New Year's Resolution

Here you have a couple of videos about New Year resolutions, a typical thing to do in anglosaxon countries. I hope you'll enjoy them.

• Ten new year's resolutions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-xS5flexx0
• Two weeks later: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_sZQP36bt4

Happy New Year 2013

Here we are again after Christmas. Let's come back to class and here you are some pages to start with reading:

• simple present story with exercises: story 1 story 2
• simple stories with different exercises: click here and choose the exercise you like
• http://www.usingenglish.com/comprehension/beginner.html : stories for KET level
• http://www.newsinlevels.com/ : this webpage is about news. There are 3 levels and the first one is very simple but if you have problem, don't worry; it's normal.

If you want to read something more interesting you can do it by using the tourist information of places you like; have a look here:

• London: http://www.projectbritain.com/regions/london.htm 
• New York: http://www.nyc.com/visitor_guide/orientation__information.75830/editorial_review.aspx

You can read a lot of kind of texts, but try to do it without translations. Enjoy your reading!

Telling the Time

You can use games for children if you want to work with the time in English. Here you have some games:

• BBC game
• ICT game
• Digital-Analogic time
• More exercises

If you are ingterested in the songs we saw in class, here are the links:

• My name is Luka
• Something stupid

Cooking at Christmas

Preparing cookies or desserts for Christmas...? Here you have a file with recipes for typical ones. Click HERE.
If you want to do soemthing special for Christmas, especially with your children, have a look at this site:
http://www.eslkidstuff.com/ChristmasGames.htm
See you in class!

Learning with videos from YouTube

There are some videos in YouTube to learn English. You can watch them to improve (mejorar) your English. Here you have an example: Jennifer ESL or Learning English with Jennifer. This is one of the first lessons and I think it's really good. Just watch it!

Another possibility is to practaice with videos for kids. Here you have an example with our lesson about jobs and what people do at work:

If you want to practise and you can do it with your little children here you have links for children:

• http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/ : this is a webpage for learning English and there are videos like this one 
• http://www.youtube.com/user/kidsonlineenglish : a bit long and boring but it's repetitive and it's good for learning.
• http://www.manythings.org/: although it's not only for children, it has a lot of games especially for vocabulary so you can practice vocabulary with your children here

Just to finish with, watch this funny video to see that not only Spanish aren't so good at learning English, click here and have a good time.

See you in class!

Present Simple

I prefer to call it habitual present because it's connected to how to use this tense, quite different from the present simple in Spanish, but you can call it as you like. It's referred to habits, routines, general truths, etc.

Present simple is formed with the infinitive and you must add the subject pronoun to know who does the action; e.g.TO PLAY --- I play, they play. there are 2 exceptions:

• the verb TO BE has 3 forms: I AM - he, she, it IS - we, you, they ARE
• the verb TO HAVE has 2 forms: I, you, we, they HAVE - he, she, it HAS

But in these two verbs the rule of having an -S in the 3rd person in singular is there. The problem is the spelling and the pronunciation, but it has the same rules as we have for plural forms:

• ending in CONSONANT+Y ---  -IES e.g. copy -- he copies  but play -- she plays
• ending in sibilant sound you add an extra syllable  /IZ/ : Peter finishes work at 5

As we saw in the previous lesson with the imperative form, we use DON'T for the negative form, but we have to use DOESN'T for the 3rd person in singular. As I explained in class this auxiliary is like the initial interrogative mark ¿ in Spanish. Have a look the examples: Do you like chocolate? Does she go with you? 

If you want to know something else about this tense go to this useful link but the explanation is in English:

http://esl.about.com/od/thebasics/a/beginner_present_simple.htm and then you can do the exercise at the end of the link or click here

If you need a simpler explanation you can go to this link: http://isabelperez.com/happy/tenses/present_simple.htm

To finish with go to My Name Is Luka : this is a marvellous song and present simple is used in it.
The other song to practise with present (simple and continuous) is Eternal Flame

I hope you can understand this tense. See you in class!

Starting with prepositions

I've just found this page to learn the most important prepositions of place. It is for children but I think it's quite funny and interesting, especially if you use it with your own children. Enjoy it!
When you are sure about the use of these prepositions you can work with them using these examples:

• Where's my laptop?  It's on the table, near the lamp, between the books and the printer, etc.
• Where are my pencils?  They're in the box and on the table, behind the laptop, etc.

If you still have problems go to this link to see a diagram of prepositions and the translation into Spanish:

http://www.lingolex.com/prepositions/prepositionsen.htm