Com cada any, l’ APAC (Associació de professors i professores d’ anglès de Catalunya) organitza unes jornades per què tots aquells que ens dediquem a l’ ensenyament de l’ anglès coneguem noves tendències pedagògiques, les darreres publicacions de les editorials o simplement escoltar el testimoni d’ altres docents.

Alguns dels professors de l’ IES Cubelles ja estan tramitant la matriculació.

I’ve just finished marking your compositions. Remember last unit’s essays consisted on a place description. The results have been relatively higher than in previous times and I have seen that some of you have used the vocabulary that we learnt in the classroom and, something which has made me even happier: some of you used a variety of connectors succesfully.

Next Monday -for some next Tuesday- you’ll see the results.

Before the 1980s, news reports were often read from a piece of paper, with little or no maps and terribly, inevitably boooooring. In the 80s, something started: news editors thought that the final message of a news report should be a happy story (otherwise, people would be too pessimistic and maybe even induced to suicide). Ever since, news reports have had the “happy” story, usually involving some kind of friendly animal or guinness records. If your memory reaches as far as mine, you will probably identify the “fets i gent” section in TV3, which was exactly that, the “happy” story. Talking of which…

Here you can check the answers to unit 4 test.

Here’s a collection of exercises on the passive voice. I strongly recommend you do them:

• A very simple beginner’s activity: decide whether the sentences are active or passive.
• Practice the present simple passive
• Practice and read some past simple passive sentences.
• Some past continuous passive exercises from a German website.
• Exercise with a variety of verb tenses.
• Another exercise with a variety of verb tenses, especially irregular verbs.
• More variety of tenses here.
• Many tenses (but they won’t give you a clue!) in this French website.
• Advanced practice with different tenses and even passive infinitives.

And before you finish…

Why don’t you try to find the missing verbs for these pictures?

Lesson 5 is dedicated to the world of press, but what do we really know the press, or media, in English? I would like to put forward a simple task for you: visit an on-line newspaper, radio or tv channel and choose a piece of news that has interested you. You can add a link, and the reason why you chose that particular story.

This here is an exemple:

Enric12@hotmayl.com:

I chose this story because it is unusual for a government to say I’m sorry, especially to people who have a low status in society.

As simple as that. If you don’t know about newspapers published in English, check this list:

• United Kingdom
• USA
• Canada
• Australia
• South Africa
• India

Sometimes teachers talk about words that are old-fashioned, or dying-out, like the use of ‘shall’ for the future, or ‘lavatory’ instead of the more common ‘toilet’. However, the opposite may also happen: a student asks about a word that is too new for the teacher to know.

Well, professor David Crystal is one of the leading experts in the English language, and he recorded a series of short podcasts talking about some of the most innovative pieces of language today. This BBC production can be useful for learners who want to keep up-to-date with the trends of the English language. It may also work for teachers who have not moved from Catalonia in some years.

The podcasts are very short, not more than two minutes, and are accompanied by a trasncript of the recording, which makes it strongly advisable for listening practice. This here, is his comment on the use of the word ‘e-‘.