Monthly Archives: June 2015

Most Popular Posts of the Year for Learning and Teaching

General

I would say that 90% of the content in this blog comes from the need to offer my students good  interesting  lessons. I highly value the time and effort it takes for most of them to come to my classes and that’s why I try my best to design lessons packed with engaging content and  interactive activities.

The school year has come to an end and with it, what triggers my inspiration to write posts and design activities. Therefore, and as every single year, this blog is going on holiday and though I might continue sharing old posts on Facebook ( “LIKE” my blog on facebook if you haven’t done it yet :), I won’t be writing any new ones until probably the end of September when I’ll need to start preparing my lessons.

This year has been extremely  rewarding to me professionally speaking .My blog has been shortlisted four times by the British Council (facebook page), lots of my articles have been published and shared on social media sites and the number of visitors to the blog has dramatically increased. OMG!I have even been interviewed for a local newspaper!.

So, a good year it’s been!

These are the most popular posts of the “school” year for both learning and teaching

MOST POPULAR POSTS FOR LEARNERS

♥Tips to score a good mark in the oral exam 

♥Six Wonderful Sites to Help you Write, Speak and Sound Better (shortlisted for the British English blog award)

♥9 Useful Websites to Help you Improve Pronunciation and Listening

♥Confusing Words

♥Some Useful Guidelines and Techniques for Describing Pictures

♥Preparing for Listening: Focus on Distractors.

MOST POPULAR POSTS FOR TEACHERS

♥Lesson Plan: Speaking and Writing about Relationships and Using Indirect Questions (shortlisted for the British English blog award)

♥Teaching diphthongs in an easy way (shortlisted for the British English blog award)

♥Some Nice No-Prep Activities to Practise First Conditional (shortlisted for the British English blog award)

♥Moving Up from ” I Made Tea” to” I made myself a nice, hot sandwich of low-fat blue cheese because I was starving

♥Some Activities to Talk Nonstop Using Comparatives and Superlatives

♥Get Students Out of their Seats with a Lesson on Gender Stereotypes

 ♥Inspiration from Ellen Degeneres Show: Never Have I Ever

That’s all for now! Have a very nice summer! I’ll be back in action sometime in September.

“So grant me this wish and meet me back here in a year
If we still exist….. “Habits” by Maria Mena

Knoword: A Fun Highly Addictive Game to Help you Expand your Vocabulary

General, , , ,

Wanna have some fun with words?

Knoword is a fast-paced word game that helps boost vocabulary and spelling . It is  highly addictive , a lot of fun  and  a game of quick thinking.

How does it work?

Once you hit the LET’S GO button , it gives you a dictionary definition randomly generated  and the first letter of the word you need to guess. You are given a minute to guess the word . If you don’t know , click on the X and you’ll briefly see the word before a new definition is presented to you. Every single time you guess a word , you get an added time bonus (5 seconds) + 20 points  and every time you skip a word -10 points

From the Menu on the right you can choose from three levels of difficulty: Novice, Hotshot and Wizard.

You don’t need to register to play the game although if you do , you can keep track of your statistics.

Seen on Free Technology for Teachers, a blog written by Richard Byrne, which I highly recommend.

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Common Errors 5: Spelling Mistakes

Common Errors, , ,

My favourite season is undoubtedly spring. The weather starts to warm up and you can enjoy the  warm rays of the morning sun while sipping some iced coffee on the shaded terrace of a cafe.  Sometimes, if  it is a very quiet place, I take with me the exams I need to correct and  what would have been a boring task, takes on a new dimension  I can almost say I enjoy it.

So, once again, it’s all about exams. June also means exam time .

Most probably you don’t have these speling mistakes but, just in case, check  or (much better) double-check  you know how to write these words because, trust me on this one, these are real spelling mistakes from B2 students.

This is how I suggest you do it.

1. Read through the list of misspelt words

2. Look up the ones you don’t know how to spell or check the correct spelling  below the poster

3. Take pen and paper and  write down all the words on the poster  you can remember. Repeat the exercises as many times as necessary until you feel confident  you can remember how to correctly spell the words.

Correct Spelling: comfortable, professional,discussion , responsible, successful, writing, necessary, recommend, appropriate, frequently, opportunity, immediately, foreign, conclusion, beautiful 🙂

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Common Errors 4

Common Errors, ,

Here’s another post dealing with some common errors .These errors are mistakes B1/B2 students make.  I hope you find them helpful!

♥Read the sentence and identify the error

♥Rewrite the sentence correctly

♥Read the corrected version  and the grammar input after the  line

The correct form is: I couldn’t decide what dress to wear but in the end I chose the read one

In the end” means the same as “eventually”, “finally”  “after something has been thought about or discussed a lot”

“At the end“ is more physical like “at the end of the road” “at the end of the book” , though you can also say ” at the end of the day”.

Check your understanding with these exercises. Click here

Common Errors 3: Pronunciation and Grammar Errors

Common Errors, ,

This is a quick post written on a Friday afternoon!

I promised I ‘d be with you every step of the way and here I am again, with a new post on common errors I have been hearing these days during tests.

The thing is I am totally sure  most of the students I interview, don’t normally have these mistakes and though I am well aware oral exams can be  really intimidating for some students the truth is that, unfortunately, there are some mistakes you cannot make when trying to get a  degree for a certain level and being nervous is a poor excuse.

Please, make sure, but really sure 🙂 you don’t have these mistakes because they are really important. For example, make sure you know how to pronounce “man”  ( I’ve been hearing ” a men” ) or the word “nervous” that you use so often at the beginning of the exam.

Check their pronunciations here

Everybody makes mistakes  and it is OK to correct them. So, if you feel you have made a mistake, don’t be afraid to correct it. Native speakers do it all the time.

But please, double check you do not make these mistakes .(grammar input below the image)

1.”People ” is plural and  takes a plural verb

2.Here and here (exercise here)

3. After an adjective , you need to use the verb in the infinitive form

It is easier to make mistakes

It is important to learn English

4. ” news” is uncountable , you need the partitive “a piece of”  or “some”

Some good news / a piece of good news

5. “hair” is uncountable , therefore you cannot say “a hair” ( unless it is in the soup 🙂

6. Difference between used to and usually  here (exercise here)

7. Other/Another . Grammar here, Exercise here

Also, check the difference between fun and funny 

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