Monthly Archives: May 2013

9 Useful Websites to Help you Improve Pronunciation and Listening

Audio, Create your own stuff, Listening, Resources, , ,

The speaking test is already knocking on your door and you still need to improve your pronunciation? Don’t rest on your laurels ! Time to do something about it!

This a selection of some of the posts I have been publishing over the years where you can find not only listening activities but also the tapescript of the recording.  The school year is almost over  but it is maybe not too late to give a little push ,in the right direction, to your pronunciation. Remember, we learn by imitation so let’s get down to some serious parroting !

To make this image interactive I have used a tool called ThingLink, that  allows you to turn your images into a multimedia launcher. Click on the icons and start practising.

I hope it is useful!

Words in a Song: Give Up

Words in a song

Time for a phrasal verb in the second cropped song of the series “Words in a song”. If you want to see the Whys and the Hows of this exercise , follow this link to the first song in this series.

Steps :

♥Orally , introduce the word you want students to learn, giving examples and asking them to infer the meaning.

♥Choose a song that contains the word or words you want to teach

♥Crop the video with tubechop; you don’t want to play the whole video.

♥ Students listen to the cropped video and identify when, in the song, the highlighted word(s) has been used.

♥ Second time: students do a fill- in- the- gaps exercise or any other king of exercise that takes my fancy.

♥ Third time: students sing along

♥ HOMEWORK: Now, very important, students need to go home and write a sentence containing the highlighted word(s) . Ask for vonlunteers to translate the cropped song .

This time I have chosen  the beautiful song My Kind of Love by Emeli  Sande to teach this popular phrasal  verb.

Cropped version

Fill in the Blanks

THOUGHT,QUESTION,PERFECT,FEEL,ENOUGH,PROMISE,MATTER

I know I’m far from _____, nothin’ like your entourage
I can’t grant you any wishes, I won’t _______ you the stars.
But don’t ever ________ if my heart beats only for you, it beats only for you.

Cause when you’ve given up.
When no ______ what you do it’s never good ______.
When you never _______ that it could ever get this tough,
That’s when you _____ my kind of love.

Listening: How to Clean your Teeth in Space

Listening, ,

Dead tired after a long day, I finally sat down and turned on the telly .I took my ipad to  see what was going on on my facebook while, at the same time, talking to my husband about  my afternoon meeting, which I’m sure he only pretended to be interested in, when a man singing on TV caught my attention (This is called “multitasking”, in case you’re wondering, and it’s something we, women, are very good at).

Anyway, apparently the man was singing a version of David Bowie “Space Oddity” but the amazing  thing was that he was floating . I soon learned he was an astronaut and he was singing it from the International Space Station. Wow!!  And I’ve always thought astronauts were very serious people! I went to Saint Google, looked up this man and found that his name is Chris Hadfield, Canadian, and who among other things has become” the most social media savvy astronaut ever to leave the Earth” (source wikipedia)

I got quite curious about this man and found in YouTube several videos he recorded while in space. I have chosen the one below for my Elementary students, which I’m sure they will enjoy. By the way, have you ever wondered how astronauts manage to  clean their  teeth in space?

LISTENING TASK

WATCH THE VIDEO AND THEN COMPLETE THE SENTENCES BY PROVIDING THE RIGHT WORD OR CHOOSING THE MOST APPROPRIATE ANSWER.


1. You need a _______ of water from the water bag

2. Then, get your toothbrush w_____

3. Grab some t_______

4. He says you have to brush your teeth for as long as you sing  __________

5. After cleaning his teeth, what does he do  with the toothpaste in his mouth?

a. he swallows it      b. he spits it     c. he reuses it

6.To clean his toothbrush, he gets w_____ in his mouth.

7. According to the astronaut, is the toothbrush…?

a. clean   b. quite clean     c. not so clean

Follow Up: If you could travel to the moon or to Mars, what would you take with you and why?

I Recorded Short Story Contest

Audio, Create your own stuff, freeware, Students' Corner, Writing, , ,

Welcome to our I Recorded Short Story Contest. Open to all my students until May 31st!
Are you willing to try your hand at writing a short story in English and then reading it? This could be your chance to be internationally known; who knows who might be visiting the blog and listening to your stories and , well, you might end up being a well-known writer !!!
Yeah! I know !, Probably too far-fetched ! But ,what is undeniable is that this activity can help you improve writing and pronunciation, and this  is what  really matters!
As in every single contest of some importance , there are RULES. These are mine:

♥Entries must be in English
♥They must be recorded using the online tool Sound Cloud (Tutorial in Spanish , here)
♥Recording should last up to three minutes
♥Stories must be entirely your own work and must be previously unpublished
♥Only one entry per person
♥There is no set theme
♥Closing submission date: 31st May 13
♥Top three prizes to be determined
♥Winner will be announced the first week of June ,online and in this blog
HOW TO SUBMIT A SHORT STORY
♥First, you need to record yourself using SoundCloud.
♥Then , go to the comments section in this post
♥Write your full name
♥Write the name of your short story
♥In the Share box of your recording Copy/paste the link provided by soundcloud (starts with https)

Good luck !! Some pictures that might inspire you ,below!!!

I got this fantastic idea from the wonderful blog -MCargobe’s Blog-Room- written by a colleague from the EOI Valencia, which I highly recommend if you are willing to practise your English. Click here to see her blog.

See the winners here and listen to their stories.