The Twelve Days of Christmas!

Wednesday 10^th December

Hello students!

This is going to be our last week of class before Christmas.

I know you will have finished your projects by now. I hope so! But, anyway here you have some more information. http://www.the-north-pole.com/around/

Tomorrow we’re going to finish the listening under the heading (title)’Are English people too polite?’ and then we’ll definitely finish talking about manners, advice, protocol and so on…(etc.)

Last week we only had a class because of our long December weekend. We spent the class talking about what we had done at the weekend and checking our homework and some other exercises that hadn’t been corrected. Both of you worked very hard. Especially Mónica, who did ALL the exercises, even the ones we had given for homework before her arrival! Great!

Let’s prepare the mood for Christmas!

This is my favourite Christmas carol (a typical Christmas song).

See
you 
tomorrow!!!

Verb Patterns

 Monday & Wednesday 1^st -3^rd December,

Hi! How are you?

On Wednesday we had a new classmate. Welcome Mónica, nice to meet you.

We started the week commenting on the terrible news that took place (happened) on Sunday.

The supporters of two Spanish football teams arranged to meet near the Manzanares river in Madrid , before the football match that as going to be played a couple of hours later, so as to get involved in a fight. The result was a dead person and a lot of injured people. Many supporters were also arrested and taken to the police station.

 So, we started commenting on this piece of information. It reminded us of other similar tragedies that were connected with football matches. We watched a video on ‘The ten biggest tragedies in football’ and their terrible consequences. It seems that human beings never learn from their mistakes!

After that, we turn to more gratifying issues.

We read a text written by an English woman married to a Russian. She compared the two cultures and their different manners. She was surprised that so few ‘thank yous’ and ‘pleases’ in Russia. Her husband thought exactly the opposite. He thought that British people are extremely polite, even when there’s no reason for that.

We also learnt that when having an Arab host or hostess, we shouldn’t admire any object in their houses because they would feel they have to give it to us!

We did a listening and later talk about presents, how to give presents abroad.

It seems that in Japan you shouldn’t give knives, scissors or anything you can cut with because that’s a symbol of death and bad luck!

Giving presents abroad isn’t as easy as it looks like! (seem)

As for grammar, we studies verb patterns.

Some verbs are followed by ‘to + infinitive’; others, by infinitive ‘without ‘to’ and others by ‘ing’

Remember that modal verbs are followed by infinitive without ‘to’.

+ infinitive	+to+infinitive	ing
Can	Would like to	like
Sometimes you can be rude without saying anything.	I would like to give you some advice.	I like travelling.
must	Need to	start
You must never touch people’s head	You need to know something about their traditions.	Start thinking where you want to go.
might	try	finish
Someone might invite you to visit them.	Try to leave some food on your plate.	Finish packing your suitcase, we have to go.
Will	forget	prefer
Should	Don’t forget to eat with your right hand.	I prefer eating at a Japanese restaurant.
The host will feel he should give it to you
Could	decide	go
We could decide later.	Have you decided to travel around the world?	I go cycling every weekend.

Here you have some exercises on this topic.

 Verb patterns

And so our weekly classes ended. There’s now little left for Christmas, so work on your project. See you next week. On Wednesday because we have a long weekend!

Enjoy your weekend!