Cambridge PET free resources

Hello dear teachers.

Today I prepared a list of useful links where you will find free resources to use in your PET lessons. 

If you can recommend any other, please send it so we can include it here.

Let's get going with the links:

flo-joe
In this website you will find some Practice tests (not the listening part), grammar exercises and activities related to vocabulary topics.

Vocabulary PET list

This is a pdf file with all the terms your students will need to manage when sitting for PET.

Free PET worksheets

This is a collaborative website where teachers upload their worksheets and share them with their fellow teachers. It requires registering but it is free. 

Free listening exercises online (PET format)

Listening sample exercises to use in class. It requires wifi and speakers of course.

Online extra practice

Recommended online worksheets to solve in class with a smartboard.

Enjoy!

@esl4freeblog

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Reading Comprehension samples for FCE

Hello everyone! Today I bring you some pdf mock files that will help your students develop a bit more their reading skills if they are preparing for First Certificate.

The Reading and Use of English paper has seven parts and 52 questions. The paper contains texts totalling approximately 3,000 to 3,500 words and candidates are expected to understand different types of text, such as fiction, newspapers and magazines, promotional and informational materials.

For the reading paper, students only have one hour and fifteen minutes. Here are the sample papers with the answer sheets you can download for free and use wisely in your lessonsClick here. 

Learn nouns through apps

Hello dear teachers.

As I have done in a previous opportunity, today I bring an education app that can be installed in tablets and phones. It is called Check Correct English Grammar - Noun List Exercises. With this app, your students will be able to practice Compound and Collective Nouns.

Check it and leave your comments here about it.

Downloads available in free version: iOs App Store.

Tips to estimulate quick learning on your young students

Sometimes learning english can be hard for young learners because they find it boring, because they spend already too much time among school books and whiteboards, or simply because they have amazing auditive memory instead of reading memory. 

What can we do with those students? Encourage them to learn through less conventional ways, through movies and songs. Art is a well defined runway of language learning. The key is to find short clips or trailers that can match your lesson plan. Today with Youtube, that is a piece of cake for good teachers.

Here are some tips that can help you plan a lesson for these particular group of students:

1. Choose an interesting movie

2. Select a movie that matches your current English level. 

3. Movies with subtitles (cc in youtube) are always more encouraging for young learners. 

4. Repeat without subtitles after the kids have been familiarized with the vocabulary and the clauses of the dialogues in the scenes. 

6. Download VLC player, it works with most video formats and has a low crash rate and it's free. 

Now be honest with yourself, who wouldn´t love to learn academic abilities while watching a scene from Star Wars or Harry Potter? Huh?...

English Listening Lesson Library Online

Hello my dear fellow teachers!Today I bring you a suggested website full of online audio sketches for you to use in your lessons and practice listening skills with your students. 

This compilation website contains files you can listen to online. Over 2500 free lessons featuring speakers from around the world. All lessons comes with audio or video, a quiz and script.

Visit elllo.org and enjoy it in class!

Writing essays: Basic tips

Teenage students usually find it very difficult to write their complex and critical ideas in a logical and well ordered format. This is why writing essays is so difficult for them. It's not the lack of ideas, the problem is not knowing what to do with those ideas.

Here is a quick guide with 14 steps that you can share with your students so they can write a good essay with the expected worldwide format:

1. 1. Select the topic of your essay.
2. 2. Choose the central idea, or hythesis, of your essay. For example: Information technology has revolutionized the way we work.
3. 3. Outline your essay into introductory, body and summary paragraphs.
4. 4. The introductory paragraph begins with an interesting sentence. For example: Home workers have grown from 150,000 to over 12 million in the past 5 years thanks to the wonders of the computer. There are a number of types of introductions: Interesting statistics, a quote from a famous person, or a rhetorical question such as "Did you know that ...".
5. 5. After this first sentence, add your thesis statement from above. The thesis clearly outlines what you hope to express in the essay.
6. 6. Use one sentence to introduce every body paragraph to follow. This linking to ideas you will develop further in your body paragraphs provides structure to your essay.

1. 7. Finish the introductory paragraph with a short summary or goal statement. For example: Technological innovation has thus made the traditional workplace obsolete.
2. 8. In each of the body paragraphs (usually two or three) the ideas first presented in the introductory paragraph are developed. Remember that referring to ideas first introduced in the initial paragraph provides structure to your essay.

1. 9. Develop your body paragraphs by giving detailed information and examples. For example: When the Internet was first introduced it was used primarily by scientists, now it is common in every classroom.
2. 10. Body paragraphs should develop the central idea and finish with a summary of that idea. There should be at least two examples or facts in each body paragraph to support the central idea.
3. 11. The summary paragraph summarizes your essay and is often a reverse of the introductory paragrah.
4. 12. Begin the summary paragrah by quickly restating the principal ideas of your body paragraphs. For example: The Internet in the home, benefits and ease of use of modern computer systems...
5. 13. The penultimate sentence should restate your hypothesis of the essay. For example: We have now passed from the industrial revolution to the information revolution.
6. 14. Your final statement can be a future prediction based on what you have shown in the essay. For example: The next step: The complete disappearance of the workplace.

BBC Bitesize KS3 English Website

Hello dear teachers. I know it has been a while. However, I wanted to share a golden mine that I have been using online to prepare my Grammar, Reading and Listening lessons.

The website that I bring today is oriented to young students from Primary School. It is called BBC Bitesize.  Most of the lessons are oriented to teachers so they can prepare their explanations in advance. 

At the end of each chapter, there is an interactive quiz that you can solve together with your students. It's a great source of theoretical information and tips to use in class so your young learners improve their reading technique and writing skills.

Check it out by clicking here