Salsita Almendros is returning to languagleab this week. Check out her blog Salsita Says to find out more about her classes.
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Hi Languagelab Students,
We have great news for you !
The welcome area has moved to a brand new and improved space for you to get technical help and meet the Helpers.
Click here to visit.
Thanks and see you soon in English City,
Jessie Teacher
Easter is the springtime holiday marking the rebirth of Jesus and the renewal of the Christian faith. It is a festival that has both Christian and Pagan symbolism with the Easter Bunny, eggs and spring meaning fertility and being re-born.
However, many people who are not religious celebrate Easter with chocolate eggs and eating hot cross buns. It is a popular holiday with children as they get to give and receive chocolate.
In many countries painting and decorating eggs is a traditional activity for the Easter celebration. This is a great video clip from Romania, a wonderful example of a decorative egg.
Define the following words and use them to write a short paragraph about Easter traditions in your country or if you don’t celebrate Easter a spring festival from your country:
1. decorate
2. resurrection
3. tradition
4. eggs
5. bunny
6. pagan
7. spring
8. chocolate
We would like to say Happy Easter to all our students - have a great Easter weekend and don’t forget to go and visit the city for more Easter vocabulary.
Hi Students !
The Languagelab Team have been in Cardiff for the IATEFL conference 2009. We have met a lot of interesting people including members of our team based in Spain - Daf Smirnov and Cristina ,the Spanish language team at Languagelab, who were lovely !
We will be posting some videos for you over the next few days so you can get some tips from people for Grammar and IELTS and also watch a video of the Languagelab Team taking part in a Pecha Kucha - we will be be having our own Pecha Kucha evening at Languagelab soon so watch this space. Ok so enjoy the video and if you want to participate in the Pecha Kucha evening contact jessie@languagelab.com.
Scott Thornbury is a teacher, teacher trainer, text book writer and an inspiration to many people and this is why I suggest that when you’re trying to decide on what English language learning book to buy, you look for one that he’s written.
If you go to his website you’ll not only be able to find the right book for you but you’ll also be able to follow him on ‘twitter (write to jessie@languagelab.com if you want to know more about what ‘twitter’ is and how to do it).
Scott Thornbury encourages teachers and students to think about the best way to learn vocabulary and grammar. He refers to something called ‘collocations.’ A collocation is a grouping of words in a sentence. When we learn which groups of words go together we may find it easier to put phrases together.
For example, do we say ‘turn on the button’ or ‘push the button?’ Do we say ‘watch television’ or ’see television?’
In my next blog, I’ll be looking at collocations,
See you next Monday!
Grammar Girl at Languagelab
What is this:? I am not asking you about the question mark. I am asking you about the two dots that came before the question mark.
A colon is a type of PUNCTUATION.
Use a colon
We use it before a list, summary or quote.
1) Before a list.
I could only find three of the ingredients: sugar, flour and coconut.
2) Before a summary.
To summarise: we found the camp, set up our tent and then the bears attacked.
3) Before a quote.
As Jane Austen wrote: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
We also use it to complete a statement of fact. It adds a little variety to your writing and allows you to experiment: it is used in place of the following or thus. Here is an example:
There are only three kinds of people: the good, the bad and the ugly.
If you would like to continue to learn about the colon try reading newspapers, books or articles and observing if and when the colon is used.
Teachers of English use lots of strange words that may not always seem clear. The words are used as a ’short cut.’ They’re labels that educators define so that next time you hear the word you can understand the whole meaning behind it. I suspect that if you asked a teacher of English they might not always be able to explain ALL the words in a way that would make you understand them because the meaning is too technical or has been misunderstood.
Take the word TENSE, for instance. I still have nightmares about the time I first started teaching and said to my students ‘Today we’ll look at the present perfect tenses.’ I hadn’t realised that they would need more than an explanation of the ‘present perfect’ when a student said ‘Miss Miss. What does ‘tense’ mean?’ I knew what it meant and how to use it but I couldn’t explain it in a clear and simple manner for an elementary student. I said ‘Er … erm … when we look at the present perfect the meaning of the word ‘tense’ will become clearer.’
Today I’m giving myself a second chance to explain the NOUN ‘tense’ and here it is:
It is an expression of a location of an ACTION in TIME.
Does that help? Of course there is much more to it than that but as long as you remember that it is about the time or the ‘kind’ of time, you’ll be all right.
When you are choosing the right word to say or to write it is quite understandable for you to hesitate and wonder whether to use ‘talk’ or ’speak,’watch’ or ’see.’
This week I wanted to give you a very small set of useful words with definitions. Please do reply to this blog with your own pairs of words or with questions about words.
Here are 3 sets of words:
Affect and Effect:
affect means ‘make a difference to’, whereas effect means ‘a result’ or ‘bring about (a result)’.
Desert and Dessert:
Dessert is a waterless area and dessert is thethe sweet course!
Councillor and Counsellor:
a councillor is a member of a council, whereas a counsellor is someone who gives guidance on personal or psychological problems.
Commonly confused words can be learned with a little help from a teacher and a little work from you. When you are not sure what they mean, do go to a dictionary and read their definitions. Remember, building your word power is an important step in your development as a language learner.
After a well deserved holiday Salsita Almendros is back this week and will resume her popular TOEFL speaking practice classes. Join her on SL Sunday, Monday and Tuesday from 11am to 12 pm in the garden at the museum.
Languagelab currently holds the record in Second Life for raising the most money in 24 hours for charity - over $1,000 USD and in total $2,000 USD. This was last year for the China Earthquake Fund. Some of our students and helpers wanted to help their fellow citizens and we had a great 24 party with singing, dancing and special guests. So this year we want to break our record for fund rasising and help even more people!
On Friday 13th we are having a fundraising event to raise money for the charity ‘Comic Relief‘. This is a charity whose aim is to help free the world from poverty.
This is a quote from their website:
“The money we raise is allocated to a wide range of grants and social investments aimed at delivering real and long-lasting change to the poorest, most vulnerable people at home and across the world; as well as informing the public and young people in particular about global citizenship and the underlying causes of extreme poverty”
Our theme is the circus so we will have fun, games and lots of music - dress up as the ringmaster, a lion or put on your red nose and donate for a good cause!
For more information on how you can help visit our welcome area or email info@languagelab.
We need your help - if you are a DJ in SL or have some great costumes you want to share come along everyone is welcome all day on Friday 13th at our Welcome area.
See you there,
Jessie Teacher
