Thursday January 28, 2010

Like last week we started the session off with the question: "How was your week?". Several people told us about something that happened to them and they answered questions from the group. Next week it will be someone else's turn to talk about their week so be prepared!
Next we finished unit 9a by talking about your perfect vacation and I handed out a cartoon with hidden pictures on 'Connecting Flights'. Please complete for next week.
We then had a closer look at last week's (listening) text about Denise Lester who is holidaying in Marbella, Spain.

Finally I asked you to listen to, or read, tips on what to see when visiting New Zealand. You can listen here New Zealand tips but I also gave you the printed text with a little quiz. I would prefer it if you listened without reading along. Restart the audio clip as many times as you like. If you have not got the right audio player on your PC, go to this web page and get it straight from the source. Click on the little loudspeaker icon but, again, hide the text.

Thursday January 21, 2010

We had another look at the wordweb for 'transportation' by playing a few rounds of the Word Associations game. We then started unit 9a on holidays. We talked about and listened to people talking about holidays while we created a wordweb on the subject.

I handed out a text from the BBC's Learning English site about a lawyer from London at her favourite holiday spot in Marbella, Spain. The best way to work with this text is by listening to it here and do the accompanying excercises online too. If, for some reason, that proves to be impossible, you can just work through the handout with the printed text. We will look at it next week.

Thursday January 14, 2010

We finished unit 8b on transportation, including the grammar section. I handed out the vocabulary list for unit 8 which I also uploaded to wrts. You can access the lists I uploaded here (click on the blue, underlined link).
The wrts programme is not very complicated. You have to create an account by giving an email address and a password and after that it is more or less self-explanatory. How to work the programme is in any case explained in Dutch. Just give it a go and play around with it. You can not do anything wrong, really.

Thursday January 7, 2010

Only our sixth meeting due to (mostly) unforeseen circumstances. First of all a Happy and Blessed New Year to you and your loved ones! I hope 2010 and the new decade will bring you love, health and happiness.

Last session had to be cancelled because of the wintery weather and we have had snow and ice for a few weeks now. Today we talked about this and other traffic and transportation problems after reading the text 'Cabinet finalises kilometer tax plan' I handed out on December 3rd.

• What are your views on kilometer charge?
• What problems does it intend to solve?
• Can you think of any other solutions for those problems?

Then we started unit 8b.
The self-study section with unit 8 on pp. 108-109 is the homework for next session on 14 january 2010.