Category Archives: American Cultural aspects

VOA Learning English: Interesting Site to Read and Listen to American English

Voa Learning English really needs some serious exploring. Though I have to say that, in my opinion, the site is a bit of a mess, it could be a great help to some autonomous learners.

What does it offer? The site provides interesting articles based on news and information. The stories are read slowly, or at least at a slower speed and it allows you the possibility of reading the story and listening to the audio at the same time. The mp3 audio can be downloaded, which is also very helpful.

What about the level? Difficult to say  because although the stories are read quite slowly, the vocabulary is quite advanced. You’ll just have to try and see.

Stories are divided into Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3 and very often there are exercises following the audio.

if you further explore the site, you will find a section “Learning English TV” with captioned videos that will allow you to watch a story while reading the rolling script.

But there are two sections that I absolutely adore that deal with idioms and expressions:

Words and their Stories and English in a Minute where each week idioms and expressions that many learners of American English find difficult to understand are explained. Don’t miss them!

Another interesting feature in this site is that it has a built-in dictionary. You just have to click on any word to get its meaning. You really need to give a go to this interesting site, especially if you like reading the news and are interested in American English.

Halloween Party Video

Now, I promise this will be the last post about Halloween but I took some nice pictures of our Halloween party at the high school and I wanted to show you how much fun we had and how hard students worked; because not only did they spookily decorate our common room and prepared the games for the party but , they also cooked delicious creepy dishes,which I’m afraid are right now sitting comfortably around my hips.
Anyways , thank you guys for making our Halloween celebration a big creepy crawly success!!!
Enjoy the video!!!!!

Jack-o-Lanterns in Halloween History

I hope you’re not getting sick of so many posts about Halloween. This, if my memory doesn’t fail, is my third post about this tradition but I’m afraid you haven’t seen the last of it as we’ll be throwing our Halloween party on Wednesda . I’ve boarded the Halloween train and I have no intention of getting off .
As if cooking and decorating were not enough for my students, this video about the history of Jack O’Latern will set the mood for the halloween party and do the trick

QUESTIONS FOR PRE-INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS. Click here

QUESTIONS FOR INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS . Click here

Halloween: Write a Comic with a Scary Story

Halloween is coming soon , it’s almost here and this is a great time to let your imagination flow and write a scary story. Writing????? I can almost hear you complaining about having to write something , (well, anything).

OK, let’s do it in a funny way!

Let’s say the story is related to your school and /or  to your teacher . A great opportunity to scare MEEEE or even , if you dare, kill me, have  me eat poison or  place me in  the bonfire for witchcraft. The possibilites are endless.

We are going to do it using a comic template from this funny site http://www.grammarmancomic.com/index.html ,where we’ll choose from different comic options and where we can also see other comics students like you  have written. Then ,when you have finished your masterpiece , we’ll vote for the best story. Does it sound like a good plan?

Choose your template

School of Scares! It started like any other English lesson…

Terror Teacher! One day our usual English teacher was absent…

The Homework from Hell! We were in English class, waiting for home time..

Ghosts and Grammar!  Nobody believed the stories about our school day, until one day…

When writing a comic , it might be helpful to know some common English interjections. Click here to see some of the most common

Click here to see some ideas for your comics and have a spooky Halloween!