As I’m teaching A2 this year, I’ll be posting lots of useful content and cheat sheets to help my students along the way. In this post, you can download a cheat sheet and try a quick quiz to refresh your grammar. Happy learning! the indefinite articleDownload
A whimsical poem to practise pronunciation and intonation This sweet and rather silly poem has long been a favourite among English-speaking children, and for good reason — it’s musical, memorable, and packed with playful sounds. But beyond the fun, I truly believe that rhymes, tongue-twisters, and poetry are powerful tools to help learners improve both…… Continue reading Cultural Corner: The Owl and the Pussycat
If you have problems saying something like ‘Young rats in black hats’ or ‘The cat sat on my hat’ Then this video on phonetics will be handy as it will help you practise this open ‘a’ (ahhhhhhh!) sound. https://youtu.be/l3Y0jZY0d8g Serena’s blog
As a start for this year, here’s another video on English vowel sounds. This video is for short and long i sounds that are often confused by learners of English. At the end of the video you have a short listening activity to practise distinguishing the sound between two words that have a very similar…… Continue reading English vowel sounds short i /I/ & long I /i:/
Some years ago I devoted part of the blog to this area of language learning, but now that the plug-in is no longer available, I needed to refocus on a new tool. So why not Youtube? I’m going to gradually upgrade all the stuff I wrote on phonetics and here is the very first video.…… Continue reading What is phonetics and why should we learn it?
Hi there! Here’s a new video and some related activities for some extra practice. This video aims to help beginners to cope with talking about celebrations. To set an example this video is about Christmas Day, but the video is useful for almost any celebration as it deals with routines. The video has a short…… Continue reading A1/A2 How to speak about your Christmas Day
Here’s another How to video for beginners. This video deals with hair vocabulary and adjective word order, which are some of the typical problems that beginners have during the first two years of learning English. If you’re a beginner and want to gain confidence in speaking and learning vocabulary. This video is for you! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJssgNVq5j8…… Continue reading A1/A2 How to speak about your hair
Good morning! Today’s Monday and many of you may feel tired and not very motivated by the thought of starting a new week, but the funny thing is that some of us feel happy and full of energy because during the weekend we had time to think and plan new projects and Monday is the…… Continue reading Learning English with songs: Feeling Good by Avicii
Hi! Here’s another How to video. This video is a very first class video that beginners can use at home to practice their first sentences in English and gain confidence. It’s also helpful for going over nationality adjectives as there is a list with words that belong to the A2 certificate exams. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B88BrET-bI Serena’s blog
It’s true that these names are very, very similar to Spanish. But I’ve had so many students from Venzuela, Peru, Ecuador, Argentina and other South American countries that worried about how they were pronouncing these names that I decided to make a video. It’s another of the series of How to… videos that aim to…… Continue reading A1/A2 How to say the names of American countries in English
