (spelling, verb tenses…) and think about the assessment criteria below:

Competencia Pragmática			Competencia Lingüística			Registro (1)
Consigna (1)	Formato (1)	Organización (2)	Ortografía (1)	Léxico (2)	Gramática (2)

STEP 5.  (15 min)

Write your final draft.

Do not change anything at this stage, just write your final draft in a tidy and neat manner.