Thursday, 24 February 2011

How was your week? How was your day? We talked about travelling by train in The Netherlands and we talked about the Christchurch earthquake. Click on the hyperlink to read about that natural disaster, to see some pictures and to watch some videos.
Today we started unit 16 on Comedy and humour with unit 16A called What's so funny? British comedian Catherine Tate explains why it is important to speak your languages:



Then we had one final presentation of a Dutch tourist site and we ended our session with the third installment of Cat In The Hat.

Thursday, 17 February 2011

Two more presentations about Dutch tourist sites to start us off. We then finished unit 15 with the self study section. I handed out the printed version of the vocabulary list to unit 15 which can also be found here. Import this list, and the other Let's talk vocabulary lists I created before, to your own account at wrts. How to create an account, import vocabulary lists and use the programme to practice and/or listen to the correct pronunciation of the words, can be found here. After a short look at the next unit on Comedy and humour, we ended our session with another installment of Cat In The Hat. For next week you can underline all the past tense verbs in the text so far.

Thursday, 10 February 2011

Today we continued identifying verbs in song lyrics with Don McLean's Vincent. We then had three short presentations about tourist sites in The Netherlands. Next week we will have three more. We finished the session with reading the first bit of Cat In The Hat.

Poor Dick and Sally. It's cold and wet and they're stuck in the house with nothing to do... until a giant cat in a hat shows up, transforming the dull day into a madcap adventure and almost wrecking the place in the process! Written by Dr. Seuss in 1957 in response to the concern that "pallid primers [with] abnormally courteous, unnaturally clean boys and girls' were leading to growing illiteracy among children, The Cat in the Hat changed the way our [American] children learn how to read.

For more information, games, history etcetera on Dr. Seuss and his books, have a look at this site Seussville.

Thursday, 3 february 2011

We looked at Yesterday and listed all the verbs in the lyrics with their infinitive and both past tenses. After that we did some listening exercises from unit 15B.
Next week each one of you is going to write up six questions and answers about a tourist site in The Netherlands. The song we will look at for past tense verbs is Vincent by Don McLean.

Thursday, 27 January 2011

We had a look at Norwegian Wood and listed all the verbs in the lyrics with their infinitive and both past tenses. We then continued with unit 15a to practice talking about the past with memories and comparing then and now.
Next week we will list all verbs of the appropriately named Yesterday.

Thursday, 20 January 2011

We ended up spending the entire session on our autobiographies which turned out to be very educational. We revised sentence order, how to say dates and, of course, the simple past tense of regular and irregular verbs. For next week, listen and read along to Norwegian Wood by The Beatles, write down all the past tense verbs you can find in the lyrics and then add the basic verb (the infinitive) and, if you feel like it, the present perfect.

For example: I once had a girl
have had had

Thursday, 13 January 2011

Once again we started our session, the first session of 2011, with updates about the group members. What did you do during the last three weeks? Did you do anything special for X-mas or for New Year's Eve? How did you celebrate? Did you go away during the holidays?
Do you have any New Year's Reolutions? Do you believe in New Year's Resolutions?
I handed out the vocabulary list for unit 14 you can also find here. You can find information on how to import this, and the other lists, to your own wrts account so you can practice your vocabulary with it in my blog entry of 2 December 2010. We finished the unit by having a look at the self-study section and we then moved on to the penultimate unit of our book, unit 15, which deals with The Past.