Category Archives: Vocabulary

Making Suggestions

Once again I have used some online free tools to spice up my lessons; believe me, something vey much needed at this time of year when students, and shall I say teachers too? begin to feel the necessity of giving English a break. Good weather and a sun-oriented classroom doesn’t help much either.
So this time the structures I need to teach are those to Make Suggestions. Very useful structures to learn, don’t you agree?

To revise the structures I have worked with  a tool I have  already used several times. I like it and I highly recommended.It’s called Goconqr
por cristina.cabal

Fancy a bit of practice?

Role Play: At the Lost Luggage Counter

Has an airline ever lost a piece of your luggage?
I guess it is not very uncommon for airlines to lose baggage , given that every time this conversation comes up everybody has something to say on this matter, either because they have lost it or they know a friend or a relative who has . The reason might be because it is said that 1 in 100 people lose baggage so I can assure you that on this issue there is no shortage of tales , describing the different stages one goes through when you realize you have no clothes to wear for your long-awaited school trip or the documents for the meeting are inside the missing suitcase.

Wanna smile? Read these two amusing stories I found on the Internet

♥At the airline check in at London Heathrow, Guy has three bags. He puts them down and says to the young lady, ‘I’d like you to send this one to Los Angeles, that one to Hong Kong and the last one to Durban.’ Her face shows signs of confusion before her training takes over and she says, ‘I’m afraid we can’t do that, sir.’
‘Why not?’ demands Guy, ‘you did the last time I flew with you.’ I have the picture! 🙂

♥Describing your Suitcase.I was flying into Boston last week and when I went to find my luggage, it seemed to be missing. So I went to the airlines customer service center to find out how to locate it. So the clerk asks me “Sir, can you describe your suitcase?” So I tell her, “it’s a hot pink suitcase shaped like a star”. She looks up and asks “Okay, and is there anything distinctive about your bag?”:)

Now , let’s learn how to claim your baggage if you unfortunately lose it .



A Formal Email

I know it might be a tiny bit too late to be posting this but I’ve  just come across it and given that we are having the test on Monday/Tuesday I sort of hope the idea of visiting the blog crossed your mind and you are one of the lucky  who will be reading and doing the interactive exercises on the website where these snapshots have been taken from:      http://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/.

Scroll down their  page and make sure you do the following exercises

  • ♥Check your writing: indirect questions
  • ♥Check your writing . gap fill: Useful Phrases

Lesson Plan: Talking about Your Hometown .

This is a lesson for Elementary students.

Step 1. Reading and Listening

Mind mapping is a very important  learning tool for visual learners. This mind map has been created with Exam Time, which is very easy to use and  embeddable, a feature I always appreciate.

There are some steps previous to this mind mapping  we wrote on the board, essentially reading and listening about this issue. Form these listenings and readings we gathered and sorted vocabulary that was, then, written on the board.

Step 2. Mind Mapping

What you see below is a nice way of displaying what was written on the board of the classroom  with the help of my students.

por cristina.cabal
Step 3. Speaking

For this activity, instead of the typical photocopy with the list of questions to talk about, I have put students in groups of three or four and given each group a set of cards, which they had to place face down on the table. Students in turns pick up a card and talk for as much as they can about the given question. At this point I give my students the usual talk about how important it is now, to “show off.”

This is a snapshot of the cards. Click here if you want to print them.