B1 - SECOND READING ASSIGNMENT

Write a BOOK REVIEW of a book of your choice for a magazine for students of English.

Don’t forget to include the following points:

- Background information (title, author, type, setting…)

- Main points of the plot

- General comments on the plot, the main characters, the writing style…

- Your recommendation

* But do not reveal the end of the story!

- LENGTH: 175 words

- DEADLINE: April 1st

The book should be FICTION and have at least LEVEL B1

 * Ask the teacher for a handout with useful vocabulary and a sample of a book review.

VOSCREEN

How can I improve my listening skills?

This is probably one of the most often asked questions by students.

My answer is always the same: Practice. There is no other secret to it, there's no magic formula.

So the point is to practice as much as you can while you enjoy.

I've found a nice application which might help you improve little by little while having fun.

Its name is VOSCREEN and it is free, although you need to sign up. This app allows you to test your listening skills while you listen to short video clips from films, series, songs ...

You will be asked to choose the best translation (if you set the language to Spanish) or the best rephrasing (if you set the language to English) of the phrase/extract you hear in the short clip to check your comprehension.

You will listen to real English in all the videos but you can choose the level of difficulty, the grammar structure you want to appear in the clip or even the number of words of the phrase you will hear.

You can use it on your computer, your tablet or even on your mobile phone.

I hope you find it useful. If you try it, let me know how it went.

IS ROWAN ATKINSON THE REAL MR. BEAN?

Dear students,

I hope you enjoyed the sketch that we watched in today's lesson. After telling your anecdotes in the class and watching Mr Bean, I thought you might enjoy this interview with Rowan Atkinson telling a personal anecdote.

I also recommend the videos on this YouTube Channel from Graham Norton's show. They're really fun to watch.

Enjoy!

WRITING ASSIGNMENT B1 - NARRATIVE: A NIGHTMARE TRIP

Write about a nightmare trip you’ve had (or invent one). Include the following information:

- When was the trip? Where were you going? Who with? Why?

- What went wrong? What happened?

- What happened in the end?

Length: About 150 words

Deadline: 4th March

THEATRE PLAY: SPEECH BALLOON

Dear students,

I hope you can join us for our next cultural activity next Wednesday 12th, at 7p.m. in the school auditorium.

GETTING READY FOR THE OSCARS

Who else is excited about the Oscars? Are you making your predictions?

We'll get a chance to talk about them in the next unit, where we will be dealing with films.

In the meanwhile, here's your checklist for next Sunday night

Let me know if you ticked off many items ;) 

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LISTEN TO MUSIC AND YOU'RE HUNGRY

Before you play the videos below, here's a challenge for you:

Pieces of well-known songs appear in these two videos, can you identify any of them playing the video with the sound off?

In this two funny videos the comedian Bec Hill creates humour with a common phenomenon I'm sure you have all experienced at some time when listening to songs in English: MONDEGREEN.

Mondegreen happens when a misheard word or phrase that makes sense in your head, but it's in fact entirely incorrect.

When we listen to something we don't clearly understand we try to extract meaning from "the noise". This happens a lot when we listen to songs, even in our own language, as many times songs tend to have lyrics that are a bit unexpected or unusual.

If you enjoyed the videos you might also like the following website, an archive of misheard lyrics:

Enjoy it (but avoid creating your own mondegreens in listening exams!😉)