Ode To Billy Joe

The weird video doesn't do justice to the beautiful beautiful song, but at least you get the chance to listen again...



The first thing we did in class was listen to the song, note down key phrases and categorise them under the following headings:

- Family Meal
- Life & Geography of the Area
- Farm Life
- Other details

Now listen again and fill the gaps:

It was the ______________, another sleepy, dusty Delta day. I was out ______________ and my brother was baling hay. And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to ______________. And Mama hollered out the back door "y'all remember to ______________," And then she said "I got ______________ this morning from Choctaw Ridge," "Today, Billy Joe MacAllister ______________ the Tallahatchie Bridge." And Papa said to Mama as he passed around the ______________: "Well, Billy Joe never had a lick of sense; pass ______________." "There's ______________ in the lower forty I've got to plow." And Mama said it was a ____________________________, anyhow. Seems like nothing ever comes to no good up ______________. And now Billy Joe MacAllister's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge. And brother said he recollected when he and Tom and Billie Joe, Had put _________________________ at the Carroll County picture show. And wasn't I talking to him after ____________________________? "I'll have another _______________________; you know it don't seem right. "I saw him at the sawmill ______________ on Choctaw Ridge, "And now you tell me Billie Joe's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge." And Mama said to me: "Child, what's happened to ______________? "I've been cooking all morning and you haven't _______________________. "That nice young preacher, ______________, dropped by today. "Said he'd be pleased to have dinner on Sunday, oh, ______________. "He said he saw a girl that looked ________________ up on Choctaw Ridge. "And she and Billy Joe was ______________ off the Tallahatchie Bridge." A year has come and gone since we ____________________________, And brother married Becky Thompson, they _________________________. There was a virus going 'round, Papa caught it and ____________________. And now Mama doesn't seem to wanna ____________________________. And me, I spend a lot of time picking ____________________________. And drop them into the muddy water ____________________________.

If you just want to check the original lyrics you can find them here and there are some interesting "facts" about the song here.

Writing A Report

There's a complete lesson on writing a report here. I'm in the process of trying to make it more interactive and I'll post downloadable handouts soon...

Questions Questions Questions

In total, you wrote 22 perfect questions for me to answer. Click here for my 22 answers!



Vlad, Lurance, Beida

What is your favourite football team and why?

Are you married?

Do you have a car and, if so, which model?

Do you like movies and, if so, what is your favourite?

Do you have a dog or a cat?

What do you do for a living?

Are you happy with your job?




Kenny, Aneliya, Seonwoong

Do you like your job?

Do you have a reason for liking the number 7?

How many people do you know?

Where do you like to go at weekends?

What kind of girl do you like?

Where do you live in London?

How long have you been working at Internexus?




Elif and Feng

I can’t memorise words. What do you suggest?

What was your favourite lesson when you were a student?

Can you swim very well?

Have you been to Turkey or China?

What is your dream job?

If we gave you one wish, what would you wish for?

How old were you when you came to Internexus?

I want to be alone when I feel bad. What do you prefer – being alone or with other people?

Travel Tips

Lots of students ask me to recommend places to go in London so I thought I'd start a list. In case you want more than my biased views, The Guardian website has a really good travel section in which readers submit their own recommendations and the section on London is huge and here. You could also try looking at my former student Ana's blog and at the cool website, Gridskipper.





My top tips for the capital are as follows:




1. Hampstead Heath - walk around the Heath for hours (or days) and make sure you enjoy the views from Parliament Hill. If you're lucky you might see crazy people swimming in the lakes. At the opposite end of the Heath to Parliament Hill, it's worth stopping briefly in Kenwood House (even just the cafe). You might recognise the building from the end of Notting Hill (Julia Roberts films a period drama there).

2. Hampstead High Street - nothing amazing but some beautiful houses and pubs around the back streets. You should try...

3. crepes from the street vendor

4. watching a film in The Hampstead Everyman Cinema. There are “love seats” for couples to sit in…or you can pay extra to sit in a VIP area with comfy sofas and a bar.

5. Primrose Hill - a lovely quiet pocket of green hills and famous people...if you walk down Primrose Hill high street you'll see some lovely little shops and you might even bump into Jude Law.

6. Highgate Cemetery - sounds a bit morbid, but there are quite a few important dead people there. Famous as the home of Karl Marx's grave.

7.Take a boat trip down the Thames. You can get a commentary to point out the most important buildings. The London Eye is worth going on too, but it’s a good idea to book in advance to avoid the queues. Personally, I like just walking near the river – from Big Ben to The Tate Modern takes a long time but on a nice day it’s a glorious walk and you get some lovely views. At the Tate Modern there a re some nice cafes with great views. If you don’t mind spending a little extra you can eat good food on the 7th Floor Restaurant, which in my opinion, is one of the coolest locations in London.

English Politeness : A Pronunciation Exercise

This is story is supposed to be an amusing example of how polite the English are. You can have read it and go through some simple sound-chunking pronunciation tasks here, or you can download the handout here.

If you think you know about British manners, try finishing the following sentences:

1. The British think that they are…
2. It is well-known that British people like…
3. In Britain, queues are…
4. It’s very important for the average English person not to…
5. The English are terrified by…
6. If you try to kiss a typical English person, they will…

As a language exercise, you can try to re-write your sentences using the following opening phrases:

1. The British love to think of themselves as…
2. Everyone knows how fond they are of...
3. Another sign of our good breeding is…
4. The average English person would rather die than…
5. The English find touching and other shows of friendship...
6. Try kissing the average English person and they will…

I'd be very happy to read any suggestions, and you can also adapt these sentences to talk about manners in your own culture. Some lovely examples can be found here.

Writing Complex Sentences

There's a short exercise in using relative clauses to creat complex sentences if you click here. Alternatively you can download the class handout here. A simplified option is this:

Hopefully, none of these statements should be true for you:

- I hate people
- I never eat food
- I can’t stand films
- I never go to places

So, can you extend the sentences to make them true for you.


Did you use any of these devices?

I hate people who…
I never eat food which…
I can’t stand films in which…
I never go to places where…


For more practice, try to extend each expression using all the alternative devices listed below:


I hate people who…with whom…because…

I never eat food with…when…from…containing…made…

I can’t stand films starring…made…featuring…

I never go to places which…in which…from which…

Suck It And See : Lexical Sets

The point of this exercise it to recognise that any vocabulary you find in any article belongs to a lexical set (a vocabulary topic). If you know which lexical sets you can find in an article, you should be able to guess the general meaning of unknown vocabulary more easily. Paying attention to lexical sets should also help you to use vocabulary more accurately.

Here, I've divided a newspaper article into different lexical sets. All you have to do is decide what each lexical set is. The class handout can be downloaded here.

CV Writing : Step One

Today we looked at some language for making yourself sound dynamic on a CV.

First we considered a list skills and qualities featured in a textbook called Business Builder. The first task was for students to identify which skills and qualities they have and then to prove it by referring to examples of achievements in their work experience, education, and personal life.

We then looked at the language they used to express them and worked on ways of making it more dynamic. We also used this vocabulary exercise to identify accurate and effective collocations to talk about work experience. A Word file can be downloaded here.

Textual Awareness

We started by reading this short biographical text about Brad Pitt (download the Word file here), by the far the best actor in the world when it comes to playing characters who look like Brad Pitt. Anyway, the tasks were simple...

First, having read the text, guess - without looking at it - the number of paragraphs (very easy I know), sentences (more difficult), and words. The point is just to think about structures of English sentences and paragraphs.

Secondly, with the text covered, we used the simple prompts to re-write the whole biography. Comparing the reconstruction with the original text allowed us to look for areas of English writing we needed to spend more time thinking about.

New Writing Course

The course starts with a NEEDS ANALYSIS session. We discussed how well we all write a variety of different text types in our first languages. There seemed to be a class consensus that the texts we write well tend to be the ones that we have read a lot of, and which we have practice of having written. The philosophy of this course, therefore, is to improve our writing skills by focussing on text types, analysing the way they work, and then trying to produce and improve upon our own written texts. The students all wrote down which text types they would most like to be able to write well in English. A list of the types of text we discussed are listed here.

Football and Violence!

Look at the headline and first two paragraphs of this BBC news report about last night's trouble between Man Utd and Roma fans. You'll notice that I've changed the font for certain words and phrases. Can you see a pattern developing? What do the various fonts represent?


Fans clash with police at Man Utd

Police and football fans were involved in a series of scuffles before the Champions League match between Manchester United and Roma on Tuesday.

Greater Manchester Police officers made 21 arrests after confrontations around Old Trafford prior to kick-off. The worst incident involved several dozen mainly Roma fans but it was soon brought under control by officers with batons and police horses and dogs. Manchester United won the match 7-1 to reach the Champions League semi-finals. Hundreds of supporters were caught up in ugly scenes outside Old Trafford before the game. Eyewitnesses said a firework was fired by Italian fans at Manchester United supporters as bottles were hurled between rival groups.

You may have realised by now that the fonts correspond to the different lexical sets (vocabulary themes) used in the text. The sets are as follows:

a. football
b. law
c. violence

Read on and try to classify the phrases in bold according to these three categories. Notice that the only other vocabulary theme that arises in the whole article is related to travelling (I've highlighted this vocabulary by putting it into itallics).

Police said 14 of those arrested were English and seven were Italian.

Eight Manchester United fans, including one juvenile, were arrested on suspicion of committing public order offences, one was detained for allegedly possessing a bladed article, two were held on suspicion of causing affray, one for suspected criminal damage and one was arrested for a suspected breach of the peace.
Two Italian supporters were held on suspicion of public order offences, another for allegedly possessing an offensive weapon, and a fourth for allegedly possessing an offensive weapon and committing a public order offence.


Three others were arrested on suspicion of shoplifting, believed to be from the Manchester United Megastore.

Roma supporters began trailing out of the ground at about 2215 BST and were led without incident to a facing car park where a fleet of coaches will take them back to the airport.
There were no reports of any injuries.

BBC production staff witnessed Manchester United fans throwing cans and glass bottles while police with dogs tried to separate the two sets of supporters.

Police dog units and mounted officers became involved with a series of scuffles with supporters close to the club shop on Sir Matt Busby Way at about 1750 BST.

Police sources told the BBC that the "isolated" trouble - which involved fans of both teams - was contained within five minutes.

A statement released by Greater Manchester Police said: "Officers patrolling at Old Trafford ahead of the Manchester United versus Roma match have been required to deal with a number of small and isolated incidents.

"The incidents are being dealt with as they happen and are being resolved quickly.

"Some arrests were made in order to maintain the peace at the ground."

BBC radio reporter James Alexander said extra security was very much in evidence outside the stadium.

"There were lots of security personnel and extra police cars and vans around the stadium," he said.

"It was classified as a Category C match which is the highest alert there is for a match at Old Trafford. It is on a par with a home match against Liverpool."

Minister for Sport Richard Caborn said: "It's unfortunate that there have been some scuffles outside Old Trafford. "This was always going to be a highly charged game following the incident last week. Greater Manchester Police have used proportionate force in a potentially difficult situation and have handled it well."

The visiting fans were in the second tier of the East Stand and there were no reports of trouble inside the stadium.

Roma's managing director Rosella Sensi earlier insisted their fans would behave impeccably.

Uefa is to investigate the trouble from the first leg, which could lead to disciplinary action for both United and Roma.

Hopefully that was all straightforward, but did you notice that disciplinary action combines the themes of football AND law - it's about the rules and laws that govern European football - UEFA are the organisation that could punish the two teams, just like the British legal system will punish the arrested fans.

Something for the Ladies : Sense and Sensibility

Just in case anyone cares, here's that wonderful opening paragraph from Jane Austen's Sense and Senisbility again... If you lack the motivation to read it, why not scroll down and watch a trailer for the most recent film adaptation...

The family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex. Their estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the centre of their property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so respectable a manner as to engage the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance. The late owner of this estate was a single man, who lived to a very advanced age, and who for many years of his life, had a constant companion and housekeeper in his sister. But her death, which happened ten years before his own, produced a great alteration in his home; for to supply her loss, he invited and received into his house the family of his nephew Mr. Henry Dashwood, the legal inheritor of the Norland estate, and the person to whom he intended to bequeath it. In the society of his nephew and niece, and their children, the old Gentleman's days were comfortably spent. His attachment to them all increased. The constant attention of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Dashwood to his wishes, which proceeded not merely from interest, but from goodness of heart, gave him every degree of solid comfort which his age could receive; and the cheerfulness of the children added a relish to his existence.

Coherence

A few little exercises to explore the importance of coherence for you. First read through this text in 30 seconds or less:

Belgium's rubbish solution

Councils in England could soon be allowed to charge residents for the amount of rubbish they throw away. When I visited the Flanders town of Lokeren - half-way between Antwerp and Ghent - I was following in the footsteps of environment minister Ben Bradshaw. He went with a team of officials last year to see how this part of Belgium recycles more than 70% of its household waste. In Lokeren itself, the rate is nearly 80% - more than three times that in England as a whole. So how do the Flemish do it? But what effect have "pay as you throw" systems had in other countries?

In Lokeren, it's set at 80 euros (£56). Not long ago the cost of rubbish collection and disposal was "hidden" in the main local tax - as it is in Britain. But a few years ago the Flemish moved to a system where people pay a separate annual waste fee. On top of that, they pay variable charges based on the weight and volume of waste they leave for collection.



By skim reading the text without worrying too much about 100% comprehension, you should note that, like all texts, it's made up of several vocabulary themese (lexical sets) which come together to create the story. In the case of this story, it should be easy to spot that the main lexical sets are BELGIUM, RECYCLING, and OFFICIALDOM / POLITICS. When you've realised that, you can help yourself to get the meaning of any new vocabulary (e.g. Flanders and Flemish must be related to Belgium, household waste to recycling, and envioronment minister to officialdom).

If you got the gist of this article through it's key vocabulary, great, but look again and you'll find that it's not completely COHERENT. That's because I've moved one sentence from each paragraph to a position which it doesn't belong in. Look carefully and then go the BBC website to check the original article here.

Now here's a story including the lexical sets of MEDICINE, LAW, and RELATIONSHIPS. Try to classify any new vocabulary within one of these categories:

Woman's embryo appeal verdict due

She turned to the European courts after exhausting the UK legal process. A woman left infertile after cancer therapy is due to learn a court's final judgement on her plea to use frozen embryos fertilised by an ex-partner. Ms Evans, 35, says her appeal to the Grand Chamber of the European Court is her last chance to have a baby. Natallie Evans, from Trowbridge, Wilts, and Howard Johnston began IVF treatment in 2001 but he withdrew consent for the embryos to be used after they split up.

This time I've mixed the article up completely. Put the sentences in the correct order and then check your thoughts against the original article below. Notice how each sentence contains words and expressions that relate to other sentences. With attention to these, you should be able to see logic to the writer's choice of structure. Again, this is COHERENCE, and attention to this textual feature should help you read and write in English effectively.


Woman's embryo appeal verdict due

A woman left infertile after cancer therapy is due to learn a court's final judgement on her plea to use frozen embryos fertilised by an ex-partner. Natallie Evans, from Trowbridge, Wilts, and Howard Johnston began IVF treatment in 2001 but he withdrew consent for the embryos to be used after they split up. She turned to the European courts after exhausting the UK legal process. Ms Evans, 35, says her appeal to the Grand Chamber of the European Court is her last chance to have a baby.

By the time we looked at this in class, a verdict had actually been reached, which you can read about here.

If you're approaching this the right way, you should be getting used to the style of these articles. Look at the first six sentences of one final article and try to put them into a coherent order:

China slams US piracy complaint

1. By doing so, the US has ignored the Chinese government's immense efforts and great achievements in strengthening intellectual property rights protection and tightening enforcement of its copyright laws," the commissioner added.
2. China "expressed great regret and strong dissatisfaction at the decision", the state news agency said.
3. China has criticised the US over its decision to file a formal complaint with the World Trade Organization over copyright piracy and counterfeiting. The US also argues that China makes it hard for legitimate firms to operate.
4. The Xinhua news agency quoted Intellectual Property Office commissioner Tian Lipu as saying that it was "not a sensible move for the US government to file such a complaint" at the World Trade Organization (WTO).
5. The US says that China's failure to enforce copyright laws is costing software, music and book publishers billions of dollars in lost sales.

Still awake? Check your thoughts against the original text here or go to the BBC website and search the words "China slams" to see how strangely often this lexical combination occurs in the news.

Academic Word List

I mentioned this in class - the Academic Word List, which is a useful tool for anyone interested in taking part in academic study which involves the English language. This website not only contains an explanation of what the Academic Word List is, it also allows you to paste text and see words from the AWL highlighted.

Language for Presentations

If you're interested, you can look at this collocations exercise related to presentations. Cover the verbs and then try to remember whether each phrase needs MAKE, DO, GIVE, or TAKE to complete it. There is also a handout with useful phrases for opening a presentation here.

A Marketing Project

Four products with potential image problems. We considered their strengths and weaknesses and then came up with a strategy for marketing them through this task. Feedback from the resulting presentations is here.

Advertising Campaigns

We looked at these advertising campaigns and discussed the feasibility of each one. One the same handout we did a branding task courtesy of Lexicon Naming via In Company. Finally we looked at advertising slogans. If you have some free time, why not try this stupid but entertaining random advert generator.

Memos and e-mails

Writing short but effective messages is a true art form. An analysis of these examples followed by some practice will help you take the first steps to perfecting this art form!

Negotiations

The idea was to use some of this useful language for negotiations in a negotiation roleplay about buying and selling digital cameras. A breakdown of the class results is here.

Writing a CV

The class handout for improving on your CV is here.

Funny Stories

I received some fantastic funny (or just strange) stories so rather than just reading them here, why not spend some time doing grammar exercises with them.

Mini Sagas

Read the first two mini sagas here and try to put the third story in order. As a grammar exercise, you can try to put the grammar back into the two stories here (get the answers here).

There are more mini sagas here, but nothing particularly good. I'm sure that you could write something better.

800 Dollars

There are several different grammar exercises you can try with a funny story about 800 dollars.

This website has a host of other jokes and funny stories, but I can't say I'm especially impressed by them. Please let me know if you have any alternative recommendations.

A Dark Dark Story

I think that this story provides a perfect example of the concept at the heart of the article system in English. Pay careful attention to the uses of A and THE

Once upon a time…
There was a dark dark county
And in the dark dark country
There was a dark dark forest
And in the dark dark forest
There was a dark dark tree
And near the dark dark tree
There was a dark dark lake
And by the dark dark lake
There was a dark dark house.
In the dark dark house
There was a dark dark hall
And through the dark dark hall
There was a dark dark room
In the dark dark room
There was a dark dark cupboard
And in the dark dark cupboard
There was a dark dark box
And in the dark dark box there was…

___ Sydney Harbour Bridge - A,The, or Nothing?

Can you put the articles into the following story?

_____ American, _____ Frenchman, and _____ Australian were sitting in _____ bar overlooking _____ Sydney Harbour. “Do you know why _____ America is _____ wealthiest country in _____ world?” asked _____ American. “It’s because _____ we build _____ big and we build fast. We put up _____ Empire State Building in six weeks”. “_____ Six weeks, mon dieu, so long!” snapped _____ Frenchman. “_____ Eiffel Tower we put up in _____ one month exactement. And you,” he continued, turning to _____ Australian, “what has _____ Australia done to match that?” “Ah, nuthin’, mate. Not that I know of.” _____ American pointed to _____ Harbour Bridge. “What about that?” he asked. _____ Australian looked over _____ his shoulder. “Dunno, _____ mate. It wasn’t there yesterday”.

The key is here but don't just check your answers and forget about it. Think carefully about the REASON for every use of A, THE, HE, HIS, THAT, and THERE in this story. Iny my humble opinion, if you can understand why each one has been used, then you are a step closer to producing excellent writing.

Going Down the Tube(s)

A newspaper story about some artistic tubes at the Tate Modern was the launchpad for a text analysis which incorporated this quick investigation of the question What is a clause? Summaries of the Tate Modern article then led to some pain-staking corrections.

Coffee Machine Conversations

What's the difference between English and English for Work? In some ways, nothing, but we sometimes have to use English skills to get what we want (or need) at work. We used a conversation at a coffee machine as a frame in which to try to find out vital information about work-related issues. Feeback on the language used in class conversations can be found here, while some examples of wonderful phrases students used and an exercise in reducing the amount of over-formal grammar that gets used are all here.

Initiation!

In the new English for Work class we used this exercise to highlight the need for social skills as well as being able to use good English. A feedback sheet from the class, which talks about using conversations as frames as well as Chinese astrology, can be downloaded here.

Tatsu's Spectaular Summary

Read Tatsu’s excellent summary of the article Work until you drop: how the long-hours culture is killing us and fill the gaps with an appropriate form of the verb in brackets:


Recently, more and more people in Britain _____________ (put) in long hours at work. At one time, British people _____________ (think) “hard work never killed anyone” but now, an American survey _____________ (show) that long working hours _____________ (increase) an individual’s chance of illness and injury. In fact, Britain even _____________ (have) a recent occurrence of the phenomenon “death from overworking”.

Telephone Wedding!

This story from the BBC explains how a judge in Italy recently supported a Pakistani man's right to get married over the telephone. On the BBC site there are

The article has some difficult vocabulary because there are some specific terms related to weddings and the law. However, if we take this vocabulary away, you should still be able to understand the story. Look at this gapped version of the story and try to guess what words could fill the spaces. The only important thing at this stage is to guess the MEANING of these words. If you can only do this by writing three or four words, or if the words you choose don't seem to be grammatically correct, don't worry. The key thing is that you understand the story.

After you've tried for yourself, compare your guesses to mine, which I've written at the bottom of the page. Can you insert these words & phrases into appropriate gaps in the story?

Now go back to the original text and highlight all the words that were covered up in the gapped version of the story. You should find that even though this vocabulary is new to you, you understand its meaning. The next step is to decide which phrases you could use by yourself. This handout divides the vocabulary into the lexical sets of LAW and WEDDINGS and then gives you space to brainstorm more wedding-related vocabulary in order to speak or write about a typical wedding from your culture, or indeed any wedding you have attended.

Vocabulary Class : Lexical Sets

The materials we used today are as follows:

- Young "hung up on their bodies" courtesy of the BBC

- how to break pieces of wood with Kung Fu Science!

- a very serious Guardian article about Working Yourself to Death!

- a mysterious racy novel in typical Mills and Boon style!

- Ali's prospectus...which university was it?

And don't forget the girl next door...

Pancakes

Pancake day is the greatest day of the year and probably the only interesting thing about British culture...well, it's the most delicious anyway.

The BBC has some nice cultural and historical information as well as the all-important recipes which you ABSOLUTELY MUST try. Click here to entre the wonderful world of pancakes.

What is Red Fuhrerwein???

First make a list of all the vocabulary you can think of related to wine, buying & selling, and Hitler! Next, find out about Fuhrerwein by reading this article. Do you see any of the vocabulary from your lists? Can you use the article to find more accurate phrases than some of the ones you listed?

Look at vocabulary from the article broken down into lexical sets in this handout. Give each lexical set a name and try to work out the meaning of any new vocabulary from context.

A simple exercise for exploring new vocabulary you find in an article is to make a list of all the noun phrases that refer to the main topic of the article, and then try to add adjectives and verbs to the noun phrases to retell the story. Then check the original text for the authentic vocabulary that was actually used. An example from this article can be found here.

Slang

Because it's such a well-loved topic by so many students, I'm happy to pass on this link to a dictionary of British slang. Please feel free to try out anything you learn on me...

High Hopes

Mike Leigh is a British film director whose early work is dominated by issues of class and potential movement between classes (or not, as the case may be). My plan is for us to use scenes from Mike Leigh's 1988 film High Hopes to practice listening to colloquial conversations and to look at the features of different accents. The scenes should also provide the opportunity to talk about social class in the UK and make comparisons with the idea of class in other cultures.

For more about the film, there's a New York Times article on Mike Leigh's High Hopes here.

Lunch on a Roller Coaster

42 Seconds of excitement and food flying all over the place can be viewed here.

Cleopatra and the Ugly Truth

This article from the BBC tells us that the popular image of Cleopatra as an Egyptian beauty might not be very close to the truth.

Look at this worksheet for vocabulary development tasks which include word form, synonyms & antonyms, adjective noun collocations, and lexical chains - whatever they are.

You can view a class gallery of beauty here and use the vocabulary on this worksheet to discuss it.

For listening practice, you can watch this news item online here at the BBC website, or admire Elizabeth Taylor as a more attractive Cleoptara in this film clip:

The Royal Family

The Windsors are everybody's favourite family, aren't they?

Experience "the Queen's English" literally by listening to Liz's speeches made on her 80th birthday and on Christmas Day 2006. Tapescripts can be found here and there's plenty more on this rather regal website.

Take the Windsor challenge by studying these photographs and trying to identify every royal. To help you put names to all those horse-like faces you can listen to Lyndel, Steve, and Mark discussing the British monarchy. Fill in this table as you do so.

Poetry

Don't laugh. Poetry is the new rock'n'roll...honestly. It could also help you develop your listening and pronunciation skills.

You can download and listen to William Wordsworth's Daffodils here and Stevie Smith's Not Waving But Drowning here. Predictably, there's also a worksheet to go with them.

To listen to Wendy Cope's Bloody Men! click here. To use the poem as a dictation exercise you can download this tempate.

Vocabulary Development : Good Manners

This vocabulary lesson is based around a BBC article about the Chinese government's attempts to discourage queue-jumping ahead of the Beijing Olympics. This worksheet and this breakdown of vocabulary from the article should help you to understand and then activate new and interesting phrases through personalisation. That's the idea anyway...

Please post a message if you have any questions or requests.

Front Row - Listening Activities

Nominess for the 2006 Academy Awards have recently been published. A full list of nominees and other related information can be found here.

You can download this speaking activity based on these nominations here, but much more challenging is to listen to these two extracts from the weekly podcast of the BBC Radio 4 culture and arts programme, Front Row. The presenter discusses the nominations with a critic and then interviews Leonardo DiCaprio. Everyone speaks quickly, but if you think about your expectations of this kind of programme and this kind of interview, nothing should surprise you. A tapescript of the discussion is here, along with the questions that DiCaprio is asked. Your task is to try to summarise Leo's answers.

The two recordings are full of lots of useful film vocabulary, and lists of verbs and nouns related to acting and Academy Awards can be found here. A useful online dictionary to help you work out any tricky phrases is the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Try to use some nice new vocabulary in a description of a film you have seen recently, or just one that you love...or hate for that matter.

You can find lots more on culture and the arts on the Front Row webpage, from where you can also download and subscribe to podcasts.

Ilaria's Fifty Words of Poetic Beauty

Look what happens when students actually DO their homework:

You lead me to such unexpected places that, to be honest, are not always so good. You make me meet a lot of people, even if I can’t often even talk with them. You bring me continuously from dark to eight. What life would it be without you, Underground?

Lovely.

Click this way for more...

IELTS

A collection of IELTS materials from previous courses can be found here. There are separate folders for the different sections of the exam, along with one for IELTS-related grammar and vocabulary topics.

1984 : Reading Writing Grammar Class

These are the first two sentences of George Orwell's novel 1984:

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.

The next paragraph, without punctuation, is here. Try to add the missing punctuation.

The third paragraph, this time without grammar, is here. A nice simple grammar exercise with any text is to try to add the missing grammar (articles, prepositions, and verb forms).

You can check your work against the original text. The opening of the novel can be found here. If you're brave enough to read more, the entire novel can be found on this site. There are also audio files for you to listen to here.

English for Work

You can access handouts from the course here - just click on English for Work and you should be able to see everything. You can also access files individually from the following links:

Advertising slogan exercise and key.

E-mail task and follow-up roleplay.

Useful language for meetings.

Useful language for presentations.

Class Materials

There's a link to class materials here which contains stuff from several recent courses.

As well as 2007's classes so far, there are files relating to High Reading and Writing, Intermediate Reading Writing and Grammar, and Pre Intermediate Reading Writing and Grammar.

Listening and Speaking Class - Winter One 2007

Intermediate Level Class

Students: Aliya, Eyad, Hyun Soo, Ssun, Taek Joo

We started the course by doing some work on pronunciation and we looked at sound chunking with a focus on stress and intonation. Word files of the handouts can be found here and here. These materials were adapted from a recording from Natural English Intermediate.

Every day since, we have had conversations and discussions followed by feedback. You can look at the photos we discussed here or find out more about Google Earth here. For film and film star information, I recommend The Internet Movie Database as a good starting point. Try reading some reviews for new vocabulary.

Feedback from week three can be found here.

Song : You've Got A Friend

This hasn't been tested yet so I don't know if it works. Look at the gapped lyrics to the song You've Got A Friend. Try to guess what words - or what kind of words - will go in the spaces.

Now listen, check your predictions, and try to fill any missing gaps:



You can listen as many times as you like. When you want to check your answers, you can look at them here.