More reading practice

Have you tried the weblinks on your coursebook's webpage? I'm sure you have, he he, but here's the link just in case.

Upper-intermediate: http://www.oup.com/elt/global/products/englishfile/upperint/y_weblinks/

Intermediate: http://www.oup.com/elt/global/products/englishfile/intermediate/h_weblinks/

Did you know?

Get ready to read fast. There's lots of information and statistics here.

Watch and see if there's anything that you didn't know.

Sentence Transformations (2)

Hope you had great fun doing them. Now you can check to see if you got them all right. :)

PS. SORRRRRRRRRRRRY! Victoria from 4S has spotted another mistake. In sentence number 29, the verbs in brackets should be "visit", not "go". Thanks, Victoria!

Summarising

Here is a simple online exercise where you can practise summarising short texts, and it also gives you feedback in order to help you distinguish between main ideas and secondary information.

http://www.tv411.org/lessons/cfm/reading.cfm?str=reading&num=6&act=1

There are other reading-related exercises on the same page: http://www.tv411.org/reading/

Dolphin rings

One of my ex-students from "Fuenlabrada City" sent me this video. As usual, I was sceptical and Googled it, but according to Snopes.com, it's true.

I would appreciate any more information, if anyone has any.

Enjoy!

Happy clouds

Ok, maybe England has enough clouds already, but none like these:

Fleet foxes

I regularly fall in love with songs, and play them to death.

My latest "love" is this song, "White winter hymnal", by the Fleet Foxes.

There are many discussions on the internet about the meaning of the lyrics, but I'd suggest just sitting back and enjoying the melody. It's not my usual style of music, but it's SO pretty. Hope you like it.

Lyrics:

Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal

I was following the pack,
all swallowed in their coats
with scarves of red tied ’round their throats,
to keep their little heads
from fallin’ in the snow
And I turned ’round and there you go
And, Michael, you would fall
and turn the white snow red as strawberries
in the summertime

Coin-stealing birds

You probably thought that it was just the banks, phone companies and electricity companies that we had to be careful with, but nope, it's the birds too.

(I personally love the kind of bird that steals: crows, magpies, etc. I didn't know that starlings do it too. So cute! ♥)

Josep from 4T sent me the original story. Snopes.com tells it like this:

Bill owns a company that manufactures and installs car wash systems... (read more)

Urban legends

Are you gullible? Test your knowledge of urban legends with this test: Urban Legends Test

Happy Carnival everybody!

Well, I'm not really a carnival person, but this year I dressed up as a "guiri" English teacher. You may have seen me in Vilanova. I was very convincing. Life-like.

Remember there's no class on Monday or Tuesday, so I'll see you all on Wednesday/Thursday.

Have fun, and don't eat too many sweets!

Reading practice online

Today I discovered this page (you might already know it):

http://www.barcelona-metropolitan.com/Default.aspx

Some of the articles may be a bit long, but it's great practice for you, and there are lots of interesting topics.

Recommended grammar book

As mentioned in class, for those of you in 3rd year or 4th year who need to revise your grammar structures, extra practice or whatever, this is a very good book:

English Grammar in Use (for intermediate students) by Raymond Murphy (Cambridge).

(If you already have a different grammar book at home, bring it in and show it to me).

Remember to get the one with answers so that you can study at home autonomously.

Time to relax

Well, I've finished correcting all your exams, writing out the marks, etc, so now I can sit back and enjoy the weekend as I deserve. Ahhhhhhhhh.

Have a good weekend, everyone, and see you next week!

Speaking test timetables

Listening practice on the web

There are lots of listening resources on the internet, and I've included some on my list of recommended links, but just to make it (even) easier for you, let me re-recommend http://www.elllo.org/ (I know some of you have already investigated the page and found it useful).

This page has a great variety of listening activities:

Very short and easy: http://www.elllo.org/english/Games.htm

Situation conversations with comprehension questions: http://www.elllo.org/english/Situations.htm

Or listen to different people answering the same question (and practise listening to different accents): http://www.elllo.org/english/Mixer.htm

Or maybe multiple-choice type listenings here: http://www.elllo.org/english/STeP.htm.

Or, or, or... look, I'm SURE you can find something interesting on the page: interviews, news articles, etc, so what are you waiting for to check it out? Feedback welcome as usual.