After reviewing your homework, you did a few review exercises based on the Use of English parts 1 and 4 that you did last week.
You also did some work with the Reading part 1 that you did last week.
Then you completed parts from a Listening paper.
We continued practicing for Speaking part 2. This time you spoke about the sameset of pictures with two different classmates and then wrote out your answer a third time. The idea is to improve on what you say each time so that by the third time you have a very good answer.
Music
We also did a listening exercise based on some music from a television series.:
We also watched a few scenes from Modern Family series 2 episode 6 that play on the fact that Gloria has a Colombian Spanish accent in English. Why did Jay get a package of Jesus figurines?
We have 8 more classes before our last class (7 June) and some of you take the exam (on 10 June).
We will also do games and non-exam focused work in class from time to time, but in general for the next 8 weeks we'll be doing a lot exam-focused exercises and activities.
I'm giving extra homework to some of you, though anyone is welcome to do it. It will consist mostly of work in the Student Book (I will give you the answers so you can correct your own work).
The plan
Every class do 1-2 Reading & Use of English tasks
Every class do 1-2 Listening and Speaking tasks
Write a Review
Write an Article
Today
UoE1, UoE4 and R1 tasks -- also corrected and analyzed them for nuggets.
S2 activity
Back to the screen activity -- speaking task with this video
Today we talked about the story you read and then watched the film you read a review of last week. It also talked to each one of you about taking the exam in June or not.
The exam will be 10 June here at the school.
In the short extra time we had after the break, we played a few FCE-related games: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
Homework
Spend as much time as you can, at least two hours, with English over the holidays. Focus on your weak areas (e.g. Reading, Use of English, vocabulary).
We talked about the TED talk that you were to watch for homework:
And also reviewed some of the vocabulary that you are supposed to be studying.
Finally, we worked with the sentences that you wrote using collocations from Sleeping. You exchanged papers and shared ideas.
Book/First Certificate work
We then turned to your book, pp.100-101 to work on Use of English part 3 (Word formation) and Word pairs and did several exercises with those.
Story
We also looked at the first page of a story called The Price of Freedom that we continued in the computer room after break. I asked you to pay attention to vocabulary and especially collocations as you read the story.
After the break
After the break, we went to the computer room to work through more of The Price of Freedom: Innocence lost from chooseyourstory.com . Press Play and then New Game. And remember to pay attention for vocabulary and collocations -- copy and paste sentences from the story into your email and send it to yourself to keep track.
Homework
Spend at least 30 minutes more reading The Price of Freedom and collect 10 or more collocations or phrases. Write them down or print them on a piece of paper.
We talked about the stories you wrote last week, which were really good.
I reminded you that it's important to use the narrative tenses well, to use specific and more advanced vocabulary, and, perhaps most of all, to write a story with a satisfying ending that makes sense within the narrative, i.e. that gives some sense of resolution. It's also of course essential include the required details -- in this case, an address and a surprise.
If you don't have a creative idea for the story prompt that they give you on the exam, then you might just want to do a different kind of writing.
Short story from homework ('Sleeping')
We then turned to the story you had for homework. I asked you to read it again right then in class. After you read it again, I asked you to search through the first two paragraphs for vocabulary that you thought might be important to learn.
Choosing vocabulary to study is a difficult thing to learn and so we'll be working on in class over the rest of our time together this year.
Here's some vocabulary that I chose from the first two paragraphs. Some of it you already understand, but this doesn't mean that you recall it and use it. In class, you copied these items into your notebooks and underlined them in the text. Note that many of them are phrases or combinations of words - at the level of the First, it's important to remember words together.
Write 5 sentences using the vocabulary from Sleeping above. Your sentences should be similar to the ones in the exercise above. Write them on a sheet of paper that you can hand in (i.e. not in your notebook).
Work through this Quizlet list at least once, which will prepare you for the TED talk below.
Watch this TED talk by Jamie Oliver. Use English subtitles if you need them.
Study the vocabulary above (Vocabulary sets to study)
We talked about how you will be doing parts of the next practice exam over the next couple of weeks depending on your attendance and other factors. You might want to bring a snack to eat during our break time for the next few classes if you think that will help you.
We also quickly reviewed your homework. You can find the answers to p.36 ex1 in this Quizlet list. I also encourage you to study this list if you need to. The answers for p.36 ex3 are: a) totally, b) extremely, c) absolutely, d) quite, e) very.
I also returned your texts about the photos from 2016, which I really enjoyed! I was not able to finish marking your essays and will return them to you next week.
¿De qué estarán riendo? - translate into English
Speculating or making a supposition
The last time we looked at some photographs, we more or less knew what was happening in them. But often on the First Certificate (and in life) you often have to guess what his happening.
We looked at some ways to do this and considered the following from Spanish grammar:
Especulación o suposición sobre un hecho en el presente:
Tendrá muchos deberes, será por eso que está tan estresada.
Debe tener muchos deberes...
Es posible que tiene muchos deberes...
We translated these three sentences into English using the modal verbs 'must' and 'might'. We also talked about similar forms such as:
modal + V (e.g. 'She might have a problem')
modal + be + adjective (e.g. 'She might be upset because ...')
modal + be + V-ing (e.g. 'She might be sleeping now')
What about when we want to speculate about what happened, i.e. the past?
Especulación o suposición sobre un hecho en el pasado:
Habrá tenido una avería, por eso no ha llegado.
Debió tener una avería...
Es posible que tuviera una avería...
We also translated these into English (using 'must have' and 'might have') and
We also considered how to pronounce them in reduced forms:
must have -> must've -> 'musta' (must of)
might have ->
could have ->
must be ->
might be ->
Finally, we also used the Grammar section on p.96 in your book to work on the grammar for this a bit more and used the images on p.123 for Speaking part 2 practice.
Whodunnit
On the piece of paper I gave you, write short answers to these three questions:
What did you do on Saturday night?
What is one of your favorite books or films?
What was the last thing you ate before now?
I'll explain what to do after this. Pay attention to your pronunciation - practice using reduced forms.
John Lewis Christmas ad
First, some vocabulary for talking about the video:
I'll explain what we're going to do with this - just putting the links here so we can find them easily.
