Monthly Archives: March 2012

Ready-To-Go Lessons:Breaking News English

Audio, Listening, Reading, Speaking, Writing skill, , , , ,

I cannot believe I have never posted about Breaking News English. I have been a subscriber for a long, long time. But, you know, sometimes   the things you are more familiar with are the things you more tend to forget to highlight but the site is incredibly helpful.

♥Breaking News English mainly helps you improve listening and reading but also if you read along it’ll help you with your pronunciation.
♥It has more than 1,500 lesson plans based on current events and news.

♥These lesson plans are very useful for the teacher as this site provides warmers, pre, while and after reading/listening activities, discussion ideas, writing suggestions and even homework activities, all related to the news story. There is an MP3 listening you can download or listen online.

Teaching “should”: Why men shouldn’t write advice columns.

Funny Stuff, , ,

Ending a lesson with a smile on the students’s face is priceless and this is what I got after doing this activity with them.

Aim: teaching “should” to give advice.

Task: Students in pairs were given the left  column of the article where a problem is posed .  They were asked to write a sound piece of advice to help this person.

Now , once their advice  was read out and properly appraised , I wrote on the blackboard  Men shouldn’t write advice columns and then asked students to guess how this headline could relate to the problem they had  just read about.

After a juicy discussion , I handed out the right column and we had a healthy  laugh!

A dream come true: Casa MariFalcón

Create your own stuff, freeware, General, My Crafty Side, Pictures, Slides

I am dying to tell you about my new project , but first things first! and first is telling you about this very interesting site I’ve used for my little project. Everybody knows how difficult it is to build a professional looking website but with wix , it’s one of the easiest things in life. It creates a Flash website without any knowledge of Flash.

And now , about my little project

Some time ago we bought the ruins of an ancient house, Investing a lot of time, a lot of effort and, why not say it, a lot of money  we have finally finished . It is in the North of Spain and we have decided to rent it during the summer holidays. So , if you want to come to Spain and enjoy the beautiful landscape and the clean sandy beaches of the North , this might be your house.

Please, Have a look at the website http://www.wix.com/cristinaca/marifalcon created with wix.com.

5 students using MyBrainShark for their landmarks presentations

Audio, Create your own stuff, In the Computer Room, Slides, Speaking, Students' Corner

Did you think you have seen the last of MyBrainshark in this blog? Far from it!

Now I have engaged my students (level A2) into giving a presentation about a landmark of their choice. The fact that they did it at home and at their own pace , repeating as many times as they wished until they were completely satisfied and choosing their own photographs to illustrate it must have boosted up their confidence in using English because , with the exception of some students, most of them made a great effort and passed with flying colours.

Below are some of my students and their MyBrainsharks. They are: Victor Areces, Sara Días, Paula Fdez, Jesus Fdez and Paula García.

And here are their landmarks.
Grand Arch by Victor Areces

Petra by Sara Días

Ellis Island by Paula Fdez

Petronas Towers by Jesús Fdez

The Arch of Triumph by Paula Garcia

If you’re interested in using MyBrainshark  , click here to see my tutorial in Spanish ,

15 Grammar Goofs that make you look silly

A word on Grammar, , ,

I’m up to my eyes with exams so I don’t have much time to publish. I was saving this post for a rainy day -so to speak- and the rainy day has finally come.
It is literally embedded from the webiste www.copyblogger.com and if you’re wondering what a “goof” is you are about to know. A “goof” is a silly or stupid mistake. Without further ado here are the 15 grammar mistakes that make you silly:

15 Grammar Goofs That Make You Look Silly
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