Tag Archives: online

Need to improve Pronunciation and Listening??

Yes, yes … if you want to know, it is still raining in Asturias. No wonder it is always green!! And though visitors ohh and ahhh over our beautiful landscape and mountains these days we, locals, are a bit fed up with the weather. Monday to Wednesday I’ll be taking 42 students on an English Immersion Camp and this weather is going to spoil all the fun… but … it’s no use crying over what you cannot change.

This little site SoundsEnglish can be quite useful for students wishing to improve their Listening  and pronunciation skills. In this site you can get practise at all levels. It has a simple layout and two or three tasks for each listening. To practise pronunciation you can read the tapescript along with the audio.

Hope it is useful!

Reported Speech: Famous Quotes

Happy Thursday to everybody!  Yes, Ok, in Asturias  we have rain, clouds, and cold but I’m trying to keep my spirits up!

Next week I’ll be focusing on Reported Speech and I thought this could be a good way of getting their attention. I have chosen  a  few quotes from  some  famous people  and created a Power Point Presentation  Hope it’s useful!!

 

Visit my Intermediate Section for more exercises on reported Speech and also read another article (Reported Speech: questions and Orders)  I published some time ago with more ideas here

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

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.

English Media Lab

I’m sorry I haven’t posted for some days now but I’m up to my eyes. Preparing and marking exams takes up most of my free time. June is chaos!

I imagine you have plenty of ideas  when half the class is taking an exam and the others ,sort of have already passed all the tests, but here’s another one in case you’re running short of them.

I have taken my students to the computer room and let them roam a bit about this website. English Media Lab offers Grammar, Vocabulary , Pronunciation  , Videos and Games for different levels, though I have only used the  Elementary Level. They have all loved the Memory Games revising Vocabulary and they’ve made me promise to take them to the computer room once again before the course ends.

The website is a bit confusing because it has a lot of things and it might sometime take you outside their own website. I don’t really mind as long as the new website has what I’m looking for. Anyway , have a look at it and tell me what you think!

ELLLO : Practise.Listening.Comprehension

Are you looking for a site to do some Listening Practice? Then, you have just found it!

ELLLO stands for English Listening Lesson Library Online and it’s an amazing site with tons of listening activities to help you improve your listening skills with audio, video, quizzes and vocabulary.  It is created by Todd Beuckens, an English teacher based in Japan.

The activities contain the tapescript and some  comprehension questions, vocabulary quizzes and  also images to help you understand.

Choose your level (beginner to advanced) and then choose the activity.

♥Interviews: natural conversations with various speakers of English that offer multiple listening options

 ♥ Listening Games: where students listen to audio about a topic and choose the picture that matches the audio.

♥Mixera survey that features six different speakers answering the same question. Students can easily follow the topic and compare the various responses. Each speaker’s segment comes with two questions that appear at the end of the audio segment to develop test taking skills.

♥News Center: an animated newscast. Each newscast has six stories. For each story, students can try to answer questions about                                                    each news story.

ELLLO is certainly worth a visit!

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