Remember, Remember 5th November

Wednesday 5th November, 2014

Hi! How are you doing?

Last week we worked on homophones. We find it funny and useful.

·         There was a huge wave caused by the storm.

·         Look that’s your dad on the drive! Wave (say hello moving your hand) to him.

·         They caught the burglar and took him to court.

·         The student was bored trying to follow the lesson looking at the board.

·         You aren’t allowed to speak aloud in hospitals. The patients need silence.

·         They wanted to hire a car of a higher range.

We made sentences using phrasal verbs.

·      The burglars broke into (force a way into a building) the house through a window.

·      We had to tell off (reprimand) the kids who misbehaved in class.

·      He didn’t study a degree. He went to university but he dropped out (left) in the second year.

·      If you have a problem, you can count on (trust, rely on) me.

·      They have always looked up to (admire) their parents.

And, as it was 5^th November, we watched a video on Guy Fawkes’ Night or Bonfire Night. A traditional celebration in England.

See you on Wednesday!

Making your Point!

Wednesday 29^th October, 2014

Hello how’s everything? I hope everything is fine.

Have you enjoyed the weekend? You should have because it seems it was the last spring weather weekend in autumn!

It’s amazing how people change. I didn’t use to like the fall (U.S. English for autumn) But I took to it (I got to like it) when I lived in the U.K. It was then that I realised for the first time the different colours of the leaves in the trees. There was gorgeous scenery (landscape) with all those different shades of brown and yellow. Before then, I used to think that autumn was synonym of dark and grey; dull and gloomy…but my stay in England changed my mind (made me think differently) and I now appreciate the autumn much more.

 

The typical autumn celebration in the UK and the USA is Halloween. What do you know about this festivity? You can find out (learn) about its history watching this video.

Last week we learnt how to make our point!

We listened to three people talking about whether people should pay more for taxes for fast food. There were three people, consequently, we had three different points of view: in favour, against and neutral.

We learnt some words and expressions that we can use for this purpose. Do you remember them?

If you ask me	As far as I’m concerned
The point I’m trying to make is that…	That’s not the point..
To tell you the truth	I suppose the problem is that…
If you want my opinion…	Anyway, as I was saying…
What really worries me is that…	As I understand it …
Another thing is that…	But the main point is that …

Don’t forget to give a sequence of your reasons.

First of all	In my opinion	As far as I know
As well as this	Generally speaking	To be exact
Finally	The problem is,	To be honest

In our next class, you’ll make your point on one of these topics: being vegetarian, diets, smoking in public places, experiments on animals.

We read a romantic love story about a couple that got married despite the girl’s father opposition to the marriage.

The girl was just sixteen when she married the boy. Although her father used to (would) lock her in her room and she used to (would) cry a lot, in the end (finally) she got it her way and the two lovers got married.

We did exercises using expressions with get and be.

You can do more exercises clicking on this link  Exercises with GET

So, we did work hard!

See you on Wednesday!