Comparatives & superlatives

Hello everyone!

Last week we revised countable and uncountable nouns and also how to form comparatives and superlatives in English.

You can practise comparatives and superlatives here (you can select four different levels of difficulty). And here you have a text about London and another one about Los Angeles, with a grammar exercise at the end.


Then we read a text about the hottest, the coldest and the highest cities in the world, and you talked about the funniest anecdote and the best moment in your lives. Some of them were really good!! :) Also, we learnt vocabulary related to the weather (what's the weather like today?). For homework, you have to do the last two exercises of the photocopy.





Finally, we finished the book Great Expectations. I read your comments yesterday, and I was happy to see that you all liked it!

Now you know the exam calendar, so, please, use this weekend to start revising and ask me any questions you have.

See you next week! :)

Ps: Remember that you also have to write a composition for next Monday/Tuesday: write about your favourite place in the world (it can be a country, a city, your town, your house, even your bedroom!). Try to use as much vocabulary and grammar as you can (100-120 words).

Algunas ideas de cosas sobre las que podéis hablar: describir el lugar (vocabulario de la casa), qué tiempo hace (the weather), decid por qué os gusta, cuándo fue la primera vez que fuisteis (pasado), con qué frecuencia vais (adverbios de frecuencia), con quién, qué hacéis allí (actividades cotidianas, can), cuándo vais a volver de nuevo (futuro), etc.

Obama's Speech

Good morning everyone,

First of all, sorry for not updating the blog during the weekend, but I was busy with some other things. Anyway, better late than never!

On Monday/Tuesday we finished off the unit about crime correcting some final exercises on indirect questions, and we continued commenting on The Canterbury Tales. After that, we devoted most part of the lesson to discussing Bin Laden's death and the effect it will have on the international sphere. We watched Obama's official announcement and we also listened to a news report. You have the video below:

I've just had a quick look at the "Quote of the day" widget in the blog, and, curiously enough, one of the sentences that appeared was the following:

"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy", Martin Luther King.

Do you agree with this?

On Wednesday/Thursday we started talking about films and I gave you some handouts on the passive voice. We'll continue with that topic today learning some vocabulary related to cinema, and we'll correct the photocopies.

I hope you've all had a great weekend!

The future; reading practice online

Hello everyone!

How is the weekend? :)

Last week was very short because we only had one day of class. We played a game where you had to guess the definition of some words (foggy, staycation, guffaw and gobsmacked), and the winner had a prize that I hope you liked! :p

The word staycation is not in the dictionary because it is a very new creation. It refers to a new trend where people stay at home for their holidays, because (i) they don't have enough money, (ii) they want to help the environment or (iii) they want to know their country better. Have a look at what wikipedia says about this.




We talked about this new phenomenon and we also read a text where 6 people gave their opinion. Finally, we learnt how to talk about our plans and predictions for the future with the expression (be) going to + infinitive (remember that the verb be changes according to the person).

Here you have some links to practise this:

Exercise 1: Very basic exercise to practise the structure in (+) affirmative sentences.
Exercise 2: Here you have to answer questions using the future.
Exercise 3: Here you have to form negative sentences.
Exercise 4: And, finally, ask questions in the future.

Some people asked me to post readings with exercises to practise at home. I found this link where you can find a lot of readings from different topics (temas). The majority of them have comprehension exercises, and some of them also have the possibility of listening (audiotexts). Of course, only do the ones from the easy level.

For homework, I want you to do exercises 1a and 1b on pages 82 and 83. Please, also complete Grammar Banks 7C and 7D at the end of the book.

See you tomorrow / Tuesday!

Indirect questions & question tags; "From Hell" (film)

Hi there!

Last week was rather short because we only had one day of class. But I think we made the most of it, didn't we? :)

First of all, we revised some grammar and corrected some exercises related to indirect questions and question tags. Remember that indirect questions are a way of making questions more polite, introducing a formula of politeness such as do you know...? can/could you tell me...? etc. They can bit tricky because they don't have the usual structure of a question (QUASI), but the structure of a normal sentence: Sj + Verb + Complements.

(Taken from http://www.bbc.co.uk)

This also happened with reported questions. Have a look at the following examples:

• What's the time? --> Could you tell me what the time is? Indirect question.

• What's the time? --> He asked me what the time was. Reported question (remember that here we go one step back in time; we change the tense).

If you want to practise this a bit more, check out this link. Here you'll listen to a Japanese student learning about indirect questions (click here for the transcription). Then you can take two quizzes to see if you have fully understood indirect questions: quiz 1, quiz 2.

As for question tags, I left two very useful links last week (please, check them if you haven't already), but click here and here for two more.

Then we talked about The Canterbury Tales. So far (hasta ahora) we've talked about Geoffrey Chaucer, his world, and Thomas Beckett. Next week we'll start with the book itself and one of you will present a summary of "The Prologue". Remember to pay careful attention to the description of the characters: it's a real criticism of the society of the time.

Finally, we watched several scenes from the film "From Hell" (2001), starring Johnny Depp. Here you have the link to watch it on cuevana (the "download" option is not available any more, I don't know why... Maybe the Ley Sinde is starting to be enforced...).

As for homework, I'd like you to complete the Vocabulary section on page 107 (exercises a and c). Intermediate F, please, finish completing Grammar Bank 7B. Thank you.

Have a great weekend!