Writing a report

This unit's writing task is a report. Another formal text which requires elevated language and formal structures.

To complement the activities of our book, I've designed a guide compiling the main lines to follow when writing a report. Moreover, you'll find a copy of the sample text included in your book, with some interesting constructions highlighted, so that you can see more clearly the things you must take into account.

Use of english the passive ex 123 from Míriam

The PDF version can be downloaded here.

The Emancipation of Prince

Are you dog lovers? Maybe not, but many are, right? And some breeds become instantly (and inexplicably) popular for some reason.

Chiuauas are one of those. Irritable as they may seem, possessive or skittish, this particular chiuaua protagonist of the story, is learned and highly intelligent. Unfortunately for him, his owner is not so, and that's why he'll try to get rid of her.

Feel free to watch the short film (again) and acquire some formal vocabulary completing the gapped trasncript.

For some extra work, there's a worksheet about pets by LinguaHouse that you can complete: Keeping pets. It includes a lexis task, an article and its correspondent comprehension exercise. Enjoy!

The passive voice and the causative

As the point of grammar of unit 4, you need to revise both the passive voice and the causative form, and for doing that, you can direct yourselves to your book. In the slides below, you've got the answer keys from those activites. Make sure to revise them if needed or if you didn't make it to class.

Use of english the passive ex 123 from Míriam

Plus, I include some online resources if you need further practice with this:

• Passive / Causative sentences from IH Bristol.
• The passive voice from Learn English Feels Good.
• Sentence transformation with the passive from English Exercises.org.
• Sentence transformation from University of Victoria (brief introduction before).
• More sentence transformation from Perfect English Grammar.
• Several quizzes on the passive and causative from Grammar Bank.

These activities are pretty easy for your actual level, but they should be useful if you feel you need a revision. So take the ones you consider appropriate. No pressure, no panic!

Scam baiting and other crime-related videos

You already know the TED talks. Actually, the last one we saw was the one in which James Veitch, the British comedian, narrated how he scammed back a swindler.

Watch it again, if you feel like it, on the TED website: This is what happens when you reply to spam email. You can read the transcript there, or alternatively watch it with subtitles (English and Spanish ones included). Here's the worksheet we used in class.

Keeping on the TED talks, you can also watch two other videos and answer some questions afterwards. You'll need to create an account in order to take the quiz, though, but I recommend it. Click on the following links to access them:

• How people rationalize fraud.
• What are human rights.

Have fun!