Present simple, Present Continuous

 Present continuous questions

(Present Simple) Watch the video and do the exercises

(Present continuous) Watch the video and do the exercises

Conversation practice

Question forms

There is or there are?

Isabel Allende and the 1973 Chilean Coup

Before watching. Try writing this list of facts as a biographical paragraph:

Sentence 1

Isabel Allende
Acclaimed novelist
award-winning author 
23 books
“The House of the Spirits” 
“Paula” 
“Daughter of Fortune” 

Sentence 2

latest novel: “In the Midst of Winter” 
a love story 
explores the plight of immigrants and refugees 

Sentence 3

books have been translated into 35 languages 
sold over 57 million copies around the world 

Sentence 4

Father’s first cousin: Salvador Allende, Chile’s president 1970 - September 11, 1973
Augusto Pinochet seized power
CIA-backed military coup

Sentence 5

Salvador Allende died in the palace that day

Sentence 6

Allende later fled to Venezuela

Salvador Allende

Soldiers attacking the Presidential Palace, September 11, 1973

Augusto Pinochet

Check how the bio paragraph was written by the news channel

Acclaimed novelist Isabel Allende is an award-winning author who has written 23 books, including “The House of the Spirits,” “Paula” and “Daughter of Fortune.” Her latest novel, “In the Midst of Winter,” is a love story that explores the plight of immigrants and refugees. Her books have been translated into 35 languages, sold over 57 million copies around the world. Her father’s first cousin was Salvador Allende, Chile’s president from 1970 until September 11, 1973, when Augusto Pinochet seized power in a CIA-backed military coup. Salvador Allende died in the palace that day. Isabel Allende would later flee from her native Chile to Venezuela.

Watch:

Isabel Allende

Answer the questions

1. Where was Isabel Born?

2. What does the museum new exhibit include?

3. Where is Allende's new book set?

4. When did Salvador Allende become President of Chile?

5. Why did no one believe Allende when he warned that the CIA was undermining Chile's government?

6. What was Isabel's job at the time?

7. What is Isabel's opinion of the Catholic church?

8. Who was Eduardo Frei?

9. How long did the military stay in power?

10. Who was Pablo Neruda?

11. When did Neruda die?

12. What joke did Salvador Allende used to make about himself?

13. Which party did Neruda belong to?

14. Why did Isabel stand beside the ambassador of Sweden at Neruda's funeral?

Pablo Neruda

Intermediate Pronunciation in Use

 Intermediate Pronunciation in Use

5 Ways to Listen Better

In our louder and louder world, says sound expert Julian Treasure, "We are losing our listening." In this short, fascinating talk, Treasure shares five ways to re-tune your ears for conscious listening -- to other people and the world around you.

Watch:

5 Ways to Listen Better

Vocab:

 

retain

roughly

extraction

recognise

signal

distinguish

pink noise

to discount

embedded

the flow of time

 

identify, keep, approximately, taking out, message, to think sth is unimportant, the passing of time, deeply part of, notice a difference, random ordinary sounds…

 

Pre-listening:

What is the difference between hearing and listening?

How long can you concentrate on something you’re listening to?

Do you prefer listening to music on speakers or with headphones?

Part 1. 0:00-2.00
Techniques we use to listen (extract meaning from sound):

 

Pattern recognition: example__________________

Differencing: example ______________________

Filters:

___________

___________

___________

___________

___________

___________

According to Julian

Sound can / can’t tell us about spaces

Sound is more closely / less closely related to our experience of time than other senses

The different reasons why we are losing our listening:

1

2

3

4

5

 

Part 2 2.00-

 

What is RASA?

 

R___________

A___________

S___________

A___________

 

What are the 5 ways of becoming a better listener?

 

___________

___________

___________

___________

___________

5 Ways Listening can change your life

Dictation

82 points

We spend roughly 60 percent of our communication time listening, but we're not very good at it. (18)

We recognise patterns to distinguish noise from signal, and especially our name. (12)

When I married my wife, I promised her I would listen to her every day as if for the first time. (21)

If you close your eyes right now in this room, you're aware of the size of the room from the reverberation and the bouncing of the sound off the surfaces. (31)

spend

use

define

create

recognize

retain

paying

discount

disappeared

promised

experience

receiving

being

fall short of

invented

take

pay

suggest

have

can

scream

get

becoming

cease

places

 

We are losing our listening. We ______ roughly 60 percent of our communication time listening, but we're not very good at it. We ______ just 25 percent of what we hear. Now -- not you, not this talk, but that is generally true.

Let's ________ listening as making meaning from sound. It's a mental process, and it's a process of extraction.

We _______ some pretty cool techniques to do this. One of them is pattern recognition. (Crowd noises) So in a cocktail party like this, if I say, "David, Sara, pay attention" -- some of you just sat up We _______ patterns to distinguish noise from signal, and especially our name. Differencing is another technique we use. If I left this pink noise on for more than a couple of minutes, (Pink noise) you would literally ______ to hear it. We listen to differences; we _____ sounds that remain the same.

And then there is a whole range of filters. These filters take us from all sound down to what we _______ attention to. Most people are entirely unconscious of these filters. But they actually _______ our reality in a way, because they tell us what we're ______ attention to right now. I'll give you one example of that. Intention is very important in sound, in listening. When I married my wife, I ______ her I would listen to her every day as if for the first time. Now that's something I _______ on a daily basis.

But it's a great intention to ______ in a relationship.

But that's not all. Sound _______ us in space and in time. If you close your eyes right now in this room, you're aware of the size of the room from the reverberation and the bouncing of the sound off the surfaces; you're aware of how many people are around you, because of the micro-noises you're_______. And sound places us in time as well, because sound always has time embedded in it. In fact, I would ______ that our listening is the main way that we _______ the flow of time from past to future. So, "Sonority is time and meaning" -- a great quote.

I said at the beginning, we're losing our listening. Why did I say that? Well, there are a lot of reasons for this. First of all, we ______ ways of recording -- first writing, then audio recording and now video recording as well. The premium on accurate and careful listening has simply_______ . Secondly, the world is now so noisy, (Noise) with this cacophony going on visually and auditorily, it's just hard to listen; it's tiring to listen. Many people ________ refuge in headphones, but they turn big, public spaces like this, shared soundscapes, into millions of tiny, little personal sound bubbles. In this scenario, nobody's listening to anybody.

We're becoming impatient. We don't want oratory anymore; we want sound bites. And the art of conversation is _______ replaced - dangerously, I think - by personal broadcasting. I don't know how much listening there is in this conversation, which is sadly very common, especially in the UK. We're _______ desensitized. Our media have to _______ at us with these kinds of headlines in order to ________ our attention. And that means it's harder for us to pay attention to the quiet, the subtle, the understated.

This is a serious problem that we're losing our listening. This is not trivial, because listening is our access to understanding. Conscious listening always creates understanding, and only without conscious listening _______ these things happen. A world where we don't listen to each other at all is a very scary place indeed.

 

B1 test prep

Vocab and Grammar Quiz

 B1 Listening Test Prep

She's leaving home (participle clauses)

 1. Waiting to keep

2. Standing alone

3. Leaving the note

4. Greeting a man

5. Stepping outside,

6. Silently closing

7. Clutching

8. Quietly turning

A. that she hoped would say more

B. her handkerchief

C. the backdoor key

D. from the motor trade

E. at the top of the stairs

F. the appointment she made

G. her bedroom door

H. she is free

 

Wednesday morning at five o'clock
As the day begins
1_____________________________________
2______________________________________

She goes down the stairs to the kitchen
3_______________________________________
4______________________________________
5_______________________________________

She, ... (we gave her most of our lives)
Is leaving (sacrificed most of our lives)
Home (we gave her everything money could buy)

Father snores as his wife gets into her dressing gown
Picks up the letter that's lying there
6________________________________________
She breaks down and cries to her husband
Daddy, our baby's gone.
Why would she treat us so thoughtlessly?
How could she do this to me?

She (we never thought of ourselves)
Is leaving (never a thought for ourselves)
Home (we struggled hard all our lives to get by)
She's leaving home, after living alone, for so many years

Friday morning, at nine o'clock
She is far away
7_________________________________________
8_________________________________________

She (what did we do that was wrong)
Is having (we didn't know it was wrong)
fun (fun is the one thing that money can't buy)

Something inside, that was always denied,
for so many years,
She's leaving home

She’s Leaving Home

Wednesday morning at _____ o'clock as the day begins
Silently closing her ________ door
Leaving the _____ that she hoped would say more
She goes ___________ to the kitchen clutching her handkerchief
Quietly turning the __________ key
Stepping outside she is _____

She (We gave her most of our lives)
Is leaving (__________ most of our lives)
Home (We gave her everything money ______ buy)
She's leaving home after living alone
For so many years (Bye bye)

Father snores as his wife gets into her dressing gown
Picks up the letter that's _______ there
Standing alone at the top of the stairs
She breaks down and cries to her husband "Daddy our baby's gone
Why would she treat us so ________________?
How ______ she do this to me?"

She (We never thought of ourselves)
Is leaving (Never a thought for ourselves)
Home (We ______ hard all our lives to get by)
She's leaving home after living alone
For so many years (Bye bye)

Friday morning at ____ o'clock she is far away
Waiting to keep the ____________ she made
__________ a man from the motor trade

She (What did we do that was wrong)
Is having (We didn't know it was wrong)
Fun (_____ is the one thing that money can't buy)
Something inside that was always _______
For so many years (Bye bye)


She's leaving home
She's leaving home

Quantifiers

 

Quantifiers

We use quantifiers when we want to give someone information about the number of something: how much or how many.


The following quantifiers will work with count nouns:
      many trees
      a few trees
      few trees
      several trees
      a couple of trees
      none of the trees

The following quantifiers will work with non-count nouns:
      not much dancing
      a little dancing
      little dancing
      a bit of dancing
      a good deal of dancing
      a great deal of dancing
      no dancing

The following quantifiers will work with both count and non-count nouns:
      all of the trees/dancing
      some trees/dancing
      most of the trees/dancing
      enough trees/dancing
      a lot of trees/dancing
      lots of trees/dancing
      plenty of trees/dancing
      a lack of trees/dancing

Practice and learn more here

Practice by speaking

Think about cities

 

What do cities need? Think of some basics.

 

 

What problems can cities have?

 

1. Too much ____________________

2. Not enough ___________________

3. A lack of ______________________

4. Too many _____________________

5. Almost no ____________________

 

What would the ideal city have?

 

1. At least a bit of _______________

2. Not too many ________________

3. Plenty of ____________________

4. Not too much ________________

5. A variety of _________________

6. As little ___________ as possible.

7. Enough ____________________

8.An abundant supply of _________________

9. A few good __________________

10. Very little __________________