English is cool

Lyrics training

mguill36 — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 16:47:53 +0000

Do you have any favourite song in English? Don’t look for the lyrics in Internet to translate it! Try to guess the lyrics yourself using a useful web page: Lyrics training, an easy and fun method to learn and improve your foreign languages skills, through the music videos and lyrics of your favorite songs.

Try it! Click on the lyrics training web page, you can look for your favourite song using the search tool or choose any English song to practise. Songs are organised by levels: easy, medium and hard. Once you have completed the missing word(s) the song will go on. If you get lost, use narrows to go up and down the song. It’s easy and fun!!!

Times change, feelings remain the same

mguill36 — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 08:00:15 +0000

Past Simple

mguill36 — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 20:02:44 +0000

Do you have problems with the past simple?

Try it! Watch and listen to the video and try to understand the past simple by doing the exercices following Jennifer explanations.

Present Simple and Continuous

mguill36 — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 18:25:20 +0000

Present simple and continuous powerpoint

View more presentations from fiona22.

Running dictation

mguill36 — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 13:15:51 +0000

The running dictation is a good activity to do in class. You can do it in one-hour session and the main aims of this activity are to put practise your listening, writing and grammar skills, to play with your classmates and to test your memory as well. You can play it in class or with a group of friends. Depending on the text you choose, you can revise one or other content. This is a good activity to put into practise some basic competences too, the linguistic, cultural, learning to learn and knowledge and interaction with the world competences can be the most important one’s.

Try it! Divide your class into groups of 3 or 4 at maximum. Each member of the group has to have a pen and a paper. Take a table and put it in one corner of the class, as far away from the groups as possible. The teacher/another student who acts as a teacher sticks on the table 3, 4 or 5 copies of the same text, as many copies as groups. Each team nominates a runner. It is the runner’s job to make repeated journeys between their groups and a text. On each trip, the runner should attempt to remember (accurately) a chunk of language and then relay it to his or her group members who write it down. Everybody has to be a runner and a writer and there has to be a time to complete the activity (3,4 or 5 minutes…). When everyone finishes, each group compares their text with the original, the winner will be the group who has made less mistakes!

Getting inspired

mguill36 — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 14:52:21 +0000

You have to write a composition or a story for homework and you feel your imagination has gone, come on! Writing can be an exciting experience, just look around, places, people, books you know… to get inspired, organise your ideas and try to be original.

Try it! Watch and listen what Farrah says in this video about the best ways to be creative and inspirated for your best writings!

The scavenger hunt

mguill36 — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 13:42:11 +0000

The Internet is an enormous collection of answers. The challenge is to find them! Start by doing a scavenger hunt, be yourself the teacher of your class and prepare an activity to your students. You will learn lots of interesting stuff.

What is a scavenger hunt?

A scavenger hunt is a web page with a number of questions and a list of web addresses to find the answers to those questions. At the end there is usually “the big question”. The answer to that is not found directly in any of the suggested web pages, so you have to read, understand, process and produce their own answer.

Scavenger hunts are very useful activities for a number of reasons: you and your classmates can research and learn a lot about a certain topic, you prepare your project reading real English, you practice different abilities in relation with the use of ICT, and you improve your reading comprehension and your written and/or oral production.

Try it! You can work in groups of 2 or 3 students. Choose a topic from the English culture you want to learn more about (Art, History, Sites and Monuments, Important people, Sports…). Look for information on the net. Then, try to do your own scavenger hunt. The next class, exchange your hunts with the rest of the groups and try to solve the other scavenger hunts. You will learn a lot of things and spend a good time.

Useful web pages:

Scavenger hunts at Education World: A collection of scavenger hunts organized by month.

Scavenger hunt generator: you can use this web page as a model to create your scavenger hunt.

Comic of the day

mguill36 — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:38:55 +0000

Common phrasal verbs

mguill36 — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:46:53 +0000

A phrasal verb is a combination of a verb and a preposition: give up, set up, run out, go away… are phrasal verbs. Many people have negative feelings about phrasal verbs. Why? Because it’s impossible to know the meaning of a phrasal verb from the words. For example, if you say ‘I’ve run out of milk’ It doesn’t mean that you run, it means that you don’t have any milk.

Try it! Click on Bob Wilson’s web page. You can watch the video as an introduction and then test yourself in some online phrasal verbs exercises.

What do animals think about Christmas?

mguill36 — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 08:32:41 +0000

Try it! Watch and listen how animals see Christmas dates. Very funny and good way to practise your listening! If you want to know more about them, click on Creature comforts web page.