There goes another one down under. Sigh! We do grow old, don’t we? A gapped text for Advanced students adapted from TIME magazine.
Ho! Ho! Ho!
And a very merry Christmas to you all. Listen to Amy Winehouse sing Tommie Connor’s Christmas song “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”.
Do the following matching exercise and check your answers.
Now sing along to this video clip.
Life is Beautiful
La vita è bella, but only for the chosen few. Scene? Switzerland (of course). Period? The present (today as yesterday as tomorrow, per saecula saeculorum). Here’s a multiple choices test for Intermediate students.
Loulou and Yves
How lucky of her, not having much else to do in life other than get by! I can think of worse things than being dubbed Yves Saint-Laurent’s muse. A cloze test for Advanced students.
Alice in Wonderland: Caterpillar Sequence
Common mistakes when Spanish and Latin American students learn English include confusing an A /eɪ/ with an I /ɑɪ /, an I /ɑɪ/ with an E /iː/, a C /siː/ with a Z /ziː/, and pronouncing R /er/ instead of /ɑː/. To help them with these MAJOR problems, for they are major problems whatever people may say, I make them watch the caterpillar sequence from Walt Disney’s adaptation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The transcript of the dialogues at the bottom of this post can be used to practice the vowel s A /eɪ/, E /iː/, I /ɑɪ/, O /əʊ/, U /ju:/, and the letter R /ɑː/, and Lewis Carroll’s poem How Doth the Little Crocodile, a parody of the moralistic poem Against Idleness And Mischief by Isaac Watts, to practice the diphthongs /ɑɪ/, as in ‘Nile’ and / eɪ /, as in ‘scales’.
Tacita Dean’s Film as Seen by Richard Dorment
Click on the link above. Watch the video and listen to the way Richard Dorment pronounces the words film, artist, hall, whole, ramp, staircase, level, escalator, up, behind, canvas, again, and dramatic. Do you recognize any of the following vowel sounds in them?
[ɑː] [æ] [e] [ə] [ɪ] [ɒ] [ʊ] [ʌ] [ɑɪ] [eɪ] [əe] [əʊ]
Check your answers by clicking below.
Comin’ out of the Kitchen
On August 15, 2011 TIME magazine published an interview with feminist Gloria Steinem in which she speaks about the road feminism has taken in the 21st century. Here’s a questions and answers exercise for NI2 students adapted from Ms. Luscombe’s interview. There’s also a link in this post to The Guardian’s May 19, 2011 article on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal, in case you haven’t heard about it (which I doubt), another link to HBO’s documentary trailer Gloria in her own Words, and a last one to TIME video 10 Questions for Gloria Steinem, which you may want to watch after doing the exercise. Both the article and the videos are above your level, so don’t panic: just read, listen, and learn to the best of your abilities.
gloria_steinem_10_questions_answer_key
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/19/dominique-strauss-kahn-scandal-france
http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,1094264687001_2086963,00.html
Follow the Leader
Sometimes copying is not so bad as it seems. It can be a question of survival in certain cases. Sweden has set a good example, well-worth following, so let’s all get rid of that stale, encrusted prejudice and just follow the leader in matters green. A gapped text for NI2 students.
Time Waster, Weight Gainer
Come summer, when it’s scorching hot, all you can do is drag your feet from bed to couch and fritter away precious time watching the usual rubbish on TV. Don’t do that! Here’s why. A gapped text for Advanced students.
