The Ghost of the Green Lady

The Ghost of the Green Lady tells the  mysterious story of a teenager who goes to live and study at a boarding school and there is this legend about a Lady with a green glow that appears in the lake nearby. It is well written and keeps the attention up till the end.

This reader will help my students of 3rd of ESO develop their reading comprehension and improve their vocabulary. As a teacher, I really like Burlington Books readers because of the stories they choose -normally they are close to my students likes- and because of the materials they offer to the teachers. If you want to listen to the book as you read it, you can do it in this link to their page.

I hope my students like it and I hope you leave your comments if you have read it.

Learning about Jane Austen through the use of PBL

Jane Austen by people from 3rd ESO.

I have always loved the English language and especially reading in English; one of the things that normally stay out of the curricula is learning about literature in English and Project Based Learning offers us a great opportunity to learn about literature and keep track of the curricula at the same time.

My third of ESO students (congratulations to them) have been working for two weeks answering the question: What important literary figure is going to appear in 10 pounds notes from 2017? With a bit of motivation at the beginning and a good deal of work in investigation, writing and especially cooperation among themselves, we can see one of the examples of the great works they have done. For me, one of the most important things apart from the obvious is that they now know who Jane Austen is and what she is important for.

If you are a teacher and want to give an opportunity to this project, you can read it or download it at Scribd.

If you are one of my students, you can say what you liked about the project and what you did not like in a comment.

Present Perfect.

Last Wednesday, I wrote a post which contained a video, its title is  "Have you ever really loved a woman?" and I told you I would be writing on the present perfect soon, well, here it is. You can see the form of this tense in the picture above, it is really easy.

The use is said to be somewhat informal; basically, the action always starts in the past and has a strong relationship with the present, there are mainly three options:

1. the action is not finished, example: I have lived in Málaga all my life.
2. the action is finished but still has consequences in the present time, example: I have eaten too much. (My stomach aches).
3. the action finished recently, this tense used in combination with the adverb "just", example: I have just written my last post on the blog.

One of the main differences with the simple past is the fact that we do not usually mention a given time with the present perfect and, also, the action may be repeated. We normally use the present perfect with the time phrases that start with for and since. It is important to remember that we often use "been" as the past participle of the verb "go" when we are talking about past experiences with the present perfect.

If you want to practice this tense, have a look at this pages:

• On for and since: rules and exercise.
• On present perfect: Englisch-Hilfen, this one too.
• English on 2nd Language (explanation and one exercise)

I hope it helps, if you have any doubts remember you can always ask or comment!!

Have you ever really loved a woman? by Brian Adams

)

I know that Women's Day was just a few days ago and I wanted to post this video and song in which Brian Adams sings about how to love a woman and I agree with him on most of what he says (lyrics in English and Spanish). I also like this video because we can also see and listen to the wonderful Spanish guitar "maestro" Paco de Lucía (RIP). The video was recorded in Málaga, very near to where I live.

It also uses the structucture "Have you ever + past participle?" that we are currently learning at the 3rd of ESO, so I did not want to miss the opportunity to use it as a preamble for my next (and I hope it comes soon) post of Present Perfect.

You might think I am being lazy because I haven't been writing on the blog lately, but I do have been blogging, you can check my Spanish and teacher education topics at Formación docente (fuera de horario), my other blog.

Do you like the song? and what do you think of the video? 

Typical Spanish, isn't it?

Getting ready for September... before going on holidays.

Página Moodle del IES Tartessos

Before we go on holidays, I want to introduce you the new page that the English Department at the Moodle platform. My mates have been working hard to upload the activities you can do during the summer to review English and pass the exam in September. They have already uploaded activities for 1st and 2nd ESO (both at the 1st ESO section of Moodle, just follow the link on top). When you enter the page, you have to register to get access, but it is very simple and in Spanish!
If you want to know the dates of the exams in September, you can also have a look at them at the official website of IES Tartessos, you have a summary of the English dates, all of them on the 2nd September:

	1st language	2nd language
1st ESO	10h00	11h00
2nd ESO	11h00	10h00
3rd ESO	10h00	11h00
4th ESO	11h00	10h00
2ºPCPI	11h00	X
1st Bachillerato	8h00-9h45 (Hz 1&2)	9h45-11h30
2nd Bachillerato	9h45-11h30 (Hz 3&4)	X

All the ESO exams will last one hour and will be held in the SUM of the school. The bachillerato exams will last longer and will be held in Haza.

Football vocabulary

British Council

We have already seen the difference between football and soccer in this blog. Today I present you with a great collection of games and exercises on football vocabulary. Many of my students are great football players so I recommend you to learn this new vocabulary on the field, the players, the clothes, the equipment, the vocabulary the referees use in the field, the one used by the supporters, cup competitions or even the English teams to which you may go in the future.

Do you like football? Then, give it a try!! ;-))

Improving reading comprehension in secondary education(ESL)

@AnaGarciaTeacha

We are having our Reading Comprehension tests next week, I know, it is such a pain!!! But I am going to give you some tips to work on them.

What should you do first?PREDICTING!!!
Have a look at the title and any pictures that accompany the text, also count the paragraphs. The title normally tells you the topic of the text, pictures give a lot of information which is not in English!!!! Each paragraphs brings up a new idea on the main topic. Now that you have some information, think about what ideas will come up and better than this, what words, expressions, even grammar and textual features...

What should you do next? UNDERSTANDING!!!
Read the text one paragraph by one and try to understand the main idea of each one and how it relates to the main topic (understanding a text has a lot to do with understanding what it is talking about, that is the world to which it makes reference). Don't worry about the words you don't understand, try to figure them out; two good ways are: trying to relate it to a word you know (whether in English or Spanish) or trying to fill the meaning gap - this can be fun, teachers should practise this in their classes more often. It is also important to take into account textual references such as those of personal pronouns and others.

What should you then? GET DOWN TO WORK!!!
Now it is time to read the exercise you have to do in order to show that you have understood. What do you have to do? There are different types of exercises which go from the fill-in gaps to the question answering or from multiple choice questions to finding synomyms or opposites... Depending on your level, your teacher will ask you to do different tasks. Many teachers ask students to answer questions, so it is important that you know your wh-words!!! Go back to the text and look for the information you need.

You can get deeper information on how to develop reading skills in your own language and others if you go to How to improve reading comprension. You have many corrected instances at English for Everyone.

Will you follow these tips? 

Fighting against gender violence.

Dragonslippers

Today is an important day, not only for woman, but also for men. For me, it is a day to be aware of what kind of relationships  we have with our partners and to weigh if it is a healthy one or not.

 The other day with my students when we were talking about gender violence, I told them that the first time he hits you, it is too late. Today, I am leaving you the link to a comic by Rosalind B. Penfold, a woman who went through the horror of an abuse relationship. Her way out was drawing this comic that she later made into a book. You have an excerp of it here, but you have the link to the complete comic where she talks about the signs that make you see that you can be in danger:

• He wants to go too fast.
• He makes you think being with him is more important than anything else.
• He makes plans for you without your agreement.
• He talks badly about your friends and family.
• He makes you feel less than others in public.
• He doesn't want you seeing anybody.
• He mistreats you and then quickly goes back to treating you too well.
• He abouses you and then makes as if it had never happened.
• He says your behaviour is your fault.
• He is too jealous.
• He wants to know everything you  do and where.

Please, have a look at the comic and take it into account!!!
If you want to learn more about the author, you can read an interview with her at El Mundo.
What are you going to do to balance gender roles today? Tell us!!!

Thanksgiving already!!!

A year ago, I started this blog with a post about Thanksgiving, one year later, I am still here trying to teach you and learn from you through your comments. In this video (first part of two; you can watch the second part when this one finishes), you can see Charlie Brown and his friends telling the story of the Mayflower and the first pilgrims.

As you already know (because you have read my first post), Thanksgiving takes place on the 4th Thursday every November and it is a holiday, which normally becomes long week-end and it is a very familiar celebration. It appears in many soap operas and TV series; you can watch  some "Thanksgiving dinners" in my favourite one: Friends (very funny!!) and in many others, choose your favourite and check out at YouTube.

Even though this is mainly an American celebration, the Black Friday tradition is getting to Spain, have a look at the leaflet I found today in my mail:

Can you tell me what is this tradition? You can check in the first post or at Wikipedia..

 Leave your comments!!!

Article published in Blog de TIC en Lenguas Extranjeras

Blog de TIC en lenguas extranjeras

This has been a very exciting week for me, I got an article about my blog published in  Blog de TIC en Lenguas Extranjeras  which depends on the institution INTEF (Instituto Nacional de Tecnologías Educativas y  de Formación del Profesorado from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports. If you want to read the article completely you can do so at this link, it is in Spanish, so many of my students will like it.

The day after, I found out that my article had been reposted on English Elda, a blog of the CEFIRE (Centro de Formación, Innovación y Recursos Educativos de Elda), in which they recommended this blog and said it is "amazing"

English Elda

I want to thank all of you who read me and follow me, especially the people who are closer to me who are not learning English and read just because I write it, I want to thank you for giving me the strength and support I need to continue with this work. I also want to thank my students who use this blog and get better so I can pass more people!!! ;)
What do you think??Leave your comments and tell us!!!

Hahaha...Halloween!!!

All Famouse Wallpapers

Halloween has its origin in Ireland, it was a Celtic celebration of the end of the harvest time and the beginning of the winter, it was also thought to be the Day of the Dead, so people used to dress up to scare the ghosts and spirits. Nowadays, it has more to do with a children's holiday. Children and youngsters dress up in creepy, scary ways and go from home to home saying the famous "Trick-or-treat" and getting candies from strangers and neighbours. It used to be a celtic, then British and mostly American tradition, in these days, it has almost overcome the Catholic tradition of All Saints Day, even in the rest of the world.
 If  you want to learn more about this celebration, you can do so at History. If you want to practice some games or vocabulary, you have a great collection at the blog Think in English, and also at the British Council for kids page.

I want to thank my mate Carmen for all the information on Halloween she gave me. Thanks Carmen!!

Do you like Halloween? What do you do to celebrate?
Tell us!! Leave your comments!!

LEAVE A COMMENT!!

Some of my students do stop by and use this blog as a tool, it is useful for them to learn English, which is the main idea of this blog. I also know that some of my acquaintances and friends do like it and also give it a look every now and then and also leave their comments.

This post is for those of my students, friends or any other person who passes by who like the blog but do not leave comments:  Writing a blog is a hard but rewarding task, I love to have comments in my entries (if you read this blog, you already know this). So, please leave a comment and say hello!!!

If you do not remember how to do it, have a look at this old entry: How to post a comment in this blog.
If you want to make me really happy, make yourself a follower of the blog!!:))

Thanks!!!

If I were president, I would...

This week we have had our local elections in the class of 4th of ESO. First, all my students wrote a composition with the title "If I were president, I would..." Then, I corrected them; all of my students had very good ideas to overcome the crisis we are in, a bit populist and inmature but very well organised. We set a date for the election and they prepared themselves to give a speech and persuade the rest of their mates to vote for them.

Picture of Manuel's poster.

Many rhetorical devices were used, such as repetition and parallelisms, just like in real political speeches!!! They enjoyed very much their mates oral expositions and I really liked this activity because it fosters speaking in public and, as they were really into getting the votes, they became less anxious about their English and more aware of what communication is all about.

Montse's presentation.

All of them had great ideas and exposed them in a fantastic way, that is why I wanted to thank them, not only for this activity, but for the amazing course that we have had together. I hope next year we are together again. So thank you: Marina, Antonio, María José, Miguel, Ana, Anabel, Francisco Javier, Ángela, Alba, Beatriz, Montse, Javier and Manuel.
If you want to see how I have treated the conditionals in the blog in other ways, check the following:

• What if...?
• What would happen if bees disappeared?
• What a wonderful world.

You can also leave your comments, you know I love them!!!

What did she say? Going down the stairs...

Many of my students mix the change of tenses of the passive with the changes needed in reported speech. We use the passive voice in English more often than we do in Spanish, normally when we do not know the subject of the sentence or when we do not want to say it or we want to emphasize the result among others.

For the passive, we use the verb to be in the tense we need and add the past participle of the verb we need. In reported speech, the tense goes "one backwards" or you can also go down one step in the stairs as you can  see above.

What is "reported speech" or "indirect style"?

We use the reported speech when we report/tell what other person has said. In order to do this, we use introductory verbs such as:

• tell or say (for statements)
• tell or order (for commands)
• ask or want to know (for questions)

We also need to do some changes because the context and cotext of the sentence which was told and the one which is being retold in the present time are different. We may change:

• subject, object and  possessive adjectives and pronouns.
• references to time and place.
• the tense of the verbs (as can be seen in the image above)

If you want to practise these changes and how to say what other person stated, commanded, asked or suggested, you can do exercises at Activities for ESL students or English Exercises online and English Exercises online

I hope you have a clearer idea now; however you know I will be happy to answer  your doubts if you leave a comment!!

Can you tell me when do those tenses remain unchanged as it says in the image?

Olympic games in London 2012

from yo y mis circunstancias

The day before yesterday, the Olympic games came to a start with the ignition of the Olympic flame in a beautiful ceremony that you can watch at the BBC. It  is the starting point more than 70 days  before the London 2012 Olympic Games begin, and it is a way to link the ancient Olympic Games and the modern ones in a ceremony full of rituals.

Now the Olympic flame travels to England  where it will be fired on the opening celebration at the Olympic Stadium in London on the 27th July 2012, (unlike previous flames which went throughout the world, it will fly from Greece directly to England and will only go abroad to Ireland; this way, 95% of the British population would have been able to be just 10 miles away from it).

Believe it or not, the photo you can see with this post is (a joke-collage of) the Spanish official equipment.It was presented some time ago and designed by some Russian company who made it for free-as you can see!! Taking into account that we have very good fashion designers, I wish even a low-cost Spanish design company, such as Zara (who offered money to design it), would have done it; at least we would be laughed at ...consistently.

If you are willing to see the Olympic games, be it because you like sport  or because you want to see our sportspeople wearing these clothes, you can be informed of everything at the official website London 2012.

What do you think of "our uniform"? Do you like it? Would you wear it? Leave your comments and tell us!!

Organising a make-up show.

Mac Cosmetics

The majority of the girls like to make up, the majority of the boys hate waiting while the girls are making up...
In the same way that we have organised a fashion show, it occured to me that a good way to practise  colours and  parts of the face could be to organise a make up show in which boys could be the make-up artists and girls their models; in this way, we could teach them several issues that have to do not only with grammar (present continuous and "going to" for plans, adjectives before nouns...) and vocabulary, but also with education on values.

What values can we promote with this activity?
We can teach girls to make up in a more natural way, help them with their self-esteem besides working on inner beauty as well. We can teach the boys patience and understanding for the girls.
Moreover, we can give a second turn and change roles so that all of them are also made-up in different forms, such as tigers, dinousaurs, skulls, butterflies and so on. Doing so, sympathetic values would emerge.

You can teach students how to paint their faces at the YouTube channel called Face Painting with Karina.

If you want to practise a little more your present continuous, go to Tolearnenglish.com.

What do you think of this idea? Would your class like a make-up session just for a day?
Leave your comments and tell us!!

New page for families.

As a teacher I feel it  is very important to take into account, not only the students, but also their families. As teachers, we encounter lots of situations in which we have to help families and I think this is also a nice part of our job; it also happens the other way around, that is, we need help from the families most of the time at home but sometimes even at school!!

This is the reason why I wanted to have a part of my little space for them in the internet. Today  I am going to introduce you to the last thing I have prepared. It is written in Spanish because I teach English in Spain and many of the parents of my students have studied French or do not feel confident enough to read in English.

I hope this helps parents and they can also help me through this space where all commentaries will be welcome,   even in Spanish. I have linked it here, though it is at the top where the rest of the pages of the blog are permanently.

What do you think of this idea?
Leave your comments and tell us!!

Black Comedy at Teatro Alcazar in Madrid.

Photo taken by Ana García

Last weekend I went to Madrid and I was lucky enough to get tickets for Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy. Peter Shaffer (1926-) is a British playwright and screenwriter especially famous for his plays Equus and Amadeus which were later made into films with his own help. Many of her works were represented for the first time at the National Theatre in London and in 2001 he became Sir Peter Shaffer.

The cast of the play was excellent, as you can see in the photo, and included Gabino Diego, Aurora Sánchez, Paco Churruca, Diego Molero, Ramón Merlo, Ana Arias and Eva Santolaria who did not act that night but was sitting in the stalls watching her mates.

Black Comedy is a very funny play, special for its lighting effects. Its name is a pun, that is, a play on words because it is about an electric short circuit and supposedly takes place in total darkness. There's only dim light when a match or lantern can be used by any of the characters. As the play starts, all the theatre is in total darkness and in complete normality. All of a sudden, the lights go out  and the stage gets well-illuminated though they act as if they were blind. 

Brindsley, a mediocre sculptor,  and his recent fiancée Carol are preparing a meeting with her father and a billionaire who is interested in some of his work and may buy something. Both are nervous and do not feel confident about Brindsley's furniture, so they have borrowed some from Harold, his art collector neighbour who is not at home. A variety of people come into scene: Miss Furnival, a funny neighbour who "does not drink alcohol" and profits from the situation; the operator of the London Electric Company, who is mistaken  by the millionaire because he knows about art; his former girl-friend,Clea, who wants to come back to him and, of course, Harold who comes before time unexpectedly and forces Brindsley to get his furniture back to his apartment at the same time as they are waiting for the billionaire.

It was an interesting and hilarious one-act play, we laughed a lot and had a look back at London in the seventies.

Do you know any of the actors or actresses? They have acted in some television series... If you recognize any, leave your comments and tell us!!!

Liebster Blog Award

My good friend Angelus, who has a very good blog called Tembladeral de Sílabas, has awarded me with the Liebster Blog Award. This award consists in the mentioning of the person who gave it to you and the link to their blog. As you receive it, you are due to presenting it to five of your most beloved (that is the English for German "Liebster"), the only rule is that it should  have less than 200 (in order to promote new blogs which is the aim of this Award), so here comes my list:

• Mates para andar por casa, its writer is very original and makes everyone like maths, even me!!
• Mr Sergio's English Lesson, this blog helps me in my classes mainly because of its links to English activities of all types.
• English for Teaching, great blog related to the teaching of English as a Second Language.
• Baobab La Laguna, this is a blog which helps promote reading among our children, this is reason enough!!
• Teaching English By Fran, I like this blog because I think it has a similar vision to mine in relation to how to teach English.

Thanking again Angelus, I hope the mentioned blogs continue this award so that we get to know the best blogs in the net. As I should, I am now going to leave a commentary on their blogs to let them know that they have won the award.

What do you think of the award? And of my list?

Leave your comments and tell us!!!

World Book Day 2012

On the 23rd April 1616, two of the greatest writers of our world died, within 24 hours. One of them was William Shakespeare and the other was Miguel de Cervantes, who died during the night from the 22nd to the 23rd. As a result, this day has been chosen by the UNESCO to celebrate the World Book Day. Every year they centre the Day on some aspects related to books and this year they focus on copyright and translation because it is the 80th anniversary of the Index Translationum which is the world's bibliography of translation. A person who knows a lot about translation and has a very good blog is my friend Ángel. 

There is a very interesting proposal to celebrate this Book Day in the new social network called Pinterest in which people can post the picture of their favourite book and explain why they like it, they have called it The Wall of Books. If you want to, you can tell us which is your favourite book too. At the present time, mine is The House of the Special Purpose by John Boyne.

What is your favourite book??

  LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS!!