Verbs and Time

 Infographic to revise basic Verb Tenses and those time expressions that usually complete the sentences.

Writing Professional Emails

HOW TO WRITE A PROFESSIONAL EMAIL

Infographic and scheme with main parts of a formal email.

You can use it as a quick guide or as a checklist.

Email Structure Overview

A professional email usually includes the following parts:

• Subject
• Greeting
• Opening
• Body
• Closing
• Sign-off

STEP-BY-STEP guide

1. Subject

• Purpose: To clearly show the reason for your email.
• What to include: A short and specific description of the main message.
• Tone: Clear and professional.
• Example: Request for information about the training course

2. Greeting

• Purpose: To address the recipient politely and professionally.
• What to include: A formal or neutral greeting, depending on how well you know the recipient.
• Tone: Polite and respectful.
• Example: Dear Ms Smith,

3. Opening

• Purpose: To introduce the reason for writing.
• What to include: A clear and direct opening sentence.
• Tone: Professional and neutral.
• Example: I am writing to enquire about your services.

4. Body

• Purpose: To explain your message in a clear and organised way.
• What to include: The main information, organised into short and clear paragraphs.
• Tone: Professional, clear and concise.
• Example: I would like to confirm the details of our meeting scheduled for next week.

5. Closing

• Purpose: To signal the end of the message and indicate the next step.
• What to include: A polite closing sentence.
• Tone: Polite and professional.
• Example: I look forward to your reply.

6. Sign-off

• Purpose: To close the email appropriately.
• What to include: A standard professional closing formula.
• Tone: Professional and courteous.
• Example: Kind regards,

PROFESSIONAL EMAIL STYLE

• Be clear and concise
• Use a polite but professional tone
• Organise your ideas logically
• Use standard professional expressions
• Avoid informal language

Final Check

Before you send your email, check that:

• All parts of the email are included
• The tone is professional and polite
• The message is clear and easy to understand

 

Animals and Pets

Animals and Pets Infographic

Common vocabulary related to animal and common pets.

• List of common pets

• Body parts

• Adjectives to describe pets

• Actions. Verbs related to animal actions

• Objects related to pet world

• Taking care. What we do to properly take care of our pets

• Animal sounds

Tap image to enlarge

 

English Pronunciation with Genial.ly

Time to play!!

These days I'm trying some of Sandbox Educación extensions to create Genial.ly games for my students. As you may already know, possibilities are endless!!

I've tried creating a Memory game to practise English pronunciation with some homophones.

It's a small game with a few words but you can reuse the template to change words, images and so on.

Hope it helps!

English Homophones

A game with Prepositions of Movement

Time to play

Why not playing a game to revise some verbs and prepositions of movement in English.

This time, I bring a version of the so famous game "Who wants to be a millionaire?" to practise this grammar and vocabulary topic. The games are made with one of those fantastic templates from Sandbox Educación,

There are two games and in both of them students will have to guess the correct preposition to complete the sentence.

Prepositions of Movement Game 1

Prepositions of Movement Game 2

Cambridge Vocabulary for PET: Phrasal Verbs

 

Time to face Phrasal Verbs, again?!?

We all know studying Phrasal Verbs is a tricky issue, so just trying to ease the pain, here you are some Quizlet flashcards with B1 level Phrasal Verbs.

If you don't know Quizlet yet, have a look at this post although, being such an intuitive tool, you can just start playing the sets below.

Not only for students, teachers can also play Quizlet Live in class and thus introduce a revision game in the lesson.

You'll find the same Phrasal verbs in three different sets:

• B1 Level Phrasal Verbs "English-English"
• B1 Level Phrasal Verbs "English-Spanish"
• B1 Level Phrasal Verbs "Find the Preposition"

Let's go for it!!

B1 Level Phrasal Verbs "English-English"  

 B1 Level Phrasal Verbs "English-Spanish"  

 B1 Level Phrasal Verbs "Fin the Preposition"

Irregular Plurals

Just a short post to share this list of irregular purals in English.

At the botton half of the sheet you'll find some words with a Greek or Latin origin.

Get ready for the FIRST Cambridge exam

As I did for the PET Level Cambridge exam, I also collected questions, and answers, together with some resources, during a course to prepare the FIRST Level Cambridge exam.
(See my list of resources for PET exam)

In this paper you will find:

• Dictionaries
• Sample paper exams
• Sample online exam
• Listenig, reading, grammar....exercises

Donwnload PDF

Get ready for the PET Cambridge exam

When teaching I usually encourage students to ask questions and ask for more information than the one given in the book, I trully belive that students learn what they really need to learn. Besides, it's a good way to keep them engaged and create a good class atmosphere.

During a course to prepare the PET Level Cambridge exam, I collected all those questions, and answers, together with some resources.
(See my list of resources for FIRST exam)

In this paper you will find:

• Dictionaries
• Sample paper exams
• Sample online exam
• Listenig, reading, grammar....exercises

Hope it helps.

Download PDF

4 infographics to improve writing; connectors and phrases

I'm bringing today a collection of very useful infographics to level up writings and compositions.

You'll probably find this information under the name of connectors, linking words or phrases and, for sure, you'll find thousands of images.

I've collected these ones because I highly recommend the webs where I found them. Don't forget to visit them for info on other topics.

So, here you are the infographics and links to the original source.
In all of them you'll find connectors, well organised, to adjust writing to communicative purpose.

Aprende Inglés Sila
PDF Printable
Pronunciation of words
 

Fluent Land

Cork English Teacher
(Facebook page)

Connectors

Phrases with grammar tips

3 ready to use Christmas activities

Christmas is coming, a time for having fun in class with English.

In this post I'm sharing 3 reading activities I found in ISLCollective.

🚩Remember to visit this site, you'll find lots of resources for your classes, well organised and ready to use 👍

1. On Christmas Eve. by MrsFrobisher

2. An English Christmas by SCouleon

3. Christmas time by 1mada

Interactive Notebook's Table of Contents

Working with Interactive Notebooks can be very rewarding, you can have a look at my students' work in Pinterest, but it also requires perseverance and being a well organised person.

The "Table of Contents" is a must in this methodology.

To make sure that all of your students have all the information, and the right one, you can give them a sample table.

Here you have the table I made for my students. You can download and edit it so you can make the most of it.

TIP: You can share the table in Drive, blog...and give "edit permission" to students. This way the whole class will have access to the document so that keeping it complete will be a collaborative work. Besides, in case a student needs to confirm some information, he or she can check it easily.

Table of contents / Interactive Notebook from Verónica Alconchel

Hope it's useful!

English podcasts for listening activities

Using real English in class not only benefits listening and speaking skills, it can also be very engaging for students.

We can find lots of websites on the net with really good podcasts to take to the classroom.

Ivoox (also known as Audiokiosko) is one of those websites which, besides, has an App, so you or your students, can listen to real English audios anywhere, anytime.

What you can find in Ivoox

• On demand podcasts

• Audiobooks

• Conferences

• Documentaries

• ....

• On line radio

• Talk radios

• Music radios

My selection of channels for the English class

• Luke's ENGLISH Podcast

• Aprende ingles con La Mansión del Inglés

• Audio en inglés podcasts por Inglés.fm

• All Ears English Podcast

App to download

• Google Paly

• App Store

• W. Phone

Have a look at Ivoox, it’s free, and start improving your English.

Animals and parts of their bodies - Flashcards

New sets of Flashcards to revise some vocabulary while playing.

Remember you can print them, create some tests with this vocabulary, and of course, print these tests.

1. Animals (print flashcards)

2. Animals: Body parts (print flashcards)

Enjoy your learning!!


To know all the possibilities that Quizlet offers you, read my previous post.

Halloween Activities - British Council

Image by lumpi

Still in time to celebrate Halloween in the classroom.

Ready to use activities from the British Council's section "LearnEnglish Teens".

Levels B1, B2

Short texts with interesting facts about how British people celebrate Halloween. On line exercises or printable worksheets.

• True / False
• Vocabulary grouping
• Gap filling

Go to British Council page

Elementary English Adjectives Flashcards

When preparing lists of vocabulary for students, it's always difficult to determine which words you're going to include.

One never wants to forget those words that might be useful for our students in the future. But there's a point from which we must start, and here it is.

This is a list with some basic adjectives that every student should know. This is for an elementary level but students with a higher level can also play with them while revising.



And I said "play" because with Quizlet flashcards you learn by playing.

At the bottom right corner you can choose among:

• Four Study modes:
• Flashcards
• Speller
• Learn
• Test
• Two Games
• Space Race
• Scatter

Now it's time to start learning and playing

Print the list of words or print the flashcards

Practise your listening skill

Revising the resources I found in the past, I have rediscovered AgendaWeb. What a great site!

In this site you will find a wide range of exercises to improve your English: Vocabulary, Grammar, Reading, songs.......and listening.

Today, I want to stop at this skill; listening. There are a lot, and I really mean a lot, of resources to practise your listening.

These resources are organised at a first stage in: 

• Comprehension Exercises 
• Dialogues-Podcasts 
• Audio Books 

Once you enter each section, you find, now organised according to level, a huge variety of exercises.

To have a clear overview of the kind of exercises you can find, I've made the scheme you can see below.

You'll get the links to all the exercises in AgendaWeb-Listening

(Click on the image to make it bigger)

Films Review - Fill in the gaps

Do you know what are the famous Sci-Fi films Interstellar, Gravity and 2001 Space Odyssey about?

Read the following reviews from the Reader's Digest and fill in the gaps with articles first, and prepositions later.

You can download and edit the file.

Have a look first.

Vocabulary: Clothes & Jewellry

Recently, I've made a new set of flashcards using Quizlet. This time I made it to study some vocabulary related to Clothes and Jewellry.

If you don't know this tool yet, you can click here to read a brief summary to know the learning possibilities it has, included games.

Apart from the flashcards, you'll also find below a funny game from English Flash Games. Remember to check this fantastic web when you want your students to learn new vocabulary. They have a great variety of games.

Enjoy the games.

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Click the image to play

Word Games & Jokes

Holidays is a good time for having fun with English.
Forget about studying for exams and have some laugh reading the Reader's Digest magazine.
In this popular, general and family interest, magazine you can find:

• Knock-Knock Jokes
• Corny Jokes
• Funny One-Liners
• Cartoons
• Funny Stuff

If you like Word Games try theese ones. You'll improve your English Vocabulary while having some fun.

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Click on the image to play.

	Form as many words as you can!
	Find hidden words in the scrambled grid of letters!
	Try to break the code!
	Find the hidden words in the mess of letters.
	Are you a walking encyclopaedia?
	It’s all the fun of crosswords without a newspaper!
	Get ready to be wowed with wonderful word fun!
	Link letters and clear space for flowers to grow!

Images and games from Reader's Digest