Monthly Archives: October 2011

Punctuaction is important

Funny Stuff, The English language,

You might not agree with me at first, but you’ll soon do it when you have read the following :

If only they had punctuated , grandpa would be alive!

 

Now , look at the difference between these two emails. Jane was very much in love with John but she never gave much thought to proper punctuation.This is the  letter John received  from her beloved Jane , which caused him great sorrow

Dear John,

I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we’re apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?

Yours,

Jane

After sending the letter Jane was ditched by John. This is the letter she wanted  John to have.

Dear John:

I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we’re apart. I can be forever happy–will you let me be yours?

All right, I have an OHP and now what? Part 1

freeware, ,

Exactly and now what?

Surprisingly , a publishing company has given  the English Department an overhead projector and given that we have to almost beg for our own  children’s books I can only describe it as an act of utter generosity. I should maybe have to explain that although education  is compulsory in Spain until you’re 16 ,books are not free; not even kept at the school and handed from student to student . So you can only guess at how much publishing companies earn out of textbooks.

Right , so now I have an overhead projector but… I don’t have  an Internet connection. The thing is that I have a funny video that fits like a glove with my next lesson and I want to display it using the OHP.

That’s where this little tool comes very handy. It’s called Savevid and it allows you to download videos from Youtube, Vimeo, Metacafe and some other popular sites  to your computer or USB . The only thing you need to do is paste the url of the video you want to download, choose from 5 formats  the one that suits you best and play it on your computer.

A word on Grammar: on the weekend or at the weekend?

A word on Grammar, , ,

No wonder we sometimes get confused with prepositions. They are crazy to learn and frustrating to teach, iiiif they can be taught !

So, the question of whether you say at the weekend or on the weekend is not a question of being grammatically correct  but of  speaking American English or British English, being at the weekend (BrE) and on the weekend (AmE).

So, both are correct. My only tip is that you stick to either American or British. Nobody says Alo (as in Santo Domingo) when answering the phone in Spain, although we understand it.

Hands in my pockets: Alanis Morissette

General, Music

Still on the subject of teaching, over and over again , personality adjectives to my students I bumped into a post where this song was suggested for the teaching of these adjectives.

This is the handout  from this song I’m going to give my intermediate  students. It contains a bit of everything: working with opposites, phonetics and open questions.

Hope you enjoy the song! handout , HERE