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.

Advanced Reading & Writing

Maybe Keiichi will get these materials online instead of coming to class...or maybe he'll do neither...

Advanced Reading & Writing Materials

Intermediate Grammar and Exam Skills

I've just put the class materials online. You should be able to access them from the link below- please let me know if it doesn't work...

Intermediate Gramar and Exam Skills Materials

Intermediate Grammar

I'll be putting class materials online in the next few days but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE can you submit a grammar question to this website? It would be nice to build up some questions and answers to the typical questions and concerns you have.

Autumn Two Class Materials

The website I use to host my files has changed so I'm not sure this still works, but I have posted pdfs of class materials online and you should be able to access them using this link.

Handouts

Murder Mystery Summary

Read this - especially if your name is Zufar and you bunked off this morning:

As in any good detective story, the actual police are stupid compared to the detective hero, so naturally in The Murders in the Rue Morgue, the police couldn’t possibly solve such a mysterious case. Our hero Dupin, however, was able to do so very quickly. He applied logic to the situation, and was able to unravel the mystery.

Dupin realised that the witness accounts of the voices heard from the fourth storey were conflicting. Each witness claimed one of the voices to have been a different language, yet none of them spoke the language that they claimed it to be. After stating that there were not many Asian or African people in Paris, Dupin’s conclusion was therefore that it might not have been a language at all.

The police thought that because all the windows appeared to have been nailed shut, the murderer could not have used them to enter the building. However, Dupin inspected these nails and discovered that not all of them were solid. He was able to open the windows in spite of these nails, because they used a different mechanism for opening and closing. This was what had allowed the murderer to enter and exit the building, apparently without a trace.

Concerning motive, Dupin concluded that the murderer had not killed the ladies in order to steal from them. According to Dupin, if the murderer had been a thief, he wouldn’t have left four thousand francs in gold and numerous valuable pieces of jewellery in the house. Dupin’s friend thought that the murderer must therefore have been a madman – he might even have escaped from a nearby mental hospital. However, Dupin doubted this because the brutality of the murders meant that the killer must have had superhuman strength. The murderer had been strong enough to pull out a handful of human hair by the root, to almost slice off a woman’s head with a razor before throwing her out of a window, and he had even managed to push a corpse up a chimney upside down. Dupin’s conclusion, then, was that the murderer could not have been a man at all.

Finally, Dupin found a new piece of evidence. In Madame L’Espanaye’s hand there were some orange hairs. After inspecting this hair carefully, he was able to identify it as the hair of an Ourang Utang!

Now make some guesses and suggestions with the following prompts:

Likelihood

Where did the Ourang Utang come from?

It can’t have…

It might have…

It must have…


Obligation

What should Dupin do next…

He should…

He shouldn’t…

He has to…


What should happen to the sailor?

He should…


in hindsight…


The police shouldn’t have…

The police should have…

The sailor should have…

The sailor shouldn’t have…

Madame L’Espanaye and her daughter should have…

Madame L’Espanaye and her daughter shouldn’t have…


Regrets

The sailor probably regrets…

The chief of police must regret…

Downloadable Materials

There's a problem with some of the links to materials you can download. If you click on the link below and then choose your class, you should be able to find what you're looking for. (I hope).

Streamload - Hosted Files

Technology Slideshow

Click on this link to watch a slideshow on the topic of technology. Together with your partner, make a list of all the pictures you see. Work quickly because you only have a few minutes to look at the photos.

Technology Slideshow on Flickr

Machines Behaving Badly

If you want to practice listening and pronunciation, you can listen to a recording of the text on page 81 - Machines Behaving Badly. Simply download the mp3 file here and listen.

Other material from the morning class will also be posted to this address for you to download.

Spring One

Hello to any new students who haven't seen my blog before. I think it's quite simple. I put class materials and extra study resources here and you can do anything you like with them. I'd really like it if you made comments and used this blog for discussions and communicating in English. It would be even better if you set up your own blogs (easy to do, just go to www.blogger.com and follow the simple instructions) and started writing and posting for youself. Happy blogging...

IELTS Speaking Practice

For the five students who did practice IELTS speaking tests last Thursday, MP3s of the recordings can be downloaded here. Happy listening.

Cobuild Concordance and Collocations Sampler

This is a nice little page which allows you to search a sample of the Collins Corpus to explore examples of vocabulary in use. It's particularly useful for looking at collocations and their frequency.

Cobuild Concordance and Collocations Sampler

The Corpus is the result of years of research, collecting and recording examples of real spoken and written English. It contains so many examples of English in use that you can trust it as a reliable source of how native speakers really express themselves.

What's a Chelsea Tractor?

Click here and read to find out...

English language learning resources

For more English language learning resources on the web, look at the Internexus London website and click on study.

MY HOME TOWN - ARTICLE EXERCISE

MY HOME TOWN – ARTICLES

In the spaces write either A, AN, THE or leave it blank:

VAHE

My home city is ___ capital of ___ Armenia. ___ city, which is called ___ Erevan, has ___ many places of ___ interest, like ___ museums, ___ old churches, ___ theatres, ___ restaurants, and ___ shops. It is surrounded by ___ high mountains, which make ___ deep impression on all ___ visitors and ___ tourists. ___ city’s population is about 1.6 million. ___ city is situated in ___ South West of ___ Armenia. There are ___ three lakes in ___ middle of ___ city and also ___ big forests.

MELIS

I live in ___ city of ___ Istanbul, which is situated in ___ North West of ___ Turkey. ___ population is about 5 million. It is about 250 kilometres from ___ capital city.

Istanbul has ___ beautiful coast and there is ___ bridge, called ___ Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge that joins ___ European and Asian sides. On ___ coast of ___European side there are ___ lots of mosques which are very old and historical. Lots of ___ tourists come to visit these mosques. They are really beautiful.

There are lots of things to see in ___ Istanbul, such as ___ museums or ___ palaces, from which we can learn about our ancestors. These are ___ good places to discover more about ___ Istanbul’s history.

There are lots of ___ really good universities and there are lots of ___ other amenities like ___ restaurants, ___ cinemas, and ___ shopping centres. It’s ___ good place to live.

NADYA

I live in ___ town of Saltka, which is situated in ___ middle of my country, in ___ South of ___ Urals, about 360 kilometres from ___ Ural capital, Ekaterinburg. Saltka has ___ population of about 80,000.

Saltka is situated on ___ edge of ___ small lake, and at ___ foot of ___ Ural mountains. It is located within ___ industrial complex which produces ___ fire-proof material. ___ industrial complex covers ___ whole town and about half of ___ population work there.

My home town is very small and there isn’t ___ lot to see. ___ Satka is not ___ tourist town so there aren’t any ___ tourists.

___ town is divided into___ there parts: ___ old part, new part, and western part. ___ new part is situated in ___ centre of town. It’s ___ nice place to live, but ___ little bit expensive.

We’ve got just one university so there aren’t ___ lot of students. In Satka there are plenty of ___ amenities like ___ restaurants, ___ cinemas, and ___ nightclubs. It’s ___ good place to live.

You can find they key to this exercise here.

Carbon Footprints

There's a nice worksheet that I'll make available in class and it's based on an article about the carbon footprints of businesses. You can explore the idea of carbon footprints in more detail from the following links:

http://www.carbonfootprint.com/green_energy.html
http://www.nrel.gov/
http://www.safeclimate.net/understanding/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_footprint

TESCO – THE RISKY STEP OF ENTERING THE US MARKET

This article is about UK supermarket giant Tesco. The most important news in it is about its risky step of entering the US market. Firstly, the company’s chief executive Terry Leahy said that they’ve researched the market for many years. Secondly, we get information for Tesco like it is the dominant supermarket in the UK. After that I read that the company has a presence in 12 countries outside the UK, mainly in Asia and central Europe. Finally, I saw information for the percentage of global GDP and also that it will be quite risky to enter the US market.

• Why is Tesco the dominant supermarket in the UK?

• Is it a too risky for Tesco to set up stores in the US?