Thursday, 24 March 2011

Our very last session of the year 2010-2011 already and it is very clear that Winter has ended too. The crocuses are everywhere and we had a first week in which we could actually go outside without a coat on.
As there were only four of us, Steven took over the session by giving an account of his 28-day trip to New Zealand last year, illustrated with a map of the country and a slide show of beautiful pictures. We will tie up the final strands of Let's Talk 2 at the beginning of next season.
I did hand out the vocabulary list with unit 16 which you can also find 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.
Next week we will have our communal end of year dinner party at 7pm. I hope to see you all there and to see you all back alive healthy and happy in Autumn.

Thursday, 17 March 2011

We started off with discussing Paul McCartney's joke with the aid of a list of words that occur in his story. We then had some more jokes in English before we moved on to unit 16B. Next week we'll finish the unit, AND the book, by having a look at activity 2 and the self-study section on pp. 124-125.
Because the people who were not present last week were curious, we finished our session with another entertaining round of the question words game.

To finish this week's blog entry a riddle for you:

Make sure you get every single word right!

Read the following passage loudly to yourself and then scroll down to the comments for further instructions.

Now read:

This is this cat
This is is cat
This is how cat
This is to cat
This is keep cat
This is a cat
This is fool cat
This is busy cat
This is for cat
This is forty cat
This is seconds cat

Thursday, 10 March 2011

Because there were only three members of our group present, we switched round our program a bit. Whatever you had prepared for this week will be discussed next week. First we made a wordweb with 'W-questions' (what, why, where, when, who and... How). We listed a few example sentences with each question word. After that we played a Grammar Game with W-questions. I all turned out to be a surprisingly educational session. Next week we will resume our normal schedule.

Sir Paul McCartney tells a joke. Can you understand it?

Thursday, 3 March 2011

We again started the session off with the past tense but this time we focused on asking questions about the past. For some extra online exercise with that go here.
We told each other jokes in English and then continued with our books in unit 16A What's so funny?
We ended with the last installment of Cat In The Hat and read up on some facts and figures about Dr. Seuss, his books and their importance in getting children, and adults I suppose, to read.

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.