I owe this idea to my colleague, Mº Jesús Balán who has an excellent blog ESL Bloggers.
Ready? Time to put into practice everything learnt for picture description. Click here and here if you need to brush up .
Look at these pictures. The exercise is quite simple. Choose someone from this collage and write a description in as much detail as possible.
Still on the subject of sports, today let’s focus on a writing activity where you’ll have to make use of lots of things learnt this week, namely
What to do?? Simple!!! Look at the following pictures. What do they all have in common? Exactly!! They’re all sports.
What do you have to do? Choose a sport and give a good definition for it, mentioning everything you know about it as regards equipment, rules of the game, where you can practise it…etc. Make sure you do not write the name of the sport as we, readers, will have to guess the name of the sport you are describing.
Need a dictionary? Here : Monolingual http://dictionary.cambridge.org/
Bilingual http://www.wordreference.com/es/
Ready??
If only I had known first I’d have paid more attention to my mother when she persistently tried to teach me and my siblings good table manners, but when you are a child you can’t see the point of not getting a bit of fun out of flinging crusts of bread, making a mashed potato snowman or getting my brother and sisters’ hair red with tomato sauce (my mother would have never allowed ketchup to enter her kitchen). 
My mother was educated in a nun’s school. It was a time when subjects such as Maths or Languages were not as important as knowing how to knit or embroider. In a way it wasn’t as different as the education received by the female characters depicted in “Jane Eyre” by Charlote Brontë or in “Pride and Prejudice” by my very much admired Jane Austen.
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One of the things my mother was taught was good table manners and since me and my siblings were very young we were insistently reminded of things such as keeping elbows off the table, eating small bites, sitting straight, placing the napkin on our laps and …. a long etc I’m not going to bore you to death with.
What I didn’t know and have just found out is that good table manners can help you lose weight so as I’m a bit on the plumpish side my mother might not have taught me so well.
That’s why I have paid careful attention to this video where Jill, Duchess of Hamilton, an Australian and an etiquette expert, explains how good table manners can help you lose weight.
Watch the video here and do the activity
If you are interested in this theme, Click here to see a whole lesson plan I have prepared for my pre-intermediate students on Restaurants and Food.
Related Posts:
I never say “no” when one of my friends phones me to suggest going shopping. I love it!!!
Although I like going shopping a lot I don’t see myself as a shopaholic: I am definitely not a compulsive shopper although I am one of those who sort of view going shopping as a hobby. It helps me relax but I certainly do not spend money I do not have and I am not drowning in debt because of my purchases. Well, this is what I tell my mother every single time she tells me off for wearing new clothes.
Anyway, this is a video from the film Pretty Woman, which I’m sure all of you have seen.
You can do three things:
♦ Just watch and enjoy it
For students in the elementary level
♦ Watch the video and do some exercises
♦ Do a whole lesson plan on going shopping Here
And now that we are on the subject what about learning some expressions containing the word shop?
→ talk shop
if people who work together talk shop, they talk about their work when they are not at work
Even when they go out in the evening, they just talk shop all the time.
→go window-shopping 
to go about looking at goods in store windows without actually buying anything.
Joan said she was just going window-shopping, but she bought a new coat.
→shop around (for something)
to shop at different stores to find what you want at the best price.
You can find a bargain, but you’ll have to shop around.
→be like a bull in a china shop
to often drop or break things because you move awkwardly or roughly.
Rob’s like a bull in a china shop – don’t let him near those plants.
Fortune telling, palm reading, tarot, physic reading, clairvoyance, onomancy ,numerology,horoscopes and the whole lot. There are countless ways of predicting the future and there are lots of people, even politicians who consult fortune tellers to help them take decisions.One good example is Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State. This is said to have happened between the fortune teller and Hillary when she was Senator.
[note]
During a recent publicity outing, Senator Hillary Clinton snuck off to visit a fortune teller of some local repute. In a dark and hazy room, peering into a crystal ball, the mystic delivered grave news.
“There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just be blunt: Prepare yourself to be a widow. Your husband will die a violent and horrible death this year.”
Visibly shaken, Hillary stared at the woman’s lined face, then at the single flickering candle, then down at her hands. She took a few deep breaths to compose herself. She simply had to know. She met the fortune teller’s gaze, steadied her voice, and asked her question.
“Will I be acquitted?”
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