Category Archives: Writing

Write, Write, Write

Writing,

Words — so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

I am not going to lie to you, writing is not easy. It is not even  easy in your own native  language, let alone  in a foreign one.  I think that some people are born with a natural talent for writing, but for most of us  it ‘s a question of  practice , time and determination.

There is a quote by Pablo Picasso that I’ve always liked

And If you want a tip from this humble teacher  , here it  goes  , if you want to improve your writing  read, read , read and write ,write,write.

Anyway, today I want to share with you this website , which is really a timesaver for teachers when our brains are on holiday ,but we are not, and a nice place for students to refer to when they  want to do some autonomous practice. The site is called  English Tonight and although it has different sections to help you learn English, the one I like best is the Writing Section, full of creative writing prompts, as the one just below

Giving Opinion: Driving

Students' Corner, Writing, , , , ,

For the past week I’ve been raking my brains looking for a nice way to display these statements   and finally for lack of something that took my breath away, I have decided to stick to the overused  writeacomic.com , which works just fine … but for a few details there is no point in getting into right now.

So , right below , you’ll find some statements  about driving . This is what you need to do

TASK

♥Choose one statement  (only one , please)

♥Write a comment (5-8 lines) explaining  your point of view and why you agree or disagree with the statement.

♥Use some of the expressions here

I am pretty sure we all agree that these weeks before Three Wise  Men’s Day  are chaos. We’re all  super busy buying , wrapping ,eating and drinking (OMG!) so I don’t think I’ll be back in this space  until lessons start again.Thanks for being there!!

Wishing you all a Happy New Year!!

Guess Who!

Picture Description, Writing, , , , ,

Good morning folks!! I hope you are having a great week!!! Me?? So far, I can’t complain!!

Here we go once again with an activity where you ‘ll need to use your writing abilities in a game . Have a look at the mosaic below; I guess you’ll recognise most of our celebrities but if you don’t , don’t hassle , for this game you’ll need to write about one of them .

TASK.

Aim: to describe both, physical  appearance and personality, of one of the celebritities in the mosaic  without mentioning their name.

Steps

♥ Choose one of the celebrities  and without mentioning who he/she is ,write a description of both physical appearance and personality.

♥ Don’t forget to use adverbs of degree  : quite, slightly, a bit, a little

♥ Show off, I guess you can see the difference between these two sentences: I think she is 70 years old  and I think she’s a 70-year-old woman. You are an Intermediate student, let the whole world know!

♥ Write a maximum of eight lines. See what other students have done here

♥You think you have finished? Right, you haven’t !! Now,  read what you have written several times to correct grammatical and spelling errors .

♥Now that you are confident everything is Ok, click on the “leave a comment” section and write your description.

♥In class, all descriptions will be read and the celebrities guessed. Enjoy! 😉

 

 

 

 

Picture Description: Fashion

Picture Description, Speaking, Students' Corner, Writing, , ,

Another example of picture description for the Intermediate speaking exams. Thanks to Eloy Menéndez for kindly sending it.

These pictures are related to fashion and clothes.
To begin with, the photo on the left shows a group of young people wearing eccentric clothes, with a very particular style: most in black, large boots, fishnet stockings. Many people would say they look scruffy. Probably, they are in a music festival or in a concert and they seem as if they are having fun. In the other photo, we can see a catwalk, in which high-heeled models are wearing very expensive garments, probably from famous designers. Maybe, such events are more targeted towards shopaholics, who are always trying to be in the limelight and constantly renew the way they dress.
From some years up to now, clothes have become a distinguishing factor.

There are multiple urban tribes, some of them wearing outrageous clothes, others with colourful and bright garments, but each one with its own particularity, and they don’t care what others may think about them. They dress in the way they want. I am more keen on how the “skins” dress: shaved hair, tight jeans, suspenders, military boots. On the contrary, most of the teenagers are very fashionable because they are influenced by the media and constantly being fed with “tips” about what it’s cool to wear or not.

I would say fashion is cyclic and so are trends. Styles from the past are re-invented by designers or they just return in the same way they were many years ago: for that, vintage clothes, patterns, accessories and colours have become trendy nowadays.

One of the most widespread stereotypes is that women pay more attention to their appearance than men do. I think that used to be so in the past, yet today more men are worried about how they are seen by the opposite sex. So therefore, most fashion ads are directed to both sexes.

I believe everyone has to wear those clothes which match their own styles, their thoughts and moral convictions. If you think the most expensive shirt, the old-fashioned skirt or the most ragged jacket fits you, that’s what matters. Dressing well or badly is something subjective and if you feel comfortable with that garment, go ahead.
Eloy Menendez

The memorable life of….

Students' Corner, Writing, , , , ,

There is little that gives more satisfaction than publishing students’ work; they are  the reason behind all the hard work that means keeping  this blog going.

Today, I want to show you some essays written by students in the Elementary level under the heading “The memorable life of… . I would have wanted to include all of them but the truth is that they were too many so I have just published half the ones I was sent. I hope nobody is disappointed!

As I have often done in the past, to publish the content I have used the free digital publishing platform Issuu.

Click to enlarge .

Carmen Menéndez’s presentation of The Memorable life of Amelia Earhart is also worth  publishing . I hope you enjoy it!!