20/11/07

What's in a name?

Hello again... "Listening" time!

Ok, do you remember File 1 or is it already too far away? The very first topic we tackled was "Names". Here you are two listening exercises, taken from the BBC site (wonderful site, by the way!):

- Nice and short exercise: text adapted for upper intermediate students with full text available (Over 3 minutes). Topic: popular names nowadays.

- "Real English" exercise: fancy a challenge? Listen to a chat between different women in a radio programme- the discussion topic is whether to change your surname when you get married (over 10 minutes). Remember: don´t panic! Pay attention to key words and don't expect to understand everything.

Finally, click here for some very useful pronunciation tips.

Enjoy!

12/11/07

Grammar in Plain English

Hi there again. Are you finding the new grammar bits easy? I'm sure you would like to practice a little bit more. I found a great page called English Grammar Secrets where grammar rules are explained in a very simple and understandable way; they also provide you with exercises to assimilate the explanations.

So why not try reading the rules and doing the exercises on the Future Continuous and Future Perfect?

And of course... your all-time favourite! Click here to practice the structures "Used to" / "get used to", etc...

Do you still want some extra explanation? Click here to access a different site and here to do more exercises on "used to".

Enjoy!

8/11/07

Videos about the Internet

Remember the other day we were talking about wikis? What on earth is a wiki?
Here you have a great video that explains it "in plain English":





There was also some talk about the Internet and how it is changing our lives. I'd like to make you think about "the way we find, store, create, critique, and share information" since the Internet arrived as such. Here you are an interesting document (only video, no sound) which may make us give it a second thought:





Enjoy!

1/11/07

EXTRA MATERIAL that's not in the book

A teacher from a school in Zaragoza has taken the trouble to collect some material which can help you study the contents from File 4 Upper Intermediate:

Why not visit her on her website?

It's divided into units: in each unit (in each "file") you have different headings with the grammar or vocabulary contents we're looking at this year.

Another teacher, this time from Granada University, has done more or less the same in his website. Some of the links are very similar, and the organization is quite the same.

What are you waiting for? Give it a go!