Polite/Impolite Intonation, Prepositional Phrases and Differences between Wharf, Pier, Dock, Harbour ...

Week 17^th – 20^th June

Hi, how are you doing?

This week we just corrected our ‘use of English’ exercise. The headings were ‘Mystery of the deep’, ‘Bicycle Town’, ‘Insects and Camouflage’, The Emperor’s Villa’, ‘Table for Two’ and ‘Interactive Movies’.

As usual, we had to tackle word building, rewriting and gapped sentences.

And we practised intonation in polite requests.

Remember that intonation and stress mean a lot when we are speaking. They can completely change the meaning of what we are saying. Even if you use a polite structure such as: “I wonder if you could possibly tell me the way to the station” – extremely polite, by the way – if you use a flat intonation, it loses its meaning and you’ll come across as somebody who has just memorized that sentence, out of emotion.

Notice the intonation as well as the word stressed in the following examples given in this exercise. Polite / impolite Intonation

Would you like to practise idioms and prepositional phrases with quizzes? You can do it on this link  Prepositional Phrase Quiz

For Eduardo’s information; I think you’ll find this article interesting!

What’s the difference between dock, wharf, pier, port …? http://www.theshippinglawblog.com/2011/10/what-is-difference-between-quay-pier.html

Remember that we are having 2-hour lessons both days next week, in order to make up for the class we missed the week before the last.

Have a nice weekend! See you on Tuesday!!!

Conditional Sentences and Persuasion

Week 10^th – 12^th June

Hello again!

Nearly finishing the course! This is the countdown for the summer holidays.

It was nice to see Eduardo again. But better yet, was to know that he has done it well in his exams.

Last week we only had a class. Remember we are making up for (recuperating)it next Friday 20^th at 10.00a.m.

But, what did we do in our class last week?

We went through verbs followed by infinitive with to, bare infinitive, that is, without to and verbs followed by –ing

In other words, verb patterns.

·         I was so happy to receive your present. (After adjs, to +infinitive)

·         She was busy looking after her little sister. (Exception;after “busy”, ing)

·         He went to the sop to buy some bread. (To express purpose, why?)

·         Doing sport is healthy. (When the verb is the subject, ing)

·         The kid wasn’t tall enough to reach the door knob.(After too and enough)

·         Don’t leave the office without locking the door. (After prepositions)

·         They didn’t know where to run.(After question words, except “why”)

·         We went swimming last weekend. (After “go” for physical activities)

·         My niece would like to become a teacher when she grows up.(After would like, would love etc.)

 After certain verbs we use to + infinitive and after other verbs we use “–ing”. And this is the most difficult part to remember because there are no rules for it. Read a lot. Do exercises and above all, learn the verbs in context with sample sentences.

·         What did they plan to do?

·         My friends agree to stay in the hotel closer to the beach.

·         She promised not to tell anybody.

·         I refuse to go by bus. It takes longer than the train!

·         I hope to finish my degree next year.

·         They seem to have forgotten what happened before.

·         I decided to take the job.

·         Avoid drinking tap water if you travel to India.

·         There’s no point warning him, he’ll go anyway.

·         He denied taking the money.

·         He confessed to killing the man.

·         They objected to having the shop open until 9pm.

·         We are looking forward to hearing from you.

 Verb Patterns

More exercises on Verb Patterns

Then, we continued with conditional sentences.

At this level, of course you have perfectly clear the three types of conditional sentences and even, the ‘Zero conditional’; the problem being the mixed conditional sentences. My advice? Even though I usually recommend not to translate into Spanish, this could be the solution and in this particular case it makes a lot of difference between understanding the use of mixed conditionals or not.

We usually mix 2^nd type and 3^rd type conditionals. We do it so as to refer to the present and the past in the same sentence. Bear in mind that these sentences must make sense, they must have a ‘sound meaning’.(being coherent)

Mixed:           They wouldn’t get a table if they hadn’t booked in advance.

(type 2)                                (type 3)

Present situation: they have a table. Past situation: they booked-in advance-

Second:        They wouldn’t get a table if they didn’t book in advance.

                                                         Type 2

Hypothetical situation in the present /future. They have to book if they want a table.

Third:            They wouldn’t have got a table if they hadn’t booked in advance.

                                                                     Type 3

Hypothetical situation in the past.  They booked, they got the table.

Mixed conditionals- Grammar and exercises

And we finished the class reading about “persuasion”.

It’s amazing how a single word can make a lot of difference when it comes to persuasion, isn’t it? Take the example of a stranger approaching some people waiting to use a photocopier. He asked, “May I use the machine? I’ve only got five copies’. People let him go first. The percentage of people who agreed to him being first increased when the statement was ‘May I use the photocopier because I’m in a rush?’ This proves that when a request is followed by ‘because’, no matter how petty (unimportant) the reason is, persuasion works!

 Beggars or charities asking for some money also know persuasion techniques. It’s been proved that if they say something along these lines ‘Could you collaborate with us? Even a little money can help’ instead of just saying ‘Could you collaborate with us?’ the outcome (result) will be quite different!

And so the class finished! See you this evening.

History Goes to the Movies...

Week 3^rd -5^th June

Hello Chus!

Well, it seems there’s only the two of us in class!

As usual, I wish the best of lucks to Eduardo. He must be studying for his exams and finishing projects for his degree.

We did a reading from a sample test. The headings were:

‘Travel Africa: Brochures under review’, ‘The Thatchers’, ‘Music at School’ and ‘Service Excellence Award’.

Then, we went through a letter of application.

We analysed a model text.

When you write a covering letter/ email to apply for a job, a grant, etc., remember:

·         Use appropriate sentences to open the letter.

·         Organize the main body of the letter into clear paragraphs.

·         Make sure you use a suitable style:

·         Don’t use contractions or very informal expressions,

·         Use formal vocabulary, e.g. require instead of need, as instead of because.

·         Use the conditional to make a request more polite, eg. I would be grateful if …, I would welcome the chance to …

·         When you say you’re suitable for the job, don’t ‘oversell’ yourself. Be factual and positive but not arrogant.

·         Use the appropriate phrases to close the letter.

We listened to two songs. ‘I will Survive’ by Gloria Gaynor and ‘I don’t want to miss a thing’ by Aerosmith.

You can listen to them again in here: I will survive

I don't want to miss a thing

And we finished the week with more listening.

As we had been talking and reading about history in the movies, we listened to an interview with Adrian Hodges, a screenplays writer.

We was asked questions related to the importance of accuracy in historical movies, if they were more expensive to shoot than non- historical ones and his views on why Ancient Roman movies are so popular.

Then we listened to a survey made in the street.

People were asked:

‘If you could have lived in another historical period, which period would you choose?’ And ‘which historical figure do you particularly admire?’

What about you? How would you answer these questions?

This was all! See you on Tuesday!

Week 27^th -29^th May

Hello!

This week we were talking about history in the movies.

Some films are memorable for a scene or a sentence, but in the case of historical movies, to which extent are these facts faithful to the historical period portrait in the film?

Take ‘Braveheart’ as an example.  The film is set in 13^th-century Scotland. Mel Gibson plays the Scottish rebel William Wallace, who tries to overthrow the English who ruled Scotland at that time. One of the most memorable scenes was the battle of Stirling, when Wallace’s army, hopelessly outnumbered, wait in an open field for the English to attack.

As a matter of fact, the battle took place on a narrow bridge; being that the reason for the English troops defeat. That bridge was an impediment for the shooting, so  the director decided to eliminate it! But that was not the only inaccuracy …

 As for ‘Titanic’ , the most stricken inaccuracy is that the romance between Jack (third class passenger) and Rose ( first class) would probably had not taken place due to the segregation existing between classes aboard of ships. And what would have been the success of this film without this story?

We took advantage of this context, and put into practice the use of discourse markers: adverbs and adverbial expressions.

And we did a word building exercise.

noun	person	adjective	verb
capture	captor	Captor /captive	capture
civilization	civilian / civil	civilized	civilize
execution	executioner		execute
history	historian	historic / historical
looting	looter		loot
rebellion	rebel	rebellious	rebel
siege			besiege
survival	survivor	surviving	survive
withdrawal			withdraw
victory	victor	victorious

And that was it!  See you next week!

If you want to know more about films and history, 

History goes to the movies

I Wish ...

Week 20^th – 22^nd May

Hello, boys!  What’s the matter with you?

You let us down last week! Hadn’t been for Chus, I’d have been on my own the two classes!

I guess Eduardo will be snowed under (loaded) with work, studying for his exams. Good luck!

I haven’t heard from Gabi, but I expect us to see him this afternoon. Anyway, I hope his knee is better!

What did we do last week?

We corrected ‘Use of English’, test 2. I included the ‘key’ in the stack of copies I’m keeping for you!

But if you’d rather check the answers by yourselves, you can do it on this link

http://www.flo-joe.co.uk/cae/students/tests/   Test 2

The sections of this test paper were headed as ‘Sound Advice for Language Learners’, ‘Pre-History’, 21^st Century Workplace’, and, of course the sections of ‘Gapped Sentences’ and ‘Key Word Transformations’

We revised the uses of the unreal past.

Sometimes the verb tense we use does not coincide with the time. Bear in mind that “tense” isn’t the same as “time”.

Time: present, past or future.

I wish I had Sue’s telephone number. So, I could tell her about the lecture.

“Had” is past simple tense but the time it refers to is present. It refers to a present situation.

·         When Bill and I got married, his attitude to money amused me.

·         If Bill got promoted, our standard of living would go up.

·         I wish we were better off.

·         I was so jealous when I heard about Carol’s weekend in New York.

·         I think it’s time we moved to a bigger house.

·         I’d rather my daughters married a man with money.

·         I wish I’d married my first boyfriend!

·         If I’d married Sean, I would have a better standard of living.

Tenses In bold red really correspond to past time.

Tenses in bold green, use the past but refer to present or future situations.

 Summing up

·         Use wish + past simple to refer to things we would like to be different in the present or the future (but which are impossible or unlikely)

If only I knew the answer!

I wish I knew the answer.

·         Wish + past perfect, to talk about things which happened and we now regret.

(Instead of ‘wish’ you can use ‘if only’ in exactly the same way. Nevertheless, ‘if only’ is more emphatic).

 If only you hadn’t forgotten the map, we’d be there by now!

I wish you hadn’t forgotten the map.

·         We use would rather + subject + past tense to express preference.

I’d rather you left your dog outside. I’m allergic.

We can use would rather+ infinitive without ‘to’ when there is no change of subject.

I’d rather not talk about it.

·         We use the past simple after it’s time + subject to say that something has to be done now or in the near future.

It’s time (high time) the government did something about unemployment.

We can use it’s time +to+infinitive when we don’t want to specify the subject.

It’s time to finish this.

And we finished the classes reading and speaking about the topic ‘I wish I had married for money, not for love!’

See you this evening!

Reduced Infinitives, Synonyms, The world of Work and a lot of Work!

Week 13^th -15^th May

Hi! It’s been ages!

There’s an old British adage that says “No news is good news”, but I prefer to hear from you rather than not having news!

We had very good news indeed last week. Gabi restarted the lessons and he told us that he had passed his First Certificate Test “With flying colours!” (Successfully; with good marks).Well, first goal, achieved! Now let’s focus on CAE!

On the other hand, there was a bit of an annoying fact, his knee. We expect you get better soon and thanks for coming, even though you came in crutches! Be patient.

What did we do in the last weeks?

We worked on a “Use of English” paper with the following headings:

“Phobias”, “Stress”, “Turn a hobby into a business” and of course, gapped sentences and word transformations.

You can do this test again online if you wish to practise.

            http://www.flo-joe.co.uk/cae/students/tests/   Test 1

We tried to widen our vocabulary with synonyms or near synonyms expanding our thesaurus (a dictionary of synonyms). Can you think of synonyms of faith, skilled, persuade, to lie, tactics, carefully, annoying, very important, dangerous, scared?

Remember:

·         Little girls giggle when they think something is funny, with their hands in front of their mouths.

·         Little boys snigger, laugh unpleasantly, when they are laughing at someone who has done something they think is stupid.

·         To chuckle is a nice way of laughter.

·         You burst out laughing when you suddenly laugh very loudly.

·         When you laugh so much that it starts to hurt, you are in stitches.

And also:

·           If you really hate something, you loathe it or detest it.

·           Abhor is quite formal.

·           When you despise someone, you dislike them strongly because you have absolutely no respect for them.

Reduced infinitives.         

Don’t forget to use reduced infinitives so as to avoid repetition:

·         “Haven’t you done the washing up yet?” “No, I’m just going to.”

·         “Are you coming for a walk?” “No, I don’t want to.”

“To be” is not reduced to “to”.

·         She’s less moody than she used to be. She’s less moody than she used to.

·         I wasn’t as impressed as I expected to be. I wasn’t as impressed as I expected to

We also learnt vocabulary related to the world of work.

A challenging job tests your abilities and keeps you motivated. It can also be stressful at times; especially if you have to meet deadlines and you feel under pressure. On the other hand, a monotonous, repetitive, dull, tedious job isn’t rewarding at all. You just feel bored! There are highly demanding (they require a big effort) jobs that take up most of your time and don’t allow you to have a work-life balance and that ends up in working overtime and not seeing your family.

We went through the list of questions related to job interviews, ‘Building your answers’

They are split into several sections: motivation, interpersonal skills, decision-making and creative or practical?

We did an exercise that consisted of finding a suitable job for the possible candidate. Each student had a list of three or four jobs. They had to make questions related to skills, abilities or experience that matched the requirements of those jobs. After the job interview, they had to offer the job which better fitted the candidate’s skills.

           

It seems that Gabi is going to start working as a conference organizer, although he isn’t  very organised. (A white lie at the interview!)

And Chus will be a shop manager. She seems to be better organised!

We ended the week listening to a poem called ‘Hints on English Pronunciation’

It just was an excuse to practise the pronunciation of the group “ought”

Do you remember how to pronounce tough, bought, cough, dough, thorough, plough, enough, through?

I’ll check it this evening! See you!