A different approach to the news

Would you like to know about current events in English? Are you tired of reading the news on the paper? Don't you have satellite TV?

If you have answered YES to at least one of the questions, why not try this different approach, then?

Instead of reading the news, you can try and watch mini-videos about them.

1. One wonderful website is Yahoo News. If you click here, you'll have access to lots of 30-second videos of the latest news. The clips are taken from different TV channels (ABC, BBC News, FOX, CBS, etc) and they are also classified into different categories and topics: Sports, Technology, Entertainment... You even have a section of Odd News!

2. Another very interesting resource is the Audio Slideshow Gallery at the Reuters site. You'll have access to "the pictures of the week", which are shown AND explained at the same time. The audio clip takes about 2 minutes and the photographs are amazing! Do give it a go.

Hope you enjoyed your weekend.

PS: some other day I'll give you links of newspapers where you can actually READ the news. Why not?

Editing your written texts

Dear students,

Here I am, on this grey Saturday, busy with your compositions. I'd like to share my thoughts with you... What am I feeling? What am I worried about? Let me put this briefly: I am thinking it would be a good idea if we came back to "the very beginning" and started looking at basic tips to improve our writing. Mmmm... Let's see.

A wonderful website to start with would be this one; but specifically, I'd recommend you to go straight to the Editing section, which is really helpful to revise (or to learn) essential basics on the Writing Skill.

So, my dear students... I think my weekend experience with your compositions might change our schedule for next week. We'll talk on Monday about it.

Happy New Year gift

Happy New Year everybody! Hope you had a lovely Christmas break. Are you ready to come back to class? Me too!

To start the year, I'd like to share with you this wonderful website I've just come across:

"TED Talks", where you have access to lots of videos on different subjects. They are rated under different categories (most emailed, funniest, most fascinating, unmissable...) and you can choose whatever calls your attention most.

What is TED?

"TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free. Almost 150 talks from our archive are now available, with more added each week. (...)

Our mission: Spreading ideas."

See you in two days!

Christmas with a British flavour

Is anybody out there? Hope you're enjoying your holidays.

By the way: I just found out that the British Royal Family has gone cyber! Click here to access their Official Youtube Royal Channel.

Of course, the Christmas day Broadcast is there, together with other delightful videos.

Enjoy the Queen's accent and Happy Xmas to you all.

Pronunciation of Irregular Verbs

Because it's never too late!

Here you are: a list of irregular verbs with their phonetic transcription. You can print it out and stick it on your fridge.

; )

No more doubts! Ever!

-ed Past Simple endings

Fascinating subject today, isn't it? "-ed" endings in regular past verbs!

Look at the Grammar Challenge in the BBC website to listen to the radio programme and download the documents attached. Remember you can also do the quizzes related.

Enjoy the challenge!

Have you got a few minutes?

19 minutes is all you need. Take a seat, grab a cup of tea and relax. Are you ready? If you click here, you'll have access to a very interesting interview: Mark Haddon being asked about The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. Yes, it's the author himself! Very nice, understandable accent. Don't you think so?

Enjoy!

The curious incident of the bishop in the night time

Would you like to listen to the whole interview? Here it is.

Why not read a short article about the incident? Click here to have a look at it.

Some videos on the topic here and here.

Hope you have a nice holiday.

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!

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!

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!

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!

NEW LINKS- listen, watch and pronounce!

WATCH:
Why not visit these videos organized into categories?

There's also this wonderful blog that has a collection of different videos which may be useful for you learners out there.

You have to click on the "Free Subscription" button on this site, but it might be worth it to listen to "Real English".

PRONOUNCE:
Lovely website with phonetic games! Don't miss it.

This phonemic chart might take some time to load, but it's very interesting.

LISTEN:
And what about these group conversations around images, documents and videos?

Grammar links

To improve your writing and speaking:

- Make subjects and verbs agree here.

- Revise Phrasal verbs.

- Have a look at Prepositions.

- Grammar explanations, examples, exercises (all levels).

- Online grammar and punctuation guides.

Writing links for advanced students

- BASIC TIPS FOR WRITING:

Very basic pieces of advice here and here. And a more academic link if you click here.

- SPELLING:

- English spelling rules here and here.

- Spelling game.

WRITING COURSES:

-Writing e-mails.

-Paragraph writing tips.

-Complete writing course online.

-How to improve your writing in 5 minutes.

-Interactive exercises.

PUNCTUATION:

- At last! Punctuation rules and exercises explained here and here. And why not try this other link? Finally, you also have some activities here.