Retelling the story

We agreed that a good story teller keeps their story by including a lot of details in it. Next lesson, you are going to retell the story you'd found in a newspaper or online on a topic that interests you. When you prepare your stories you need to include the following:

• who? (Who is the main character in your story? Are they famous? What is special about them? Age? Marital status? Gender?) 
• where? (Where is your story taking place? Can you briefly describe it?)
• what? (The main events of the story in order, emotions of the characters, your own opinion)
• so what? (What happened in the end? What's the 'finale'/ 'punch line'?)

Also think about what tenses you're going to use and how you're going to interest your audience with your story (Will it be the story itself? Your tone of voice? The pace of your speech? Special words?). Below, I'm including the links to the audio recordings we listened to so that you have an example of a story that is well 'retold' and an example of a story that lacks details and therefore is quite boring. 

Open the links below and click on 'Download file' on a page. The file will open in a media player on your computer. 

Story that lacks details (bad example of story telling) 

Story that includes details (good example of story telling)

I am also putting an electronic copy of the chapter we are working on now. At the end of it, you'll find a tapescript of both stories on p. 17 & 18. 

Chapter 2 Level 1

Past Perfect

What a discussion we had about Past Perfect yesterday! I'm happy to see that you are so inquisitive and try to go deeper into understanding this grammar point. So the most important thing for you is to recognise it and understand why it is used.

So to recognise it you need to know that we form it by using had and past participle. 

E.g. When I arrived Ann had just left. 

You also need to know that we use Past Perfect to:

• to show that one action happened before another action in the past: I did not have any money because I had lost my wallet.
• to show that something started and continued for a period of time in the past up until another action in the past: I had already studied for two years at university by the time I was 20. 

On the other had, you need to keep it in perspective. Past Perfect is quite a low frequency tense and so be careful not to overuse it. In every day speech, when you recall events in a chronological order you just use Past Simple: 

I switched on the TV and I went to the kitchen to have something to eat. 

rather than

I had switched on the TV and  I went to the kitchen to have something to eat. (Although this sentence is correct, there is no need to use Past Perfect in the first part of it.)


For further practice with how to create it watch the video and do the following exercises.


6 exercises (practice with the use of Past Perfect)

Exercises to practise the form of Past Perfect

Want to improve your listening skills? Read on...

I know that many of you have problems with understanding native speakers. Yes, they speak quickly. Yes, they speak with an accent (north-eastern accent God forbid!). Yes, they use slang. Yes, they don't pronounce the endings in words. You might feel scared and disencouraged from talking with the natives because of that. All in all, what's the point of speaking to them if you can't understand what they are talking about. So instead of going out and listening to people on the street, you sit at home and listen to Polish/Czech/Iranian/Pakistani/youchose radio and watch Polish/Czech/Iranian/Pakistani/youchose TV. 

But I want to encourage you to use podcasts. A podcast is basically an audio file that you can download to your phone, computer, tablet or MP3 player and listen whenever you like. The benefits of listening to podcasts are enormous:

• you can do it on the go, when you do the ironing, travel on a train, walk on the beach, etc. 
• you are exposed to real language 
• you can select the level of a podcast (some websites offer podcasts from elementary to advanced levels)
• you can select topics of your podcast according to your interests (at a cafe, at the train station, etc.)
• you have some exercises that go with the podcast to help you understand the content of it
• each podcast is usually accompanied by a transcript so you can listen and read at the same time
• you don't need English friends to practise with 
• it's FREE

Remember that listening is very powerful. It's a natural method of learning a language. This is how kids learn their first language and, as you might have noticed, after a couple of years they are pretty fluent in their speech, so it works! You not only listen and learn new vocabulary, but you also get accustomed to the accent and intonation of the English language. This is how you immerse yourself with the language and this is how you can make progress. So, below I've put a couple of links to websites that offer podcasts. The main one is of course the British Council website, but there are others as well. If you do a research of your own into other podcasts available, you might find that some websites will want to charge you for their material but you don't need to use them, a lot of high quality podcasts are available for free. Enjoy listening!

http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/elementary-podcasts

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/tae

http://teacherluke.wordpress.com/

http://www.eltpodcast.com/

http://www.podcastsinenglish.com/pages/level1.shtml

Defining relative clauses

Let's start with explaining the difference between a sentence and a clause.

We speak to the factory workers who have won the lottery jackpot. 

That's a sentence. It makes sense and can stand on its own. Within this sentence there are smaller units: clauses.

We speak to the factory workers who have won the lottery jackpot.

The first part of the sentence (in yellow) is called the independent clause because it can stand on its own (it would make sense if we put a full stop after the word 'workers'). The second part of the sentence (in green) is called the dependent clause because it doesn't make sense without the other part of the sentence. 

So clauses are smaller units within the sentence. They can either be independent or dependent. 

Relative clauses are always dependent clauses and we recognize them by the fact that they contain relative pronouns: who, whose, whom, that, which, where, when. Below is their usage:

Relative pronouns | Create Infographics

Some more examples of relative clauses are here. Can you see how relative pronouns join two sentences together?

I met a woman. She speaks six languages. 

I met a woman who speaks six languages. 

Jack was wearing a hat. It was too big for him.

Jack was wearing a hat which/that was too big for him.

Look at the house. I grew up there.

Look at the house where I grew up. 

I talked to a girl. I can't remember her name. 

I talked to a girl whose name I can't remember. 

The pronoun 'whom' might be quite troublesome, especially that you don't hear it very often in everyday speech. Below you have a link to a website that explains the use of 'whom' in more detail. 

Whom

For more exercises on relative clauses, visit this website:

http://www.xtec.cat/~ogodoy/sac/rephrasing/relclex1.htm

Newspaper headlines- why are they difficult?

Many non-native speakers of English find news headlines difficult to understand. No wonder, there are several methods that journalists use in order to attract attention of the reader. One of them is a pun -a play on words or a double meaning of words. Check the examples below (I put some clues under both headlines to help you understand):

What's the difference between 'piece' and 'peace'?

Do you understand the word 'undies'?

Other methods that are used by the journalists are shown below:


by mariolahejduk


 As you can see, the authors 'play' with the language to achieve desired effect- the interest of the reader. They leave the words out, they use tenses differently and they exploit double meaning of words. Below, you have a quiz of some words that are used in the headlines frequently. Beware, their meaning in headlines is different from their everyday use. Can you guess the meaning of the following words in headlines?




by mariolahejduk


Finally, do an internet research into headlines that contain the words from the quiz. What can you say about the meaning of the words? Does it match the meaning of the correct answer in the quiz? Or maybe there is yet another meaning to the word, e.g. 'to axe', apart from meaning 'to cut', can also mean 'to remove'. Put your findings and the headlines you found in the comment box!

Level 1 Literacy (Introduction to the course)

Watch the clip with introduction to our course:

10 years of Facebook

Can you imagine your life without Facebook now? Do you think it has a positive or negative influence on people's lives, especially the lives of teenagers? Can you go one day without checking your status and posting on Facebook?

Below is a link to a very interesting article about the first 10 years of Facebook in numbers and the numbers are staggering! The world wide craze that Facebook caused is truly mind boggling.  Why do you think that is?

The article is here: Facebook: ten years of social networking