EAP : Timed Writing Feedback

The Word file featuring all the language points we worked through in today's class can be found here on my wiki.

Hacker!

This powerpoint presentation contains a grammar exercise on word form based on this story from the Observer about a British hacker who faces 60 years in jail because he accessed Pentagon computers while trying to find out more about UFOs. If you're interested in finding out more about Gary's defence and the campaign to "free" him, you can visit this blog created by his supporters.

Lonesome George

Grammar and Writing elective students - to read the article on Lonesome George, click here. You can also download the powerpoint presentation of classes 3 and 4 here. Feel free to post any questions as comments, or e-mail me directly.

Migration

Click here for the BBC Have Your Say special on Migration which we looked at briefly in class. The powerpoint presentation used in class is here.

Wiki

What's a wiki? This video from youtube puts it in plain English:



You can access my wiki here.

EAP : Parallel Structure

The powerpoint presentation from today's class is here. I've also put my writing feedback key on my wiki, which is accessible here.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge

An American, a Frenchman, and an Australian were sitting in a bar overlooking Sydney Harbour. “Do you know why America is the wealthiest country in the world?” asked the American. “It’s because we build big and we build fast. We put up the Empire State Building in six weeks”.

“Six weeks, mon dieu, so long!” snapped the Frenchman. “Ze Eiffel Tower we put up in one month exactement. And you,” he continued, turning to the Australian, “what has Australia done to match that?”

“Ah, nuthin’, mate. Not that I know of.”

The American pointed to the Harbour Bridge. “What about that?” he asked.

The Australian looked over his shoulder. “Dunno, mate. It wasn’t there yesterday”.

What's a Thesuarus?

Roget's Thesaurus is a widely-used English thesaurus, created by Dr. Peter Mark Roget (1779–1869) in 1805 and released to the public on 29 April 1852. The original edition had 15,000 words, and each new edition has been larger. The Karpeles Manuscript Library houses the original manuscript in its collection.

There are online versions available here and here.

EAP : Perfect Paragraphs

Some more on paragraphs, with the pdf and Powerpoint versions of today's materials, as well as the Word document which we worked on together in class.

Some Dark Dark Activities

Some handouts from the second grammar and writing elective writing as promised. There's a pdf of the dark dark story, the worksheet we looked at in class (with your homework on page two), and a guide to correct article usage.

EAP : Paragraph Writing

Material from EAP session 4 is available here as a pdf, or here as a powerpoint presentation. There's more to follow...

A Collocation Resource

The Corpus Concordance Sampler can be used to see examples of any word or phrase in native spoken or written English. Type in a word or phrase (you need to put a + sign between each word, eg most+of) to see a sample of uses taken from the Collins Cobuild Corpus (more detailed instructions and explanations can be found here). Look carefully at the results and look for patterns. What words come before and after your target phrase? Do you notice anything that the examples have in common? By analysing the examples you can draw up a list of patterns and learn how to use your target language accurately - like a native in fact! By analysing the differences between two similar words, you might be able to discover important differences in meaning (for example, the difference between ASSURE and ENSURE). What you find through this process can show you more than any dictionary entry, and the fact that you have to spend time observing language and thinking about it means that you should remember it for longer. That's the theory anyway.

Pinacolada

A terrible terrible song, but it's got an interesting story to it...well, kind of, and the pictures in this home-made video are cute. If you want to use it as a dictation, turn your back and write down the lyrics you hear. You'll then be able to check your work because all the words are provided in the video clip.