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    Friday, March 31, 2006

    Archibald Prize, reports & copy right

    On Thursday 13th April we are going to go to the Art Gallery. Download and print the workshet The Archibald Prize Excursion.

    Go to Train Timetables if you want more practice on how to read them.

    Go to our forum and give your opinion to the last topic.

    You have to publish your report on your hometown. Download this worksheet, Written Skill, Report: Places,Checklist to help you with analysing the structure and linguistic freatures of reports already published in our blog.

    To learn more about the importance of copy right, visit Creative Commons flash show Get Creative.
    • Melinda from Time4English has created some car insurance related exercises for you to do. Go to Intermediate level and do 7A and 7B. I will print a webquest on the same topic for your holidays. This is part of the legal topics that you wanted to deal with as thematic content for our course.

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    Wednesday, March 29, 2006

    Easter Show

  • Very soon we are going to break for the Easter holidays. One of the most important atractions is the Easter Show. One of our teachers has prepared a very good worksheet. Download it and then print it to do the exercises: Easter Show
  • Photo by dizzy @ flickr

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    posted by rosa ochoa @ 11:56 PM 0 comments

    Report writing (information text) Revison

    This is a bit of revision for your report writing.



    Last year David showed us some Australian native animals at the Australian Museum. Do you know their names?
    Do they belong to the same species? What's their main characteristic?

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    posted by rosa ochoa @ 1:56 PM 0 comments

    Tuesday, March 28, 2006

    Working Online

    1. Today I'm not posting any new podcasts to let you work on Liz's A Trip to Afghanistan. But you must go and visit Robert's blog. He has posted his first podcast. Next week he promised to help me show you how to do it. If you want to try recording your voice with audacity (or an mp3 player and then you edit it with Audacity) visit the instructions I posted in Sydney's People Podcast.

    2. Go to the forum. Last Tuesday was Harmony Day, but we were too busy to have a forum. We can look at it today. Harjit and myself already posted an entry. Today I would like to expand the topic to the Cronulla riots. What do you think about it?

    3. We have been learning how to read and write information texts or reports. In Time4English, Lower Intermediate, Vacation, you can get more ideas and information on animal reports. Remember to write one on an animal from your country of origin. And remember to use the structure:
    General Statement
    Description of parts (appearance; habitat; behaviour)

    Remember the linguistic features:
    simple present (Kangaroos are native Australian animals)
    noun groups (The red Kangaroo)
    generic subjects (The kangaroo/kangaroos/a kangaroo)
    always agree subject and verb ( The kangaroo has/Kangaroos have)
    use be/have
    use correct expressions of time (under a tree).

    4. Visit Blogging from the Tropics , a class blog from Brazil. Introduce yourself to the students whose links appear on the left sidebar. Their teacher, Bee, has invited my students to communicate with hers. They are teenagers, but as you will be able to see, their English is very good. Bee also suggests to write to a group of women in Young caucasus women .You will find links to them in every post. They write about very interesting topics. Read them and tell them what you think or ask them questions in comments.

    5. Go to Racism No Way, in the Game Room there are several puzzles. You can try the interactive crosswords. You can also create a poster in Graffiti Wall.

    6. Go to Time4English and finish all the activities in Lower Intermediate, 8 LIVING IN AUSTRALIA (this week you should be doing 8d Drownings and 8E Jellyfish)

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    posted by rosa ochoa @ 4:36 PM 0 comments

    Sunday, March 19, 2006

    Harmony Day 2






    1. Yesterday wasHarmony Day and we had morning tea with all the students in our class. We all come from different cultural backgrounds. Table manners are sometimes different. Look at our forum on table manners and write instructions on DO's and Don'ts of table manners for our parties. Include all the rules from all the different backgrounds. For example, in Spain you shouldn't leave your hand under the table at any time while you are eating (who knows what you are could be doing!), so the instructions sould be:
    Post your instructions in your blog.

    2. Listen to your beautiful introduction of yourselves in the podcast Who are we? and check the pictures at the bottom of this blog. I'll change them every now and then.

    3. Listen to Liz's interview, A Trip to Afghanistan . You will find out many interesting things about her and what she does when she's not teaching English.

    4. Go to Time4English, Lower Intermediate and listen to 8C Life Savers

    5. Also in Time4English, check the meaning of these Aussie slang words: aggro, barbie, bathers, brekky, cow, and grotty. You will find a Slang Dictionary on the front page (Home), below MENU.

    6. Liz taught you some words and expressions used in Australian English. Check this post for more information and games on Australia, Oz Quiz. Can any one solve the hidden message?


    AMEP-A celebrate Harmony Day

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    posted by rosa ochoa @ 8:11 PM 0 comments

    Tuesday, March 14, 2006

    Harmony Day

    Today's Work

    Photos by Josef Stuefer

    1. Today I would like you to be aware of Harmony Day . When is it celebrated and what does it celebrate? We might do furhter work in class.
    2. Go to this Computer vocabulary game with pictures to learn the language of your computer hardware. Do the first 2 exerecises only (first and 3rd page).
    3. Go to the forum and give your opinion on table manners. Before writing anything, you should read the link to Chopstick rules.
    4. In Sydney's People Podcast, listen to Touring Europe and answer the questions.
    5. Last week we couldn't do any work for Time4English, try to look at the exercises when you have time. Today I would like to thank Melinda from Time4English for having prepared exercises specifically directed at the topic we've been working on, Water Safety. Go to LowerIntermediate Unit 8 and listen to 8A SAFETY AT THE BEACH - DOs AND DON'Ts. It gives you another example of written instructions. You can use it as revision for your assessment with Liz on giving instructions. Remember that I don't put a link to it here, as we have a subscription and you have to log on!. Cick on the right side bar and then log on.
    6. Listen to 8B FLAGS ON THE BEACH.
    7. Also in Time4English Intermediate, go to MORE/ GRAMMAR BOOK and print the tense chart (under T). It's a very good summary of English tenses.
    8. Do the first exercise on the Past Simple.
    9. If you have any spare time, write anything you like in your blogs or comment on other people's blogs.
    10. You should also find time to answer the Commonwealth Games questions. It's part of Australian Systems and culture and you will be hearing a lot about them on TV.

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    posted by rosa ochoa @ 6:21 PM 0 comments

    Thursday, March 09, 2006

    Commonweath Games

    Peter Konnecke's photos


    One of our teachers, Nadia, has prepared this worksheet for all our students. You cna write the answers in a Word document. Then Save it As, and finally either print it and hand it in to your teacher, or email it to your teacher as an attachment.



    INTERNET SEARCH-COMMONWEALTH GAMES

    Helpful site: Commonwealth Games
    (check latest media releases)

    1. When and where are the 2006 Commonwealth Games being held?
    2. When and where were the first games held?
    3. When the games first started, what other name did they have?
    4. Which countries participated in the first games and which country won the first trophy?
    5. How frequently are the games held?
    6. Where were the last games held?
    7. Where are the next games going to be held?
    8. Which 3 countries hold the largest medal tally since 1930?
    9. Name Commonwealth Games sports starting with these letters: ABCDFGHJNRSTW
    10. How many Austrlain athletes are taking part in the 2006 games? How does this number compare with last games?
    11. What are the largest and the smallest Australian sport teams for 2006?
    12. These 3 Australian athletes will attempt their third consecutive gold medal in the same event in 2006. Which events are they? Ian Thorpe, Michael Diamond, Jane Saville
    13. Find the following 2006 Australian athletes and give some details:
    The tallest, the oldest, the youngest


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    posted by rosa ochoa @ 5:53 PM 0 comments