Phrasal Verbs and Feedback

Hello class,

I hope you're having a fabulous weekend. I am still in bed at 2pm!! Perfect!

So yesterday you had your individual feedback and a chance to ask any questions you had for me. If you have any more questions about your progress or the course please do not hesitate to ask me, either over email (hannahsenglishclassroom@live.com) or in person during class.

We looked at phrasal verbs yesterday. There are thousands of phrasal verbs and even more being created every year so it would be impossible to learn them all. Even I don't know them all! The most important thing to do is to focus on learning the most common and regularly used phrasal verbs and begin to build up a dictionary in your brain! Another annoying thing about phrasal verbs is that they usually have more than one meaning! For example:

get off

1. To start, as on a trip; leave.

2.

a. To fire (a round of ammunition, for example): got off two shots before the deer disappeared.

b. To write and send, as a letter.

3. To escape, as from punishment or danger: got off scot-free.

4. To obtain a release or lesser penalty for: The attorney got her client off with a slap on the wrist.

5. Slang To act or speak with effrontery. Used in the imperative to express contempt or disdainful disbelief.

6. Slang To have an orgasm.

7. Slang

a. To feel great pleasure or gratification.

b. To experience euphoria, for example, as a result of taking a drug.

8. To get permission to leave one's workplace: got off early and went fishing.

9. To stop the action of touching another person: "get off me I don't want to hold your hand!"

We looked 15 of the most commonly used phrasal verbs and taught them to each other. Then we produced some sentences. Here are the results...

Also take a look at this poster which has some interesting new phrasal verbs for your learning pleasure!

We have had a long and hard week with quarterly testing so I didn't set any homework this weekend. However, as always, if you have any writing you would like me to correct please feel free to do so.

One more thing... a massive GOODBYE to all our fantastic and interesting Russian students and Diego. I have taught Diego for 6 months and will miss him making me laugh everyday! What a legend!

Remember everyone, this weekend is a bank holiday weekend so there is no school on Monday. See you on Tuesday class!

I was interested in interesting presentations!

Good afternoon class,

Today we practised pronunciation for 'ed' endings. This is something that most students struggle with but there are rules which can help us...

If you fancy some more practice with this then try these online exercises.

Next we looked at adjectives ending in ed (for feelings) and adjectives ending in ing (for characteristics)

For example...

• The movie was boring (so I felt bored).
• This movie is so interesting (so I am interested in the movie).
• My boyfriend has a very annoying habit (so I am annoyed).
• Grammar can be confusing (so a lot of students are confused).
• The soap opera story was surprising (so I was very surprised).
• The football match was exciting (so the fans were excited).

After break you did your presentations (and we had a very cute little visitor - thank you Rocio!!) Your presentations were really great and I was very happy with you. We will have our individual feedback sessions tomorrow.

Finally I want to say a big good bye and good luck to our Russians who are leaving Ireland tomorrow. You gave me some fabulous gifts today, here I am with all my presents, thank you!!

Cakes and Newspapers!

Hello everyone,

Just a quick post today to say well done on surviving your reading, listening and writing tests! Only the speaking remaining now... I hope you are practicing this evening!!

After the tests we covered newspaper vocabulary, here are the pictures of the board...

We will review this vocabulary later this week.

A few small points before I finish...

The Language Exchange will be in The Little Green Cafe beside Christchurch tonight. Students can meet at Dominick Street School at 6.30pm or at the cafe at around 7 - 7.30. This is a really fun and FREE event which will be great for your speaking skills!

Finally, a huge THANK YOU to Adolfo who brought us some cakes to celebrate his birthday (we made him promise to bring us some treats!!) They were delicious!!!!

Cheers Adolfo!!

The passive voice was studied (by you!)

Good afternoon Pre-Inters!

Today we went passive crazy! I hope your brains didn't explode after the lesson!! 

We started off with three very important questions...

So lets start with the first question... What is it?? OK, so very simply, the passive voice is...

What we use when we want the action of the sentence (the do) to be more important than the agent (the doer). 

For example, if I am writing an essay about Shakespeare I will write 

"Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet" (active)

But if I am writing an essay about Romeo and Juliet then I will write

"Romeo and Juliet was written by Shakespeare" (passive)

So when I use the passive I move the agent (Shakespeare) to the end of the sentence and the action (wrote Romeo and Juliet) to the beginning.

OK so next question, how do we form it? Here is a picture of the board from class...

Passive form in red. Remember, we always use a verb 3 (past participle) in the passive form

We completed a worksheet to practise forming the passive in different tenses. 

Lastly (and most importantly), why do we use it? Here is the board...

I checked the spelling and 'graffitied' is the correct verb 3!

So the three questions, what, how and why have been answered (by me)!

Next we looked through some newspapers and magazines to find some passive sentences and this is what we found...

Excellent work!!

If you feel that you need some more practice try here, here and here. 

Don't forget that your writing test is due tomorrow. I will not accept it on Thursday or Friday. Also remember that tomorrow is your reading and listening exam! Exciting stuff!

See you soon :-)

Hardly anybody likes Mondays!

Hello class,

Today started by reviewing all the tenses in our workbook and highlighting the areas that need work. We heard all about Lucy and Jake's love story when we read and listened to their diaries! Aren't we nosy!?

Here is some of the vocabulary which we covered today...

We moved on to speak about the word 'hardly'....

Hardly + verb

Hardly + any + noun

A big welcome to our new students today, it's great to have you with us!

Check the previous blog entry for all information regards quarterly testing.

See you tomorrow!

Quarterly testing

Good afternoon class,

Today we started quarterly testing week. As I told you earlier, this week is all about YOU - looking at areas which are strong as well as areas that need improvement. Here is the information for this week's tests...

Writing - Write an essay of at least 150 words. You can choose ONE of the following topics...

• If you were an animal, what animal would you be?
• Tell the story of the funniest traveling experience you have ever had.
• A day in the life of a one euro coin

The writing is due on Wednesday.

Reading and Listening - These tests will be on Wednesday during class.

Speaking - In a pair or a group of three, plan an interesting presentation for the class. The presentation must be between 3 and 5 minutes long. Presentations will be on Thursday during class. You can choose your topic but here are some ideas...

On Friday you will have an individual feedback session with me during class where we will discuss your progress, strengths and weaknesses and set some learning goals.

The test was 'a piece of cake'!

Hello everyone,

Well done for doing the extra difficult test today! I was impressed with your scores.

After the break today we looked at food idioms. You matched the idiom to the literal meaning, here is a picture of the board 

(matches: A-4, B-9, C-10,  D-5, E-6, F-8, G-1, H-3, I-2, J-7)

And here is the exercise which we did after learning the idioms...

I adore idioms and if you feel the same why not take a look at this list of food idioms...but don't try and learn them all... It would take forever!

You homework this weekend is to write an essay of at least 150 words about any topic. 

You must include at least three food idioms in your essay.

Finally, a MASSIVE congratulations to Jeong, Evandro and Victor who are leaving us this week and moving up to intermediate level! Well done boys, we will really miss you!!

Have a great weekend Pre-Inters! See you on Monday :-)

It's Nearly Friday!

Hi Class...it's almost Friday!!

Today we began the lesson by correcting last night's homework and practising our pronunciation. Here is a picture of the board...

And press here to listen to me saying these words. 

We followed this with some more food vocabulary practice and made our own crosswords with clues! 

Next we talked about vegetarians and vegans. We discussed some of the reasons why people become 'veggie' and about the food which they have to eat to stay healthy. Here is some of the vocabulary we encountered...

While we were speaking about this we talked about some ways to express your opinion 

(instead of just saying 'for me...' before your opinion which I HATE!)

Try and use these to express your opinion more eloquently  in essays!

OK guys, so the test is tomorrow, here is what you should revise...

Second conditional (If I were a millionaire I would buy a pink Porsche)

So and neither / nor (So have I, nor did I)

Preposition collocations (in love, at present)

Vocab from the week (all the vocabulary on the blog)

Food pronunciation (orange broccoli) 

See you all tomorrow :-)

I love grammar...so do I!!!!

Hello class!

We started our lesson today with some second conditional practice, especially using questions. We discovered what you would do if you caught your partner cheating or if you drank two bottles of vodka! You gave some very funny answers! If you want more practice with this grammar then try the links on yesterday's blog for some online tests.

Next we moved on to prepositions. Prepositions are notoriously difficult to learn so it's good to study them often! Here are the preposition collocations which we studied today...

And here are some of the sentences you made with them...

Try and remember these as they will be in your test on Friday (as will everything we cover this week!!)

Next we studied so and neither / nor for agreeing and saying that you do / are the same. Here are the rules...

Remember you can use nor or neither, they have exactly the same meaning

Your homework is a vocabulary worksheet about food. We will correct this and talk more about food tomorrow.

See you soon class, have a great evening!

If you forgot your homework Hannah would be MAD!! ;-)

Good evening Pre-Inters!

Today we welcomed some new students to the class and we got to know each other a little. We played some games related to celebrity and we started work with a reading exercise about working with celebrities. Here is some of the new vocabulary we covered...

We moved on to look at the second conditional. Here is the grammar...

We did some writing and speaking practice and you guys did really well. If you want some more practice you can do a online exercises here and here. We will do a little more on this tomorrow and don't forget your homework, a worksheet on the second conditional, we will correct it together in class tomorrow.

Have a great evening!

Have a great Paddy's weekend!

Hi class,

Just a quickie to say have a great St Patrick's weekend and to remind you that there will be no class on Monday as it is a bank holiday in honour of the patron saint of Ireland! Here's a video all about the history of Saint Patrick...

Have fun everyone, drink plenty of Guinness and don't forget your homework, an essay about your Saint Patrick's Day experience in Dublin. See you on Tuesday :-)

Too many adverbs and too much grammar!

Good afternoon class :-)

Today we started by reviewing the first conditional and correcting the homework.
Then we moved on to: too much, too many and not enough.

We made lots of examples. Some of my favourites were,

The English language doesn't have enough competition (Lumi)

Irish food has too many potatoes (Vivian)

The Internet doesn't have enough blogs about English (Diego)

The Internet has too much knowledge (Jeong)

Next we moved on to a listening exercise about working abroad. We looked at lots of great new vocabulary, here's the board...

Next we studied adverbs at the beginning of sentences...

You did a really great job making sentences using the adverbs, well done!

Remember we have a test tomorrow. On the test will be...

Reported questions - test yourself

Too much, too many, not enough - test yourself

Shopping vocabulary - from here and here

Adverbs (see above)

First conditional (if/ unless / when) - test yourself

Reporting verbs (recommended, promised, spoiled) - from here

Have a great night guys, see you tomorrow! 

If you read my blog, you will learn more about the 1st conditional!

Good afternoon class. We had a busy lesson this morning, we began by talking about brands. We looked at some logos and discussed our opinions about them, we will be taking about brands and advertising more in tomorrow's lesson.

We talked about more reporting verbs, here is a picture of the words we looked at...

After this we moved onto some grammar. The first conditional...

A good way to decide if you should use IF or UNLESS is this...

Here is an online test for more practice. Remember, your homework is the worksheet which I gave you in class, we will correct it together tomorrow.

Have a good day class :-)

She asked if you listened in class today...

Hey guys, sorry this post is a little late, as you know I am very sick at the moment...so this post will be short and sweet.

We began today with shopping role plays using the homework gap fill from Monday. Here is some of the vocabulary which we covered...

After this we did a very difficult listening exercise (well done guys) about shopping. We moved on to study forming reported speech questions. 

Remember with reported speech questions we still change the tense, just like in normal reported speech (take a look here for a re-cap on the tense changes) but we also change the form of the sentence.

                    She asked me + question word + subject + verb

"Where are the dictionaries?"

She asked me where the dictionaries were.

"Who was the woman in the car?"

She asked me who the woman in the car had been.

If the question you are reporting is a yes /no question then you must use if or whether.

He asked me + if / whether + subject + verb

"Do you like chocolate?"

She asked me if I liked chocolate

"Did you see the new horror movie?"

He asked me whether I had seen the new horror movie

Try this online exercise for extra practice (if your homework isn't enough!) 

We finished off with some conversation questions about shopping. 

Don't forget that everything which we learn this week will be on Friday's test!

See you tomorrow guys (if I don't die of the flu tonight!) 

Snowy Monday!

Hello Class,

I hope you all had fun in the snow today. I hope it doesn't stick though! 

Today we covered loads of new vocabulary, all to do with shopping, my favourite topic!

Here are some pictures of the board with the new vocabulary which we learnt...

After break we did a PET reading paper for some exam practice and I was really impressed at how well you did. Here is some of the new vocabulary you looked at in the PET exam...

If you want some more information about the PET exam or any of the other Cambridge exams then take a look at this website. You can find exam information, dates and past papers on this site. Here is a link to a free test to judge whether you are ready for the PET exam. You might not be thinking about doing an exam right now but take a look at the website and start thinking about the possibility of getting an English qualification, it will look great on your CV and give you something to focus on, most students really benefit from the motivation of having an exam to work towards.

Your homework is the shopping gap fill which is due tomorrow. Please don't forget to do this as we will be using it in class for another exercise! 

See you tomorrow :-)

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a Bear...

Hello Class!

On Friday we had our weekly test, well done to Victor who got the highest score!

After the test we covered the future passive (very quickly)...

(Future passive +)

The next football world cup will be won by Brazil

Subject + will + to be + verb 3 (+ by + object)

(Future passive -)

The next football world cup won't be won by Ireland

Subject + won't + to be + verb 3 (+ by + object)

(Future passive ?)

Will the next football world cup be won by Spain?

Will + subject + to be + verb 3 (by + object)

Try this online test to practice.

Next we tried some tongue twisters. You worked in pairs and recorded yourselves saying them and then we all listened to your recordings on the speakers, isn't it funny / interesting / embarrassing to hear your own voice recorded?! Here are the tongue twisters and links to hear me (the master of tongue twisters) saying them. Can you say them as fast as me? I doubt it! 
If you can, record yourself and copy the link to your best and fastest recording in the blog comments!

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Hear me!

Record you!

Happy hungry eggs exist in heavy elephants 

Hear me!

Record you!

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear,

Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair,

Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't very fuzzy,

Was he?

 Hear me!

Record you!

If two witches were watching two watches which witch would watch which watch?

Hear me!

Record you!

Red lorry yellow lorry x4

Hear me!

Record you!

Here is a video of you guys practicing your tongue twisters... I laughed so hard! You guys crack me up! 

The homework for the weekend is to write an essay on 'The Unexplained' 

(for example, aliens, UFOs, poltergeists, deja vu etc). This essay must be no less than 150 words.

Have a great weekend class! See you on Monday.

Grammar was learnt (by the class)

Good afternoon class,

Today we started (and ended) the lesson with some Hangman with vocabulary from the week... well done Team 3! You were amazing!

Next we corrected the homework and we learnt how to use two new relative pronouns, where and whose.

We use where for location / place: 

1. I know an English school

2. You can have great English lessons there.

Where = there

I know an English school where you can have great English lessons

We use whose for possession

1. Hannah is a teacher

2. Her class is so funny

Whose = her

Hannah is a teacher whose class is so funny

You made some sentences using where and whose as relative pronouns...

Try this online test if you want more practice.

Next we did a reading exercise about inventions. Here is some of the new vocabulary we learnt...

We looked for the past tense passive form within the text. Here are some of the sentences you found...

Remember: We form the past tense passive like this...

Subject + was / were + verb 3 (+ by + agent)

The class was taught (by Hannah)

We moved on to revise WHY we use the passive.Here is a picture of the board...

A really packed lesson today guys, well done! Remember to study for the test tomorrow. The test will cover...

Reported speech (he told me that he was a doctor)
Silent consonants (know, honest)
Relative pronouns (which, who, where and whose)
Character descriptions (narrow-minded, ambitious)
The passive form (Brazil was colonised by Portugal)
Reporting verbs (explain, demand)

Have a nice evening guys!