Thursday December 17, 2009

Heavy snowfall on this day which caused traffic jams all over the country. At 6.15pm over half of our conversation group had called to let me know they were not going to come due to the bad weather conditions. Sadly, I had to start up our phone circle to cancel the session. Our next meeting is planned for January 7, 2010.

Happy Holidays!

Thursday December 3, 2009

We continued with unit 8a from Let's Talk 2. We revised comparatives and superlatives with the text 'Comparing Transport' I handed out last week. We also had a look at a wordweb on transport by playing the Word Associations game.
A fun way to learn new vocabulary is by using wrts
Subscribe by giving an email address and a password and the program will explain how to use it in Dutch. You can import the vocabulary list I gave you for unit 7 from this page. Use it to play with the wrts program. You can also add to this list and/or create your own lists. Enjoy!

Thursday November 26, 2009

I updated and handed out our 'phone circle' so that, in case of an emergency or anything else unforeseen, we will be able to cancel a session on short notice. Please check your data on the list and let me know if there are any inaccuracies.
We started unit 8a on transportation. If you would like to practice some more with texts on transportation, follow this link to the great BBC Learning English website with a section on transport to and in London.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/multimedia/london/unit1/

Thursday November 19, 2009

I handed out the vocabulary list for unit 7 and we finished unit 7b by playing two word games: 'Endings and Beginnings' and 'Word Associations' (p. 33). The latter is a great way to build wordwebs. Remember to regularly make wordwebs for themes you want or need to talk about in English.
The self-study section with this unit on pp. 106-107 is the homework for next session.

Thursday November 12, 2009

We continued unit 7 and talked about sports with the aid of wordwebs. So far we did a wordweb on house and sports. We read last week's text on the retractable roof over Wimbledon's Center Court. As an introduction to unit 7b on games, I handed out the rules for the party game of Charades.

Thursday November 5, 2009

Unfortunately I had to cancel our second meeting because I had to attend a wake. On December 10 I will be in England so that's another date dropped from our original calendar. This means two dates will be added in April. The schedule for winter 2009-2010 is as follows:

• 1st meeting 29 October 2009
• no meetings on November 5 and December 10, 2009 (absence teacher)
• no meetings on December 24 and 31, 2009 and February 18, 2010 (holidays)
• last session on April 15, 2009

If all goes as intended in this schedule, we will have 6 sessions before and 14 after Christmas.

Thursday October 29, 2009

The first meeting of 2009-2010. We started Unit 7 from Let's Talk 2 which is about sports and games. I handed out a text titled 'Wimbledon 2009 gets underway' from the BBC's Learning English site. If you want to practice some more or listen to the text, here's a link to the webpage with the article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/wordsinthenews/2009/06/090624_witn_wimbledon.shtml