Telling Tales

Monday & Wednesday 27^th- 29^th October, 2014

Hello! How are you?

I hope you are having a nice weekend. I also hope you to enjoy the concert.

We finished the topic of ‘Holidays’ last week. And we put an end to it (finished) by listening and watching ‘La Isla Bonita’ by Madonna. We laughed at the video clip! It’s funny to look back, but everything looks sort of (looks like)…’old’, ‘outdated’, ‘old-fashioned’?

Anyway, it’s good to look back on the past from time to time.               

I’m glad to know you have also decided on the topic of your project.

So, you are going to do it about “Beach Handball”. Remember that the deadline (the dates to hand the project in) is 15^th-17^th December.

We spent the rest of the week, telling tales.

We read a story about two people that were very much in love and didn’t have much money. Christmas was getting closer (there was little time for Christmas) and they wanted to give a special present to each other. The husband pawned his watch (take something to a shop and have money in return. You have the opportunity of rebuying it if you want to) to buy his wife the combs she liked so much. But she had her hair cut and sold it so as to get money to buy her husband a beautiful chain for his watch. He didn’t have a watch to use the chain with. And her hair was too short for sporting the combs he had bought her. But they had lots of love!

Our second story was “The Emperor’s New Clothes”

It starts like all the tales: ‘Once upon a time’

Once upon a time there was an emperor who wanted to have a very special suit, so when his people saw him they could say “What wonderful clothes our emperor is wearing”. Two tailors came from a remote land. They told the emperor that they were going to make a special suit that only intelligent people could see. The emperor liked the idea very much. Time went by and the tailors worked on the clothes. The emperor was worried because he couldn’t see anything. The day came when the suit was finished and the emperor paraded along the streets of his kingdom completely naked. Everybody cheered and admired the wonderful clothes he was wearing, even though he wasn’t wearing any clothes! Suddenly a child said aloud what everybody was thinking “Which clothes? The emperor is naked”. The emperor felt embarrassed and ran to the palace as fast as he could. He looked for the tailors, but they were gone!

The morale of the story could be that we should all tell what we really think and not remain silent when we are told lies. This is especially true nowadays with all the things that are going on (happening) in our country!

The stories helped us to practice the past and to use adjectives and adverbs, as well as connectors in a narrative.

Adverbs modify adverbs, adjectives or verbs.

Very good, really quickly, run fast

Adjectives modify nouns.

Wonderful clothes

Most of adverbs of manner come from adding ‘–ly’ to the adjective.

They tell “how”. He ran quickly. How did he run? Quickly

Adjective	Adverb
quick	quickly
sad	sadly
happy	hapily
fast	fast
hard	hard
good	well

You can do more exercises online on this link

Exercises on adjectives and adverbs

This was all! See you on Monday!

Good Holidays that Weren't so Good...The Right Place? The Wrong Time?

Monday & Wednesday 20^th- 22^nd October, 2014

Hi! How are things? Are you fine? Good!

Last week we talked about holidays that …weren’t!

Have you ever had a bad holiday? It seems we haven’t had this kind (this type) of bad experiences: having our luggage lost, finding out (discovering) that our flight was overbooked and having to wait, not having transport for the hotel, having something stolen, etc. Fingers crossed! (This expression is similar to “touch wood” and it’s used to keep bad luck away. Are you superstitious?)

I remember you telling me that only once you had a bad holiday experience. It was on an occasion when your daughter went ill during your holidays and the family had to go back home. But it wasn’t the whole holiday.

We read and listened to people telling us about bad experiences they or their families had on holiday.

Yes, sometimes you think you have chosen a quiet place to relax and it turns out (has as a result) to be full of pubs, night clubs or discos! The weather is another factor you can’t trust! (rely on)You think that going to Sweden or other Nordic countries you’ll have cool (nor hot, nor cold) weather and then …there’s a heatwave (extremely hot temperatures) and temperatures increase (go up)!

Actually, it doesn’t matter the result, holidays are holidays! And being able to forget the daily routine is enough. What do you think?

In our next class we’re going to listen to the song “La Isla Bonita” by Madonna. This holiday sounds perfect to me!

We continued using the past, regular and irregular verbs.

If you need more practice, you can find more exercises in here.

 Who is J.K. Rowling?

And we started talking about how to describe feelings.

Most of the times we use adjectives ending in “-ed” to describe feelings. These adjectives usually have another form with “-ing” but the later don’t describe feelings. They refer to the reason or the cause of those feelings.

Look at the examples:

I’m bored (feeling). This book is so boring! (The book is the reason why you are bored)

I’m bored because my friends are boring. (My friends are the reason. They make me feel bored)

How did you feel yesterday? Yesterday I was excited waiting to see the football match. But in the end, I was annoyed because my team lost and the result was disappointing!

What about you?

Tomorrow, we’ll continue talking about feelings and telling tales!

Have a nice Sunday! See you tomorrow!

Where Do you Play...? What Do you Need to Play ...?

Monday & Wednesday 13^th- 15^thOctober, 2014

Hi! Is everything fine?

This week we went on talking about sports.

We learnt some vocabulary related to equipment and the names of the places where sports are played.

Sports
Names	Places	Equipment		Verb	Sport		Sports Person
Badminton Ice- hockey Golf Boxing Fencing Football	Court Ice rink Golf course Boxing ring Gymnasium Pitch / field	Rackets, shuttle Sticks, puck Clubs, ball Gloves, helmet Mask, sword Ball, sheen pads		go		Swimming climbing	Swimmer climber
				do		Boxing Athletics Fencing karate	boxer athlete fencer
				play		Tennis football	Tennis player Football player / footballer
Other verbs			Kick, throw, hit, dive, shoot

We learnt how to talk about things we like doing and things we don’t like doing.

Verbs to express likes and dislikes: love, enjoy, like, don’t mind, don’t like, hate. After these verbs we usually use “-ing”

We talked about free time and we learnt to use connectors.

·        Eddie  likes doing yoga and watching films.  + and +

·         Adam likes going to the cinema but he doesn’t like going to the theatre. 

+ but –

·        Charlie doesn’t like shopping or t going to the cinema.  – or –

On Saturdays, I go out or watch TV.I do one thing or the other, but not both at the same time   + or +

We learnt prepositions of movement.

To describe movement we need a verb of movement + preposition

 And we organized a cross- country race. Luckily nobody got lost.

We read and talk about “The most exciting sports event”.

For both of us it was when the Spanish national football team won the World Cup! We remembered where we were, what we were doing at the time and who scored the goal of the victory…

And we finished talking about sports with the song which has become the anthem for every sports event! “We are the champions” by Queen.

Next week we are going to revise the past of regular and irregular verbs. You can practise pronunciation of irregular verbs watching this video.

 And … that was all! See you!

                                           

Adverbs of Frequency. Pronunciation of "s"

Monday & Wednesday 6^th- 8^thOctober, 2014

Hello! How are you doing?

We’re having a rainy weekend! And we will probably have a rainy week!

What did we learnt last week?  We revised adverbs and expressions of frequency.

Remember the position of adverbs of frequency:

Before the main verb	Danny hardly ever does housework.	George never goes to the dentist.	Mary usually does sport or exercise.
After the verb “to be”	Christine is never at home in the morning.
In questions, after the subject.	Is Liza often late for work?	Do you often buy flowers?
Expressions of frequency, at the end of the sentence.	Steve goes to the hairdresser’s twice a year.	Christian goes on holiday three times a year.	Miranda  sees her best friend every weekend.

We read and talk about sharing flats.

We both agreed that it’s really important to choose the perfect flat mates. The difference between choosing the people you are going to share a flat with, right or wrong is that your sharing experience becomes perfect or a nightmare!

We started talking about sports.

We learnt which sports are used after go, play and do.

Can you think of more sports to complete the chart?

 

Go	Do	Play

           

I’m sure you know more sports tan me…even the rules; but do you know so many in English? Here you are some links on vocabulary on sports!!

Are You a Sporty Person?

Sports

We practised pronunciation of different “S” sounds.

Plurals or present simple, 3^rd person singular (he, she, it)

‘s’ is pronounced /s/ after /k,p,f,t/ walks, stops, laughs, eats

‘es’ is pronounced /Iz/ after /tʃ/ churches /s/ dresses /ʃ/(sh) washes /ʤ/ bridges.

In all other cases the final‘s’ is pronounced /z/ plays, parties etc.

We also practised the pronunciation of /ʃ/ shower and /ʒ/ television
Pronunciation /s/ /z/

And that was all! We’ll continue tomorrow!

See you!