One last note

Don't forget our shared morning tea today after results.

One more site if you want to practice pronunciation over the holidays (especially if you're at home and not using English!!) Try
listen and repeat podcast.

Congratulations to all of you who passed. Have a very happy holiday, and if you are celebrating Christmas here - enjoy!! I'm sure I'll see most of you next year at some time...

Karen

More revision ideas

Have you tried this grammar practice site before? Particularly useful before the exams might be the quizzes for

• countable/uncountable
• prepositions
• simple past and present perfect

Good luck with your study over the weekend, and all the best with Monday's tests.

Vocab from unit 15

If you make a lot of money, what will you do with it? Buying a house is a good investment, but some people prefer to invest in the stockmarket. Investing in a good company might mean that your money makes a profit over a long time. However, if you are in a rush to make money, you could go to the horse racing and bet on the horses. Other people like going to the casino to gamble with their money.

Edward Carson was not as honest as people thought. He had not made wise investments and so he lost all his money. In order to get rich he stole money from his clients and went to the casino to gamble with it. Unfortunately this didn’t work, so he tried to bet on a horse which actually came last in its race. He was not lucky, as a company that he had just invested in collapsed a few days later. Carson decided to kill himself but got stopped by a police officer before he drove off the cliffs. In court the judge said he had suffered quite a lot, but that he should pay back the money that he owed.

My brother-in-law had a series of accidents a few years ago. He fell off the roof when he was checking the chimney. Then, a ladder collapsed under him when he was painting the house. Not long after that, he was knocked off his motorbike on the motorway. He has had three broken bones – both arms and a leg!

Revision

Well, exams start in around ten days time. Have you set some study goals for the next week?

Remember you can use this blog

• for ideas
• to remind you of some of the things that we have done over the term
• for suggestions on software and useful sites to help you practice English

Then there is your own blog. Go through all your writing carefully. Remember vocab that we have done in class and vocab that you have learned yourself. And of course, keep practising your writing!

As well, there is also Blackboard which we have used several times during the term. Again, it is useful to remind you of language and structures that we have looked at. There are also lots of ideas from the LLC to help you out. This week the ideas are about vocabulary.

The text book is also incredibly useful for revision. Read through the reading and listening texts again, especially the ones which our vocab has come from. Use the grammar notes in the back to help you revise.

Podcasting

Try this podcasting for learners of English site, as it gives you a number of different podcasts (MP3 files) that you can listen to. I like the Brain Bubbles.

Another site is English Idioms where about once a week you can download someone talking about a different idiom.

Brilliant for your listening practice! Short, repeats the sentence a number of times and the language is just right for learners of English.

Christmas time

Children get very excited knowing that Christmas is coming. One way to help them count down the days until Christmas is an Advent calendar. (Advent is the four weeks leading up to the 25th December) Here is an online Advent Calendar specially designed as part of the BBC site for learners of English with a question for each day of Advent. You can actually win prizes if you send the answer in.

Bloglines

There are a number of different websites that will collect new items from sites that you like and you can look at them in one place, rather than going to each site yourself. These sites are called news readers. The one I use is Bloglines.

You need to register first (and you can do this in your first language, not English) and then list the sites that you want. You can put in the class blog for example, or any of your friends' blogs. News is also useful if you check bloglines every day and then there is podcasting.

One example of a useful site for learning English is BBC Learning English. If you go to this site it gives you the place to click on the RSS feed or news reader.

Try it!!

More ideas for writing on your blog

You should write on your blog at least once this weekend, and once next week. You can choose your own topic. There are some ideas below, or you might have your own ideas that are even better.

Topics related to the vocab and language structures that we have been studying over the past few weeks -:

What would your dream home be like?
Describe your home in NZ.
Describe the place where you live in your own country.
Describe a favourite room.
Have you been on any short trips recently? Where did you go? What did you do?
What do you think of designer goods?
What are the most important things in your life?
What are your hobbies? What do you do in your free time?

Your ideas

This is the time of year when we are thinking about changes in our programme for 2006. We are interested in YOUR ideas.

What do you like about the Certificate in Intensive English Programme?
What things are you not happy about?
What suggestions would you like to make?
How can we improve our programme?

Talk to your partner for a few minutes and then write a comment here giving any ideas that you have.