Category Archives: General

PASSIVE VOICE

Here you have some exercises to practice passive voice structures:
active or passive?
past simple passive voice exercises
present simple passive voice exercises
with double object
grammar and exercises

 

  1. We set the table. –
  2. She pays a lot of money. –
  3. I draw a picture. –
  4. They wear blue shoes. –
  5. They don’t help you.
  6. Somebody hit me. –
  7. We stopped the bus. –
  8. A thief stole my car. –
  9. They didn’t let him go. –
  10. She didn’t win the prize. –
  11. I have eaten a hamburger. –
  12. We have cycled five miles. –
  13. I have opened the present. –
  14. They have not read the book. –
  15. You have not sent the parcel. –

 

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS

 

https://es.lyricstraining.com/en/play/coldplay/christmas-lights-live/HvrcQjKUKv#ibw

https://es.lyricstraining.com/en/play/jimmy-fallon-meghan-trainor/wrap-me-up/gnMdGumSVn#ibw

https://es.lyricstraining.com/en/play/sia/sunshine-audio/gjK5ofmmLj#ibw

https://es.lyricstraining.com/play/band-aid-thirty/do-they-know-its-christmas/H0ZDLkE7N0#ibw

https://lyricstraining.com/play/ed-sheeran-elton-john/merry-christmas/H6w0ZDLCU6

 

“Your Song” (“Elton John” Version)

https://lyricstraining.com/play/elton-john/your-song-live/HJ3ymUHUGJ

 

https://es.lyricstraining.com/play/peter-hollens-jackie-evancho/happy-xmas-war-is-over/HLkEvrcngL#a7w

https://es.lyricstraining.com/play/john-lennon-the-plastic-ono-band/imagine/H7I4VxsmQ7#ibw

CHRISTMAS ACTIVITIES

http://www.xtec.cat/~ihidalgo/xms/xms.htm

Thanksgiving and Black Friday

Turkey, pumpkin pie, American football and giant balloons. It’s the fourth Thursday in November. It’s Thanksgiving. But what exactly is Thanksgiving Day?

Many years ago, in the 1600s, a group of people left England and sailed on a ship called the Mayflower on a pilgrimage to the New World. The Pilgrims landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts, after a long six-week journey at sea. It was a cold winter and the Pilgrims found it difficult in their new home. Fortunately, the Native Americans gave them food and taught them how to plant seeds. With the Native Americans’ help, the Pilgrims planted lots of crops and that autumn’s harvest was a good one. They celebrated their good fortune by having a feast of thanksgiving.

Today, Thanksgiving has become a traditional time to get together with family or friends. Food, drink and giving thanks are still part of the festival. People also enjoy other activities, like watching American football or going to a parade. The biggest parade is the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade that takes place in New York. The parade includes marching bands, floats, songs and performances from Broadway musicals, and giant helium-filled balloons. Another tradition is the Turkey Pardon. The President receives a gift of a live turkey. At a White House ceremony, the President pardons the National Thanksgiving Turkey, allowing it to live for the rest of its life on a farm.

Black Friday is an informal name for the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States, which is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. The day after Thanksgiving has been regarded as the beginning of the United States Christmas shopping season since 1952. The term “Black Friday” did not become widely used until more recent decades, during which time global retailers have adopted the term and date to market their own holiday sales.

Many stores offer highly promoted sales on Black Friday and open very early, such as at midnight, or may even start their sales at some time on Thanksgiving. Black Friday is not an official holiday, but California and some other states observe “The Day After Thanksgiving” as a holiday for state government employees.

The term Cyber Monday, a neologism invented in 2005 by the National Retail Federation’s division Shop.org, refers to the Monday immediately following Black Friday based on a trend that retailers began to recognize in 2003 and 2004. Retailers noticed that many consumers, who were too busy to shop over the Thanksgiving weekend or did not find what they were looking for, shopped for bargains online that Monday from home or work.

 

Now you can do these quizzes:

https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/games/quizzes/quiz-whiz-thanksgiving/

https://www.amexessentials.com/thanksgiving-trivia-quiz/

https://www.vocabulary.cl/english-games/thanksgiving-day.htm#google_vignette

https://wordwall.net/es-us/community/vocabulary/thanksgiving

Halloween

 

Halloween is celebrated on October 31st every year. The holiday began as a Celtic festival from Ireland called Samhain. Halloween became more popular world wide with the start of the Christian holiday called All Saints Day. Halloween is traditionally a holiday that is meant to ward off evil spirits. During the time of the Celtic traditions, people would carve out scary faces and figures in giant turnips, place a candle inside, and set in their windows to scare away evil ghosts and enemies on Halloween.

Nowadays the turnips have been replaced by orange pumpkins, but the carving tradition is still continued, as well as lighting the pumpkins on the night of Halloween. The traditional colors that are used for most decorations for Halloween are black and orange. There are certain characters that are associated with Halloween: ghosts, witches, skeletons, vampires, werewolves, bats and black cats.

Read the text and complete it.

vocabulary game

Halloween Quiz – Cuestionario (wordwall.net)

Halloween Characters and Things – Cada oveja con su pareja (wordwall.net)

Halloween Vocabulary Set 1 Crossword – Une las parejas (wordwall.net)

Halloween Hangman – Ahorcado (wordwall.net)

Halloween – Parejas (wordwall.net)

 

Christmas activities

JOHN LENNON’S HAPPY XMAS AND IMAGINE:

-Complete the song:

https://es.lyricstraining.com/play/peter-hollens-jackie-evancho/happy-xmas-war-is-over/HLkEvrcngL#a7w

Try to complete the white gaps from Imagine:

https://es.lyricstraining.com/play/john-lennon-the-plastic-ono-band/imagine/H7I4VxsmQ7#ibw

 

John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon, 9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as the founder, co-lead vocalist, and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles. His songwriting partnership with Paul McCartney remains the most successful in history. In 1969, he started the Plastic Ono Band with his second wife, Yoko Ono. After the Beatles disbanded in 1970, Lennon continued a career as a solo artist and as Ono’s collaborator.

Lennon was characterised for the rebellious nature and acerbic wit in his music, writing, drawings, on film and in interviews and his songs were adopted as anthems by the anti-war movement and the larger counterculture. He was shot and killed in the archway of his Manhattan apartment building by a Beatles fan, Mark David Chapman.

From 1968 to 1972, Lennon produced more than a dozen records with Ono, including a trilogy of avant-garde albums, his first solo LP John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, and the international top 10 singles “Give Peace a Chance”, “Instant Karma!”, “Imagine” and “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”.

As a performer, writer or co-writer, Lennon had 25 number one singles in the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Double Fantasy, his best-selling album, won the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. In 1982, Lennon was honoured with the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. In 2002, Lennon was voted eighth in a BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. Rolling Stone ranked him the fifth-greatest singer and thirty-eighth greatest artist of all time. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame (in 1997) and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (twice, as a member of the Beatles in 1988 and as a solo artist in 1994).

-Christmas Activities

 

 

 

GREAT BRITAIN

  1. What does BBC stand for?
  2. Which English city are the Beatles from?
  3. Which band was Freddie Mercury part of?
  4. Which British author wrote Pride and Prejudice?
  5. What is the smallest city in the UK?
  6. Which flower is associated with England?
  7. Who was the first English Prime Minister?
  8. Who is the president of the National Trust?
  9. Which British actor played the Tramp in 1915?
  10. What is the official London residence of the Queen?
  11. In which city was the soft drink Vimto invented?
  12. Who was Henry VIII’s first wife?
  13. Which British chocolatier originally created the Cadbury Creme Egg?
  14. Which British artist made the Angel of the North?
  15. Which British author wrote Oliver Twist?
  16. How many players does each Cricket team has?
  17.  Is an English bulldog bigger or smaller than a French bulldog?
  18. Who founded the car brand Rolls-Royce?
  19. Which actress portrayed the Queen in the first two seasons of The Crown?
  20. In which city can you find the Clifton Suspension bridge?
  21. Which British author wrote The Chronicles of Narnia?
  22. True or False – Worcestershire Sauce was invented by two pharmacists.
  23. What does GP stand for?
  24. In which city was Cadbury founded?
  25. Which fictional bunny is the author Beatrix Potter known for?
  26. Which football team does Harry Kane play for?
  27. How many Harry Potter books are there?
  28. In which Adele album was ‘Rolling in the deep’?
  29.  Which year did ‘The Great British Bake Off’ start?
  30. Which secret agent organisation does James Bond work for?
  31. What was the job of Simon Pegg’s character in ‘Hot Fuzz’?
  32. Which British actor portrayed Dr. Watson in the BBC series ‘Sherlock’?
  33. Who was the bassist of The Rolling Stones?
  34. In which UK city was the rock band ‘Oasis’ formed?
  35. What does BAFTA stand for?
  36. Which Nobel Prize was Winston Churchill awarded?
  37. Who established the Church of England?
  38. Which Spice girl was Posh Spice?
  39. In which city did the Hillsborough disaster happen?
  40. What is the UK national anthem?
  41. Which movement did Emmeline Pankrust organise?
  42. Which actress portrayed Hermione Granger in Harry Potter?
  43. What was Daniel Craig’s last James Bond movie?
  44. Where was Shakespeare born?
  45. Which year was the Good Friday Agreement signed?
  46. In which county does the Glastonbury festival take place?
  47. What boarding school did Prince Charles go to?
  48. Radcliffe Camera is a famous attraction in which city?
  49. What is the longest running musical in London?
  50. Which country gives the Christmas tree on Trafalgar square to the UK?

Shakespeare

Shakespeare

1-look for information about Shakespeare:

a-When and Where did he live?

b-Which are his most popular Works (types and examples)

c-Why is he the most important writer in the English literature?

d-Choose any of his plays and write a summary (5 lines)

muchadoaboutnothing

2-Put the verbs in brackets into their correct form:

William Shakespeare _______1________ (to be) an English poet and playwright. He ______2_________ (to be) often called England’s national poet. His surviving works ______3_________ (to consist) of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems and several other poems. His plays _______4________ (to be ) translated into every major living language and _______5________ (to be ) performed more often than those of any other playwright.

Shakespeare _______6________ (to be) born in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he _______7________ (to marry) Anne Hathaway, with whom he _______8________ (to have) three children:Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he _______9_______ (to begin) a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of a playing company. He ______10_________ (to retire) to Stratford around 1613, where he ______11_________ ( to die) three years later.

Shakespeare _______12________ ( to produce) most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays _______13________ (to be) mainly comedies and histories. He then ______14_________ (to write) mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest Works in the English Language. In his last phase, he ______15_________ (to write) tragicomedies and ______16_________ ( to collaborate) with other playwrights.

His plays _____17__________ (to remain) highly popular today and _______18________ ( to be) constantly studied, performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.

3- After reading the passage above, answer the questions:

1-When did William Shakespeare die?

2-What was his profession?

3-What do people think about him?

4-Which plays are the most popular of his?

5-What kind of work did he do in his last phase?

6-How was his family composed by?

4-DO THIS QUIZ:

https://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/quizshow.php?title=william-shakespeare-quiz&q=1

Expressing purpose with ‘to’ and ‘for’

We can use to + infinitive and for + noun to say what is the purpose of an action, or the reason why we do something.

to + infinitive

  • I went to the grocery store to buy some vegetables. 
  • I studied hard to pass the exam.

for + noun

  • Let’s go to the pub for a drink. 
  • We climbed to the top for the views.

Compare to vs for:

  • I went to the shop to buy some milk. 
  • I went to the shop for some milk. 

for + -ing

Don’t use for + -ing to talk about why we do something

We don’t use for + -ing to say what is the purpose of our actions, why we do something.

  • I work hard for improving my English.
  • I work hard to improve my English.
  • Turn the TV on for watching the news.
  • Turn the TV on to watch the news.

Use for + -ing to talk about the purpose or function of an object

We use for + ing to talk about the purpose or function of a thing, what an object is used for.

  • This machine is used for cleaning cars.
  • This is a special camera for photographing small objects.  

Expressing purpose with ‘to’ and ‘for’