Let's listen... to the radio

Right, most of you are always asking about how to improve your listening skills. Yeah, understanding spoken English is not always easy. Obviously, the more you listen to authentic English, the better for your listening skills. One thing you can do is listen to radio stations from different English speaking countries -this way, you'll also get an idea of how different accents sound. Listening to radio stations can be easily done on the Internet. Try the following link:
Listen to English around the world
Remember that they use authentic English on these radio stations -don't get frustrated if you don't understand everything. A good starting listening practice may be to just get the general topic of what you're listening to. As you become more and more confident, try to get more information.

Friday lessons

Please remember we'll have lessons on the following Fridays:

October 22nd
November 26th
January 14th
February 11th
March 18th
April 8th
May 20th

Billy Joel: For the longest time

The media: the press

Reading newspapers on line is an excellent way to improve your reading skills and learn new vocabulary. Also, by reading newspapers on line you can learn loads of cultural and social facts about English speaking countries. These two websites will link you to a huge variety of newspapers:
-List of newspapers in the UK (Wikipedia), apart from links to online newspapers, there is some information about formats (broadsheet, tabloid, compact...)
-Worldwide newspapers in English: a comprehensive list of online newspapers, not only from the UK but also from the US, Canada, Australia, Europe, Africa...
Well, I hope you enjoy your read...

The story so far (1)

For those of you who can't attend all lessons, and for those of you who can and want to remember all we've done so far...
-A great deal of speaking: class introductions, question revision and speaking in pairs
-Error correction with the text about Arnost (photocopy: grammar-introduction)
-First composition: a similar text about yourself
-We've completed file 1A: we've talked and read about names, we've discussed our names, we've listened to people talking about their names. Apart from names, our first grammar topic has been phrasal verbs. Also, we've revised character and personality vocabulary: we've talked about national stereotypes and we listened to this German guy talking about what he thinks about German people and stereotypes.
-We've also been discussing strategies to improve  your reading and your listening skills.
 By now, you should have completed all activities for file 1A, including the workbook exercises, Grammar Bank 1a on phrasal verbs and the Vocabulary Bank on phrasal verbs.
The last thing we did in class was a brainstorming of some ideas about stereotypes of Spanish people: remember you should write the first paragraph of an informal writing about people from Spain. Check out sections A and B in the Writing Bank (page 156) before you write that 50-word first paragraph.

Character and personality

There you go -a great group-made revision of adjectives related to personality and character.

Monolingual dictionaries

A monolingual dictionary is an essential tool to make progress with your English -monolingual dictionaries give you a great deal of useful information concerning not only meanings of words and expressions, but also pronunciation, collocations (words that usually go together), register, grammar...

Some tips about dictionaries:

1. Make sure you get the latest edition of the dictionary you want to buy. English Language Teaching and Learning editors usually publish new editions of dictionaries frequently.
2. Make sure you get a dictionary with a CD-ROM version. The CD will allow you to load it on your computer, which is extremely helpful when writing or surfing the Internet.
3. Make sure you spend some time reading the introduction and understanding the contents and conventions of your dictionary. That will help you take advantage of all its features.

Some good monolingual dictionaries are the following:
- Longman Active Study Dictionary
- Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (*)
- Cambridge Learner's Dictionary
- Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary (*)
- Oxford Wordpower Dictionary
- Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictonary (*)
- Macmillan English Dictionary (*)
- Collins COBUILD Student's Dictonary
- Collins COBUILD Advanced Dictonary (*)

Dictionaries with (*) will take students from B2 to C2 levels. The rest of dictionaries are also extremely good but cover the language range between B1 and B2 levels.