PRONUNCIATION - THE PHONEMIC CHART (ALL LEVELS)

Hi!! Let's start the pronunciation posts with the phonemic chart in English. There is a great site where you can practise (on your own) this difficult part of the English language. It's called Cambridgeenglishonline. First of all we'll practise the phonetic alphabet or Phonemic Chart (it's on the left) and then you can try the Phon' Maze (at the top). I hope it will help you out a lot. Just click HERE to go.

The second site is howjsay.com. It's a free online Talking Dictionary of English Pronunciation . Click HERE and check it out.

GAMES - HANGMAN + WORD FORMATION (ALL LEVELS)

VIDEO - PREPOSITIONS OF TIME AT, IN, ON (1º/2º/PDC)

Watch the video and try to do this multiple choice:

I never go to bed....the afternoon
at on in
She was born.....Independence Day
at in on
My nephew arrived home....midnight!!!
at in on
Her birthday is.....New Year's Day
in on at
Don't worry! See you....September!
in on at
My youngest grandson always comes back home....Christmas
at on in
Nobody left the party.....8
in on at

GAME - OPPOSITE ADJECTIVES (2º + ALL LEVELS)

You will need to find pairs of opposite adjectives. The quickest, the best. GOOD LUCK!!!! and ENJOY YOURSELF!!!!

Click here for larger version

READING COMPREHENSION + SPEAKING (3º)

READING : Chinese New Year

Vocabulary :
take place (tener lugar)
last is a verb in this text. It means "durar"
relatives is a kind of "false friend". It means "parientes/familiares/personas de una familia"
wish is a verb in the text. It means "desear"
blossom is an uncountable noun in the text. It means "flores"
to get rid of is an expression that means "deshacerse de"


TEXT:
Chinese New Year takes place in January or February and lasts for fifteen days. During the festival people visit their family, remember dead relatives and wish for good luck. Before New Year’s Eve people decorate their homes with red decorations and blossom, and buy new clothes. They also clean their houses to get rid of bad luck. On New Year’s Eve many families have a banquet together and the most popular dish is fish. On New Year’s Day children are given red envelopes containing money. The festival ends with fireworks and a lantern festival. People come to see the brightly-coloured lanterns, lion dances and dragon dances.


Read the text again and answer the questions.

1 How long is the Chinese New Year festival?
______________________________________
2 What do people decorate their homes with?
______________________________________
3 Why do they clean their homes?
______________________________________
4 What do people do on New Year’s Eve?
______________________________________
5 What happens on New Year’s Day?
______________________________________
6 How does the festival end?
______________________________________
7 What do most people eat on New Year's Eve in your country? (Three lines minimum)
__________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________


Look at a Chinese calendar.
There are twelve animals. Look at the characteristics for each animal. Underline the one negative characteristic for each animal.
Rat generous, gets angry easily, ambitious

Horse selfish, hardworking, intelligent

Ox demanding, cheerful, good with hands

Sheep artistic, pessimistic, stylish

Tiger brave, sensitive, unpredictable

Monkey intelligent, successful, materialistic

Rabbit easily upset, talented, friendly

Rooster arrogant, honest, good decision maker

Dragon popular, lots of fun, bossy

Dog loyal, dedicated, says bad things about people

Snake romantic, sensible, mean with money

Pig bad-tempered, funny, happy

Speaking:

Questions (Oral Test)

With the information given and some extra information that you'll get from the Internet. Here are some questions about this topic:

1 - When were you born?
2 - Which animal are you? Why?
3 - Do you agree with the characteristics of your animal? Why?/Why not?
4 - Yes/No questions of the type "Are Horses intelligent?"/Is successful a negative characteristic?
5 - In your opinion, which is the best animal? Why?
Possible answers to the questions:

Question 1 - You can say "I was born on the.......of........". Complete the first blank with an ordinal number . Just in case you have forgotten them, click HERE to revise. In the second blank you must give the month and the year. For instance: "I was born on the twenty-fourth of March, nineteen ninety-eight".
Question 2 - You can say "I'm a/an......". Put here the name of the animal. Explain why saying something like " Because the Chinese zodiac signs are based on the year of birth" or "Because I found it out using the widget / gadget on the right of the blog" ("find out=averiguar" "I found it out=Lo averigüé" / "widget/gadget=chisme, artilugio") or "I used a chart to find it out" ("chart=lista")
Question 3 - You can use the short answer "Yes, I do/No, I don't" or "I completely agree/I don't agree at all/Only with some of them" for the first part of the question and in the second part you must give reasons saying "Because....are....and I am quite/very....." include here here opposite adjectives, we can use the wordreference.com dictionary to look them up, click HERE or "Because....are...., and I'm the........person in the world", include here the names of the animals for the first space, followed by a positive adjective and its superlative or "Because I'm....and....but I'm not...., I am very...."include here two adjectives of an animal and the third one with its opposite. Here are some examples:
I don't agree at all, because horses are hardworking and I'm very lazy
I don't agree at all, because rats are ambitious and generous and I'm very modest and mean
I completely agree, because tigers are brave and I'm the bravest person in the world
I completely agree, because dragons are popular and bossy and I'm the most popular and bossiest person in the world
Only with some some of them, because I am romantic and sensible but I'm not mean with money, I'm quite generous
Only with some of them, because I'm artistic and stylish but I'm not pessimistic at all, I'm very optimistic
Question 4 - Give short answers: Yes, they are, No, they can't, Yes, it is...
Question 5 - You can say "In my opinion,/ I think that the best animals are the....because they have the best characteristics", include here the animals. For example:
I think that the best animals are the roosters, because they have the best characteristics
In my opinion, the best animals are the dogs, because I like their characteristics a lot
In my opinion the best animal is the snake because mother/father/ is a snake and he/she's the most important person in the world for me

SONG 1 (ALL LEVELS)

Hi!! Here is a beautiful song for you to enjoy. Remember that listening to music improves our vocabulary and our pronunciation. The song in this post is "Every breath you take" by The Police. Here are some songfacts:
This is one of the most misinterpreted songs ever. It is about an obsessive stalker, but it sounds like a love song. Some people even used it as their wedding song. The Police frontman Sting wrote it after separating from his first wife, Frances Tomelty. In a 1983 interview with the New Musical Express, Sting explained: "I think it's a nasty little song, really rather evil. It's about jealousy and surveillance and ownership." Regarding the common misinterpretation of the song, he added: "I think the ambiguity is intrinsic in the song however you treat it because the words are so sadistic. On one level, it's a nice long song with the classic relative minor chords, and underneath there's this distasteful character talking about watching every move. I enjoy that ambiguity. I watched Andy Gibb singing it with some girl on TV a couple of weeks ago, very loving, and totally misinterpreting it. (Laughter) I could still hear the words, which aren't about love at all. I pissed myself laughing." This was the biggest hit of 1983. It was US #1 for 8 weeks. Sting wrote this at the same desk in Jamaica where Ian Fleming wrote his James Bond Novels. The recording process created a great deal of tension in the studio. Sting was very particular about his song and would not let the other members of The Police (Andy Summers and Stuart Copeland) do much with it. The Police broke up after this album. The middle of the song was finished last. They didn't know what to do with it until Sting sat at a piano and started hitting the same key over and over. That became the basis for the missing section. Sting knew this would be the band's biggest hit when he wrote it, even if he didn't think he was breaking new ground. In Rolling Stone magazine, he said: "'Every Breath You Take' is an archetypal song. If you have a major chord followed by a relative minor, you're not original." (thanks, Bertrand - Paris, France) This won Grammys in 1984 for Song Of The Year and Best Pop Performance By Duo Or Group With Vocal.

GAME - CROSSWORD TRANSPORT WORDS (2º)

Try this puzzle about some vocabulary we learned in the first term.
New Words - scooter (escúter, Vespa), double-decker bus (autobús de dos pisos), high-speed train (tren de alta velocidad), coach (autocar, autobús de largo recorrido), liner (buque de pasajeros), ocean liner (transatlántico), ferry (ferry), sailing ship (barco de vela), yacht (yate), canoe (canoa), seaplane (hidroavión), hovercraft (aerodeslizador), submarine (submarino), starship/spacecraft (nave espacial), rocket (cohete), , lift (ascensor), on horseback (a caballo)

Oral Questions : "How do you go/come to......?", "How do you go from....to.....?". Remember to use the prepositions and expressions. You can click HERE to revise and learn more things about these expresions.

GRAMMAR - PRESENT SIMPLE or PRESENT CONTINUOUS (3º/4º)

It's very important to end your ESO years at school knowing the difference between the two present tenses in English. We usually insist on this point in our final exams, so here are some exercises dealing with this grammar point. Who's the fastest????

GAME - IRREGULAR VERBS (2º/3º/4º)

Hi!! Here you have a game. Try to get a lot of points. How much do you know about irregular verbs? GOOD LUCK!!!!!

Click here for larger version

VIDEO - PREPOSITIONS OF MOVEMENT (3º)

This video is about prepositions of movement. I hope it will be useful!!!!

MULTIPLE CHOICE 1 (3º/4º)

1 - .........sugar do you need?
How much How many
2 - How much coffee.......?
is there are there
3 - There are......books on the shelves
any some
4 - There's.......cheese in the fridge
a lot of much
5 - There weren't.......people at the butcher's
many a lot of
6 - I haven't got......money left
many much
7 - At the moment we.......an English test
do are doing
8 - I......my mobile because I........a text message
didn't answer / was sending was answering / didn't send
9 - A person who drives a car too fast is guilty of.......
vandalism joyriding speeding hacking
10 - A person who damages someone else's property is guilty of.....
vandalism arson burglary shoplifting
11 - He was........when his trousers fell down
confused upset cross embarrassed
12 - After a boring weekend with nothing to do I was......
disappointed luckily fed up lonely
13 - My brother........eating a sandwich
was eating noisily was noisily eating was noise eating noisily was eating
14 - There were........on the ceiling
some new, blue, Chinese bulbs some blue, new, Chinese bulbs some Chinese, new, blue bulbs some new, Chinese, blue bulbs
15 - What's your ideal bedroom like? means.....
¿Qué te gusta de mi habitación ideal? ¿Te gustaría tener una habitación ideal? ¿Cómo es tu habitación ideal? ¿Para qué quieres una habitación ideal?
16 - I'm not very.......tennis
well at good in well in good at
17 - I like......portraits of my friends
do doing to do to doing
18 - She's got an amazing........of stamps
collected collectivity collection collect
19 - Would you like.....apple juice?
several a any some
20 - The plan failed when the police......him in the legs
shooted shot shoot shooting