St. Patrick's Day

"Saint Patrick's Day is held on March, 17th.  It's a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, and the British Overseas Territory of Montserrat. It is also widely celebrated by the Irish diaspora around the world, especially in Great Britain,Canada, the United States, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand. 

Saint Patrick's Day is celebrated in more countries than any other national festival. Modern celebrations have been greatly influenced by those of the Irish diaspora, particularly those that developed in North America. In recent years, there has been criticism of Saint Patrick's Day celebrations for having become too commercialized and for fostering negative stereotypes of the Irish". 

For more reading, please click on here.

English for Specific Purposes: Crime & Punishment

On today's post we'll talk about English for Specific Purposes, that is,
a sphere of teaching English language including Business English, Technical English, Scientific English, English for medical professionals, English for waiters, English for tourism, English for Art Purposes, etc. 

However, we'll only deal with Crime & Punishment or even some legal English.

Videos about Crime & Punishment

Teaching English for Specific purposes

Question Tags for agreement or confirmation.

Basically, Question Tags are used when asking for agreement and confirmation, but they can also be found in common situations when we need to check whether something is true or not. Sometimes we just need to check information, so we use Question tags for that too.

Notice that Question Tags can also be used to invite people politely to do things, or even to refer to nothing or everything.

Adverts, Commercials and Creativity

http://morethaneoi.blogspot.com.es/2011/12/being-creative.html

"Sports serve society by providing vivid examples of excellence"

"Sports serve society by providing vivid examples of excellence.” , written by George F. Will 






And what about girls and sports?


Activyst: Help Girls Play Sports from activyst on Vimeo.

School & Education

What's the weather like today?

As stated by the newspaper: The Guardian,
"2015 smashed the record for hottest year since reporting began in 1850, according to the first full-year figures from the world’s three principal temperature estimates".

To read the whole article, please click on here. 

So, Climate Change is real and Natural Disasters are more likely to happen than before. However, please do not panic so quickly, 'cos this is just an ESL blog. Here we only learn about language, culture and sometimes what's on the News. Now let's go into a greater depth about Weather, Climate Change, Natural Disasters and Human Risks.

How to write formal & informal e-mails and letters

If I were you, I'd...

If I were you, I'd...


How would you complete the sentence above?


Conditionals are quite good for your imagination, aren't they?


So, if you're thinking about writing some more amusing couple dialogues like that one above, please feel free to leave us a comment below.


If I were you, I'd write a good if-comment right now.

Technology, inventions & Internet

TEA

Clothes

Jobs and Professions

Planning to work abroad, this is your post to study all you need to know for your stay.

Trip to Scotland

Once again we're planning a Trip to somewhere. 


This time we're going to go to Edinburgh, Scotland. 

However, there's still much to be done. Maybe, we can get some ideas from this web, or maybe we only need to talk about it in the classroom. Whatever the case, please feel free to leave a comment or ask any question about our forthcoming trip to Scotland.


Enjoy our power point presentation about Scotland:



And here's more info about Scotland:
http://www.scotland.org/
http://www.scotlandinfo.eu/scottish-culture-and-traditions/


Reading about Scotland:

Hobbies, pastimes and sports

With this post, we will learn how to talk, listen, read and write about different free time activities, sports and hobbies.

We're also going to ask about likes and dislikes. At the same time, we'll spend some time expressing our own likes and preferences.

Going on a Holiday

Reading by the sea for Intermediate 2

Sentence transformations

Are you able to paraphrase in English? 



Hey, what exactly do you mean by that? 



Sentence transformations are highly useful for you to say things differently, or better said, different ways of talking about the same thing, using other words. 



So, please avoid repetition. 

Here's your presentation about Transformations and now it's time for transformation practice.



In your own words...

Listening

Listening skills are being developed here all through TIPS, Resources and thousands of Podcasts and activities. So, let's go and listen to English!

Tip 1:
Listen to podcasts about subjects which are Interesting, relevant and useful for you. If you are into Politics, for example, you could listen to BBC News. If you like fashion, you can listen to fashion podcasts like Oh Boy by Man Repeller series of podcasts on Fashion through i-Tunes.
For more BBC podcasts and topics, please click on here.

Tip 2:
Podcasts, what good resources they are! You can listen to them any time anywhere – at your desk or while you’re on the move. What better way to pass the time during a long commute than by immersing yourself in an entertaining podcast?

With a little dedication, Podcasts will help you quickly improve your listening skills and proficiency. One perk (benefit) is that podcasts often have transcripts (a written version of the audio). This means that you can listen and read at the same time, or look at a transcript if one part of a podcast confuses you.

You may also love the combination of reading, watching and listening. English language videos are available through the internet, and they may have great subtitles to make learning easier.

Sources:
http://www.onlinetefltraining.com/25-bbc-podcasts-for-advanced-english-learners/

http://www.fluentu.com/english/blog/esl-english-podcasts/

Health and Body Parts

These days many people are talking about bad healthy symptoms and it seems like everyone is feeling under the weather. Do you know why? 


Well, let's cheer everybody up with some doctor, doctor jokes. Are you familiar with them?


Here's a good one:

Doctor, Doctor my son has swallowed my pen, what should I do?
Use a pencil ‘till I get there.

And would you be able to talk to a doctor in English? If not, here are some basic words and expressions, which are mainly based on Health and body parts:







Do you know any other doctor, doctor jokes?


If so, please leave us a comment below. LOL