Are we addicted to our phones?

Hello! Today we started talking about social media, and the use we make of them, together with our smartphones. We had an enjoyable discussion while watching the movie made from the fantastic poem by Gary Turk. Enjoy it again if you want! You can find the lyrics on his website.

To add a humouristic touch, we also watched and completed a song by Rhett & Link, two youtubers who satirize the use we make of phones nowadays.

Next you'll find the failed fixed vocabulary activities that we used for the poem. You already know my mistake, so sorry! I'll try to do some research in order to fix them. I need to find out how they work!

Look Up

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!

Law & Order

We've started the unit evolving around social issues, crimes and punishments. These days, we've been talking about all these, so for you to keep the material (if you haven't been in class), or rewatch it, you'll find it here.

The interview to the barrister can be done with the activities, plus it might be worth revising the vocabulary related to the topic.

The other document we worked with was related to the topic of amnesty, and we made use of expressions for giving reasons.

And I'll try to create a post as always for the idioms we worked with today!

We're back!

Hello again, everyone! At last I'm able to retake the blog maintenance (during all the pre-exams work stress).

First of all, I wanted to remind everyone that the following two weeks we'll take the mock exams, as planned since the beginning of the course. So here I post the exact dates for any absent-minded case:

• Monday 25th: listening comprehension and writing task. Please, do your best to be on time this day, as we'll start with the listening task.
• Wednesday 27th: Reading and Use of English.
• Friday 29th, Monday 1st and Wednesday 3rd of February: speaking tasks. Here you can have a look at the calendar.

Secondly, as I don't have everyone's email address, if you want to save a date, let me know next week or sending me an email.

See you next week! Break a leg!