Second email

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Posted on 21st August 2009 by Shaun Wilden in Teaching

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Dear All,

Sorry it’s been a couple of weeks, I was away in Germany for two weeks and then got very busy setting up and starting a teacher training course. Anyway, how are your holidays going? Hot today so hope you are ‘in the nature’ enjoying it. I have some good news for you, I have agreed to at least start teaching you again next year., although I have to question why I am such a glutton for punishment;-)

I used the phrase ‘glutton for punishment’ if you’re not sure what it means you can click on it and it’ll take you to a dictionary.  The dictionary is a good online students dictionary .Speaking of dictionaries the article here is about new words entering an american dictionary. As a contrast a newspaper in the Uk ran an article on words poets don’t like which is quite interesting and can be found here

In Britain the summer period is referred to as the ‘silly season’ in the media, so called because a rule there is less ‘serious’ news in the summer so media outlets have to fill their programmes etc with ‘silly’ stories. It seems that this year will be no exception with the silly season kicking off in fine style with this. and if you would listen to the story, here it is on youtube – bloody ridiculous (Sorry Irena, you probably think it is great :-) )

So there’s some links to keep you going,

Enjoy the heat and more soon,

Shaun

Class emails

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Posted on 19th August 2009 by Shaun Wilden in Teaching

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Over the summer break I have been sending my class (yes I only have one, lucky me) emails with links to articles etc in. Since some other people have asked me for the links, I am going to post one or two of them on my new blog site i.e. here

This is the first one sent in July:

Hi Folks,

Since I am off to work in Germany for a week from tomorrow, I thought I’d send you an email before I go.  I hope everyone’s summer got off to a good start and the somewhat tropical storms aren’t putting a damper on things (note the pun on ‘damper’ – what a wit eh). The rain certainly made biking a little difficult see photo below  -  the path should be on the left!

So for some things English for you to peruse….

This week’s news stories that interested me - this one called “I’m a pedant and proud“  - the title attracted me as I am definitely a pedant. It’s very vocabulary rich so I think a good text for you word people :-) .

Being the gadget lover and I big ipod fan this was an interesting story and much easier to read.

For a bit of brain fun then I found these free brain games by chance – the first one is a vocab game that I found a bit addictive  - if you play it don’t panic some of the letter combinations really had me stumped as well.

Two weeks ago we looked at inversion in English – this website has a list of references for further study and some links to online practice, so you can go and test yourselves :-)

Finally let’s go to you tube, following on from last week’s lesson, comments about styles of English (no I won’t forget it Olga!!!) and the two ronnies clip…..here’s a clip from an awful  movie but this scene is very funny ‘English pronunciation’ which reminded me of a scene from a czech movie

If you haven’t worked it out yet, I have made links in the email so click on the blue bits and they’ll take you to the relevant websites.

Hope you enjoy  the things I have chosen and of course email if you need any help with understanding, words or just want to say hi.

Yours

Shaun

What happened to the cycle path?

What happened to the cycle path?