Monthly Archives: October 2012

Jack-o-Lanterns in Halloween History

American Cultural aspects, Listening, , , , ,

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

Stonehenge: one of the world’s most ancient landmarks.

freeware, Listening, , ,

and one of the most mysterious , too! In fact, over the course of years, scientists and philosophers have tried to attribute their origin to Merlin the wizard, to druids and even there are some crackpots who think aliens were involved but the truth is that even nowadays, after countless studies, nobody can say for certain why it was built. Was it an observatory,  a temple for sun worship, a healing centre, a place to bury the dead or  a giant calendar? How did they manage to carry the huge stones  and then, without any metal tools or machinery  build this impressive, unique structure?

I’ve selected this video about StoneHenge  for my elementary students. I have chopped the original from YouTube using TubeChop because it was too long and probably too difficult, too. Hope it is useful!

I have decided on the True/Flase exercise because I think it is  easier  than the Open Questions option.

AFTER WATCHING THE VIDEO, DECIDE WHETHER THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS ARE TRUE OR FALSE AND CORRECT THE FALSE ONES.
1. StoneHenge is in Northern England
2. According to the Medieval legend Merlin, the wizard, built it.
3. According to recent scientific studies,it was built 500 years ago.
4. Each of the stones weighs between fifty and eighty thousand pounds
5. The stones were carved using metal tools.

Halloween: Write a Comic with a Scary Story

American Cultural aspects, Create your own stuff, Funny Stuff, Writing

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!

A Word on Grammar: Arrive At or Arrive In

A word on Grammar, ,

You’ll never believe the number of times I have corrected this mistake! I sometimes ask myself: “If I explained this mistake in Mandarin Chinese, Would they pay more attention? Let’s try this way:

THE VERB “TO ARRIVE” IS NEVER FOLLOWED BY THE PREPOSITION “TO”

See? I have used red, put it in bold, inside quotation marks…. will it work now?

The verb ARRIVE is followed by two prepositions AT or IN. See? NEVER “TO”

Arrive at a building , station, airport

Arrive in a country, city. etc

Be Careful: You arrive at someone’s house BUT you arrive home

Surely, it isn’t that difficult to remember. Why don’t you try reading this post like two or three times and then doing the exercises below?  I bet you will never ever make this mistake again. Naive? 🙂 Maybe! Fed up with correcting this mistake? Absolutely!!!

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