Category: B1
The causative: have/get something done
Causative structures are another form of passive structures where the focus is on something that is done rather than who does it. Here’s a video I made with bitable that will give you some tips on some of the different structures.
After, you can do a grammar activity to practise the structure.
Learning English pronunciation with songs: I’ll Keep you Safe
A great way to learn English is watching a film, but the thing is, how many of us have the time to watch films these days? I mean, I can hardly remember the last time I was able to relax on my settee with this intention, let alone watching one in a foreign language!
Definitely, present-day duties just don’t seem to understand our needs, do they? So, unless we can plug vocabulary, stress patterns and pronunciation into our brains just like those guys did in The Matrix, we’ll need a backup plan.
Why not try listening to music? It’s easy and fun. You can do this, working, cooking, driving, walking the dog, writing or whatever (as long as it doesn’t make you get up and start dancing). Music can also teach us structures that we need to get our tongues around, and a great number of songs have really catchy tunes that we’ll enjoy trying to understand and even learn.
Here I’ve exploited the soundtrack from the movie Up by Disney. The song is I’ll Keep you Safe by Sleeping at last. It´s a wonderful song along with a beautiful video (watch out! It could make you quite emotional! ) and although the title is great for dealing with ‘will’ used for promises, here I’ve exploited it to practise some of the English sounds and to help students become more familiar with phonetic symbols. If you haven’t seen anything about phonetics yet, you may want to brush up a bit on them before doing the activity (you’ll find plenty of introductory activities if you click on the menu Phonetics and English sounds).
Anyway, hope you enjoy the lesson.
PS If you don’t see me around much lately, it’s just that I’m SO STRESSSSSSSSSSSSSEDDDD OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUT!!!!!!!!!!!
Conditionals: 1st Conditional game
| Oh! This week we’re going to do some work on conditionals. So, just to get this structure under our belt, I’ve set up this fun activity with Wheel decide.
How to play? Click on the wheel and see what you get for the question ‘What will you do if …? Write down the sentence and spend a minute thinking about your answer, afterwards tell the class. Example: What will you do if the person you love asks you out? Possible answers: If the person I love asks me out, I will go crazy/faint/be extremely happy/buy myself something very smart/go to the hairdresser’s to look great. |
Confusing words: dish/meal/recipe
Many students get these word wrong and since I’ve uploaded some vocabulary for ingredients, it may be a good idea to go over them or learn them.
Dish
The word dish when used as a noun and not a verb, has two meanings. One is the type of recipient we use for putting food on. A dish is usually shallow or almost flat, so for a soup we would rather use a bowl.
- Nothing like a nice dish of pasta!
- Who broke the glass dish?
- He was awarded a silver dish for his fortieth anniversary in the company .
The second way of using the word ‘dish’ is when we are talking about a special recipe and way to prepare it. Usually these dishes have a special name that might or might not give us any information about the ingredients. Some examples are: paella, roast beef, lasagne, Welsh rarebit, haggis, etc.
- What’s your favourite dish?
- Paella isn’t the only Spanish dish you can have in Spain. This country has a wide variety of traditional dishes from all over the country.
- I can recommend the chef’s dish of the day.
- What shall we have for main dish?
There is another use for the word dish, but nobody seems to like using it after having a meal. Saying ‘doing the dishes’ or ‘ the dishes’ has a funny effect on people and it must be magical because people just seem to disappear. 🙂 Notice that here we use this word in the plural form.
- Who’s going to help me do the dishes?
- It’s not fair. I did the dishes yesterday!
Meal
This is a general word for the food we eat during the day, when it isn’t a snack (for instance, a packet of crips isn’t a meal no matter what some people may claim). A meal could be breakfast, luch, dinner or supper ( by the way, I’ll post something about these names for meals a little later on). And the main meal of the day depends where you are from. Some people in England have their main meal in the evening while in Spain it is usually in the afternoon.
- I try not to eat between meals.
- Next Saturday we’re going out for a meal at that really posh restaurant they have just opened.
Recipe
Recipe refers to the way in which we choose to prepare a meal. A recipe usually is a set of instructions telling us how to cook something and what ingredients we need. For example, if I want to prepare a traditional dish like paella, because I want to serve this for lunch (a meal), I may need the recipe to make sure I do it properly.
- Can I get the recipe for that delicious chocolate cake you made the other day?
- I’ve lost the recipe book and I can’t remember the amount of flour I will need.
Confusing words: ache/hurt/pain/damage
Ache
Ache (verb) meaning that a part of your body hurts in a continuous and dull way. Ache (noun) referring to a continuous dull pain. This word is usually used in combination with the part of body that is in pain.
- Stomach ache, toothache, headache, or my stomach aches.
Hurt
Hurt (verb transitive and intransitive) to cause physical pain to yourself/somebody. This verb doesn’t give information on the type of pain/ache it only explains that somebody is in a certain degree of pain or that somebody/something is causing it.
Hurt (verb transitive and intransitive) to cause physical pain to yourself/somebody. This verb doesn’t give information on the type of pain/ache it only explains that somebody is in a certain degree of pain or that somebody/something is causing it.
We can also use hurt when it involves somebody’s feelings when we mean that somebody or a situation has made somebody unhappy or upset.
- Stop! You’re hurting me!
- Yesterday I fell over. Now my leg hurts/I hurt my leg.
- This shoes are too tight and hurt my feet.
- I’m sorry! I didn’t want to hurt his feelings when I criticized his work.
Pain
Pain (noun) Not usually used as a verb. Meaning referring to physical suffering in general, often more severe than ‘ache’, used with parts of the body. e.g. pain in my leg, arm, shoulder etc.
- He was clearly in pain.
- This should help relieve the pain.
Damage
Damage can be a verb. When we use this word we mean that something physical has been done (usually to an object or a quality) and that the object is now, ruined, less attractive or is not working properly.
- The flood damaged her house.
- Smoking damages people’s health.
We can also use damage as a noun. It refers to the physical harm caused by an external agent. We usually use this noun with objects, but it is also used when we are talking about health or physical conditions.
- The car accident has caused sever brain damage.
- Luckily, the storm didn’t cause much damage to the roof.
Tense revision activity: Where Did Christmas Crackers Come From?
In Britain not pulling a cracker means that something is missing! Both children and adults love them and they add more fun and laughter to Christmas dinner and parties. But where did this tradition come from? I came across this article and found it such a sweet story that I just couldn’t help not using it, so this one is to help you go over past tenses (active and passive ) and some present tenses too.
The source is Metro.co.uk
