Our House

Since we've been practising with the household chores so far, maybe we should have a look at the parts of the house. This is a link to a crossword where you can test your knowledge about them.

As it seems to me that you like singing, maybe you remember this song by Madness, the title, "Our House", the lyrics, easy to understand but difficult to sing -too fast. Enjoy it!!!

You can't have your cake and eat it!

I know you all have a sweet tooth but this entry is not going to be a piece of cake in spite of its title. "You can't have your cake and eat it" is an expression we use when ... 

Click here and find it out. It's not always possible to have it all !!!

Fave Songs

Do you like singing? What kind of music do you usually listen to? Do you have any fave songs? All of us have ever tried to sing a song in English without really knowing the lyrics, haven't we? In my view, listening to music and singing is a good way to improve our English, we can learn vocabulary, pronunciation, ... but I don't want you to read about the good points of this, but tell you about one of my fave songs - Yellow by the group Coldplay.

Maybe you know that when they surfaced this song in the year 2000, the single went straight into the charts, they were mixing the Brit-pop music with a bit of rock. Everybody seemed to enjoy this blend, not only their fans. Although I had heard this song a lot of times before, it was not until some years later, when I used it for one of my classes and since then it became really special to me (;-)) and one of my favourite songs.

Surfing the Internet, I found a link where you can listen to your fave songs and practise with the subtitles. What's more if you click on the "exercises" they're always different so that you can learn the lyrics little by little. Isn't it funny? Just listen to Yellow and tell me if you like it.

 This is the link
Subingles.com - Lista de Reproducción de Coldplay - Aprender Ingles gratis con Canciones

Great Expectations

Great expectations is one of my favourite books by Charles Dickens. As some of you may already know, Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth on 7th February 1812, that is, two hundred years ago and we will be commemorating it along this year.

Charles Dickens was the second of eight children and his childhood experiences were similar to those depicted in his books David Copperfield or Great Expectations. His father was a government clerk who was imprisoned for debt, as a result Dickens was sent to work in a blacking warehouse, labelling bottles, for a short time at the age of twelve.

He received little formal education but became a reporter of parliamentary debates for the Morning Chronicle, he was a solicitor's clerk as well as becoming the first editor of the Daily News, although he resigned after only seventeen issues.

Maybe he was one of the most prolific English writers at that time. His novels were issued in monthly parts before being published in volumes, some of his works were published with the pseudonym "Boz".

Have you heard of Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol,A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, just to name a few, ...

A photo from the film Oliver Twist

He got married, had ten children, travelled in Europe, ... but at the age of 58,  in1870,he died of a stroke and he was buried in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey, in case you want to pay him a visit whenever you go to London.

Westminster Abbey

Household Chores

Who does the household chores at home? 

Do you enjoy doing them?

Do you think sharing household chores is still a problem in your country or not any more?

 

Listen to Adrienne talking about cleaning her apartment.

Broke in the Big Apple

Here we are in New York again, -as you know, my favourite city in the world.This time you can listen to Kevin. He tells Todd his experience in the Big Apple, when he was very young and had to live on a very little amount of money.

Click here and then you can leave your comments about being broke.

Journey, Trip, Tour or just Travel

It's always hard to use them, isn't it? OK, let's see if we can do something to clarify the differences.

Travel: go from one place to another by car, bus, plane, ... It's usually a verb.

      Peter travelled over 100 miles to see the performance.

Journey: when you travel from one place to another.

      Did you have a good journey?

Trip: when you go to a place for a short time and then come back.

      How was your trip to London?

Tour: when you visit lots of places in the same city or country.

      My neighbours are on a tour of Europe.

My neighbours

Let's have some practice now! Choose the correct word. (Read the first comment to check the answers).

1.  The best way to see London is on a bus tour / journey.

2.  In this job you need to go on business trips / travels all over Spain.

3.  My father has to tour / travel abroad a lot on business.

4.  Did you have a good journey / travel?

5.  Pupils at school are going on a day tour / trip to Madrid.

Credit cards

Ufff! I've just checked my bank account online and it's awful, everything is getting more and more expensive, to make matters worse, now banks charge us more than before. 

At least, I have my credit card!!!

What do you think of credit cards? Is it dangerous to have one nowadays?

Get ready to listen to two people talking about Student credit cards. Then leave your comments on it.

Confused or Confusing?

What's the difference? Well, we use adjectives that end with –ed  to talk about our own feelings, or how a situation makes us feel. We use adjectives that end with -ing to talk about a person, a thing or a situation that causes those feelings. So we can say the following:

I’m usually confused with prepositions. Prepositions are confusing.

 

Look at these sentences:

• My boyfriend has a very annoying habit. He's always late! I get really annoyed with him.
• Our book is so interesting. I'm really interested in learning a lot of things.
• The class was boring. I had no-one to work with so I was really bored. 

Let's have a bit of practice, now!

Complete the sentences using the correct form; either -ing or -ed.

1. My teacher is very _____. The lessons are very _____. The subject is very _____. I'm _____! (bored/boring)

2. Are you _____ in going to the cinema sometime and see a film in original version? (interested/interesting)

3. Last Christmas holiday, my boyfriend and I went skiing and snowboarding. It was so _____! (excited/exciting)

4. I watched a football match last night. It was _____ to see your favourite team lose the match! (disappointed/disappointing)

5.  We all were _____ when we check our progress test marks. We all had passed!!!  (amazed/amazing)