This is the end... my only friend, the end...

We are almost at the end of our course, level 5 and I hope everybody can make it and suceed. I'm soon finishing correcting all your texts for you to have a look at your writing.

Well, here's is the list of contents for this test.

Face the music: This is when we had our oral presentations and got to talk about music, bands, kinds of music, etc. Here we used adjectives ending with "ED" and "ING," and we expressed our opions by saying "I agree" or "I disagree," and used question tags.

Famous people: We talked about fame and success and listened to short biographies of Jackie Chan and Gloria Stephan. We also did an activity where we learned words like pen name, seudonim, etc.

The way things used to be: We read two texts "investing in memories" and "the selective memory" (with a lot of vocabulary, by the way). In this we talked and wrote about our childhood memories. We learned and practiced the use of "used to" and "would" to describe ideas in the past.

Cold, lost and hungry: Here we read the story in two people who had a scary fishing trip. We coverred the topic of joining ideas using "while," "as," "as soon as" and "when." This was particularlty difficult so I gave you a handout with explanations in the lab.

Can money buy happiness?: We mainly talked about some people with a lot of money and wrote about "What would you do if you won $200.000.000 in the lotery"

Fictional Heores never die: We talked about cartoon and TV heroes. We saw the present perfect continuos and present perfect. At the end of the class we played a game about the past tense, which I think was fun.

How we met: Here we made a revision of past continuous. We listened to two people saying how they had met.

We also included the use of passive voice and reported speech, but I'm going to evaluate passive voice only.

(printer friendly pdf version ;))
If you don't understand how to download it, click here.

I think that's it guys. I'm going to update if I find something useful for you.

cheers!

Fwd: Updating

Dear students,

I hope this week and the next can be venturous. As we talked in class we are about to finish. We have 8 hours to go, which means we are going to finish on Friday 15th of June with everything. Today I gave you a homework of writing 100 words where you answer this question "What would you do if you won the lottery" I hope you bring it tomorrow.

The final listening exam will be on the 15th of June. The second written test will be on Monday 11th, with oral part on Tuesday (Seba, Cris, Rod and Luis) and Wednesday (Claudia, Naty, Maca and Karina) If you haven't chosen your day, do it ASAP. On Thursday I'm planing to provide some practice for the final listening.

That's all for now guys. See you in class tomorro (or today.)

Your teacher
Q=^D

fame or success? and effective oral presentations

Hello people,

This is what we are doing in the lab today:

Write a text of 300 words at least about "effective oral presentations" or "fame and success." You can include examples and citations from websites.

If you write something textual, be sure to cite it properly. For example "La disciplina es la parte más importante del éxito"(1) and at the end (at the botom of the page) you can cite the name of the author and year, if you know it. You can also cite the name of the person in the text, e.g.: for Truman Capote discipline was the most important part of success, (in this case you don't need quotation marks).

If your topic is "effective oral presentations," you can mention other kinds of oral presentations (appart form the class work) if you wish.

If your topic is "fame and success" you can explain if the words mean the same and why. You can give examples of people and your opinion about them.

You can call me and ask me questions. The idea is to elaborate.
Good luck!

Thank you and namaste.

Let's talk about music

Okay guys,



This is what we have to do for next Tuesday.
Prepare an oral presentation about music (in English)

Consider an introduction, a body and conclusion. In these stages you can include anything you want but it has to be logical. For instance, in the introduction you can talk about the song and the band or singer. You can mention anecdites o popularity of the song, etc. You can present the song in the body of the presentation. You can play the song in the radio on a casstte, CD, mp3 (or any other format) or play it alive with an instrument and your classmates singing along. The conclusion can be some words or expresions in the song, or anything you decide. Be ready to answer questions.

Time: Your presentation should last 10 minutes and it must be rady for Tuesday 15th. For time reasons (obviously) not everyone will be able to present on that day, but everybody must be ready.

You have to send me a short report about it at the end of the week. In in mention the song you're going to present, the audiovisual facilities you need (radio, OHP, laptop, etc )

Questions welcomed

Q=^D

What we've been doing lately

Well, I decided to post this, just to make sure you have enough suport with the lessons, which will gradually get more difficult, by the way.

First, here you have an exercise to practise the question tags. Remember that depending on what we want to say, we can use rising or falling intonation. If we just expect confirmation, we use falling intonation, which mean in Spanish , "cierto?" "no es cierto?". On the other hand, when our intonation in the tag is rising, we are really asking a question.

Example: Imagine I say, "You have a brother called Carlos, don't you?" Okay, if I'm not sure, or I don't remember exactly who has Carlos as brother, I should use rising intonation. But if I were 98% sure I would use falling intonation.

That was about question tags. We also saw the difference between adjectives finished in -ed and the ones ending with -ing. For examaple, boring and bored.

Comments welcomed.
Q=^D

Here's the PPT

If you want to download the slide show, click here.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask them here.

And here you have what was missing
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/download/quizzes.shtml

Doctor Bechara and his team's findings

Here's my first (or second) post. I was checking the internet because I had a doubt at the end of the class, and it was: "Where the hec is the Insula?" Well, I found out and also on the job I found some very nice pages about it (simple ones) and decided to leave it here, so you can watch them if you wish.

Enjoy

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6298557.stm
http://psychology.usc.edu/faculty_homepage.php?id=86 (Dr. Bechara's e-mail is here :o)
http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?type=article&article_id=218392890 (Dr. Bechara speaking. Page needs free registration to watch video)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-01-25-brain-smoking_x.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PCKZy__0Yo (Video of Dr. Nasir Naqvi, from the team)


It's not compulsory, but apropriate to get familiarized with vocabulary ;)

Welcome

Hello folks of Level 5, first term, 2007!

Be all of you welcomed to our blog. This will be our space of comments to give a little help to our memories. Let's make this place our space for reflexion, as an extension of the classroom.

If you would like to make comments of the things we see in class, you're welcomed (even encouraged) to do it, without any restrictions, but respecting one another.

Your teacher.

PS: I think it's nicer to give our group a name. Think about it.Rather than calling it just with numbers or "el nivel 5", let's give this thing a name... Ideas?