2015.12.16 Class 11

Today I was not able to come to class – sorry to have missed you. In any case, I wish you happy holidays and look forward to seeing you in the new year.

At the least, you should have taken the quiz on The Hand That Feeds Me and then done part or all of an FCE Listening test. The rest of class was up to the substitute teacher.

Homework

1. Read the story handed out in Class 10. If you can, read it twice.
2. Make a list of at least 20 words or phrases from the story that you think are important to learn with their definitions and which page and paragraph you found them on. Then create a username (it's free) at Quizlet and add to the list I've started (password = kaspfirst).

2015.12.09 Class 10

Today you did a quiz on UE 2 and 4 from the practice exam you did in class 7 and we talked about the last part of class 9, when we investigated kahoot and lyricstraining (based on your feedback).

Stories
You gave each other feedback on the stories you had written for homework, commenting on:

1. the plot of the story and how well you could understand it
2. the presence or absence of higher-level vocabulary, with suggestions

Crime & detective work
Many of you reported that The Hand that Feeds Me had confused you a bit. Like the narrator of the story looked for clues, I asked you to consider the following:

• Underline the following words or phrases in Section 1:
1. para.1, 'human beings'
2. para.3, 'was grazing too' and 'he threw me a piece of meat'
3. para.4, 'take meat from strange men'
4. para.6, 'inviting me to sleep too'
5. para.10, 'I licked one of the wounds'
6. para.11, 'I picked up the scents'
• What do these clues about the identity of the narrator suggest to you?
• Find 4 similar clues in Sections 3 and 4 (there are at least 6).

We also took a look at the vocabulary I put in Quizlet (contributed by Au, Po and Cs last week) and I showed you how to add to the list. You should all do this and I will be assigning it as homework in the future.

We then watched a video on a famous investigator at https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/word-street/sherlock-holmes and did a kahoot quiz based on it.

Finally, we watched a short video at TED.com (How to start a movement) and I showed you how the site works. We finished class by beginning a short game of Jeopardy.

Homework:

1. Study the vocabulary on Quizlet for The Hand That Feeds Me – there will be a quiz on this at the beginning of the next class.
2. Browse TED.com. Look for a video that's at least 5 minutes long and then watch it three times: first in English with no subtitles, then with English subtitles and then one more time, either with no subtitles (if you already understand it well) or with Spanish or Catalan (or Chinese) subtitles if it's still a difficult to understand. Write down the name of the speaker and the title of the talk on a piece of paper and write a brief summary of the talk to hand in to me in Class 11.
3. (If you didn't hand in your story (homework due today), then write it and send it to me at rkirkm44 at GmaiL dot com)

2015.12.02 Class 9

Today we talked about the story from last class and revised most of the Use of English section from the practice exam in class 7.

In the class 8 homework, I put links to Quizlet lists to help you study parts 1 and 3 of the Use of English from the exam. Today we reviewed parts 2 and 4. I won't be creating Quizlet lists for these two parts, but you need to study them - see the homework below for the reason why.

We reviewed the vocabulary that you chose from The Hand that Feeds Me (homework from class 8) and then we discussed the story. The narrator is a bit unusual, and although his/her identity is not directly stated, there are several places in the text where we get significant clues about it. We'll discuss this more next class.

Next I asked you for some feedback on what we were doing in class. Thanks for that!

We also looked at some considerations when writing a story for the FCE on pp.20-1 in the SB. We did a couple of exercises there as well.


Homework:

1. Study all parts of the Use of English paper from the practice exam. There will be a quiz on parts 2 and 4 in Class 10. Remember that you can use Quizlet to help you study parts 1, 2 and 3.
2. Also study the vocabulary from The Hand That Feeds Me in Quizlet. One day you will have a quiz on this as well. If you didn't find 8 words or phrases (which was the homework for today), then you must do this for Class 10.
3. Write a story (140-90 words) with this as the first line:
   'I had always thought that my new life in the city would be exciting, but nothing could be further from the truth.'
   Be sure to mention:
   1) meeting someone new,
   2) disappointment.
   You can write the story that happens in Signs if you want, or you can create your own.
   Be sure to write an outline, be careful with past verb tenses, use high-level vocabulary and to count the number of words.
   Please write your story on a piece of paper to hand in to me next class.