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ELLA is back!

There are new units in ELLA (English Language Lab Asturias) for you to do online. The units cover the three levels taught at schools of languages.

Have a go! Try them and enjoy English. There are lots of activities and lots more are coming. I’m sure you’ll find them useful.

Using “advanced” structures

We are advanced students of English, aren’t we?  Then, let’s show it!

It is by using a wide variety of structures and vocabulary that we show our command of a language, and the best way to show that we have an advanced level of English is by using advanced structures.

If you want to do some revision on Passive Voice, have a look at what we have done in our lesson today.

View this document on Scribd

Help for your orals

In Maria Valdes’s blog you can download some helpful advice for your orals, even if you are lost for words!

This is the link.

Thank you Maria. I’m sure my students will appreciate it.

Audio Examples of English IPA Symbols

The following pages contain charts of the IPA phonetic symbols with the examples spoken using RealAudio technology. The first page contains vowel and diphthong sounds, the second focus on consonant phonemes. 

VOWELS

CONSONANTS

‘He who has two languages has two souls’…

I can’t remember who said that, but I think it’s true and that it is the main reason why we feel akward when we speak a foreign language. We feel self conscious when we hear ourselves uttering foreign sounds or using different intonations. We sound “different”, not ourselves and this can be a little bit embarrasing. But it is a feeling we have to fight if we want to speak other languages, communicate with people from other cultures and get to know them. It’s just a question of resorting to our sense of humour, of being able to laugh at ourselves, I think. We don’t have to be word-perfect, nobody is, not even native speakers so although I agree that we have to aim high in order to achieve results, there’s also the danger of aiming too high, unrealistically so, as this can only lead to failure …

I think that as with everything in life, practice makes perfect. The more you speak, the more confident you will feel, the more used you will get to yourself speaking English, to your “other soul” …

So, my advice is: relax, use your English as much as you can: read in English but read things you find interesting, listen to English, watch films or TV shows you like, speak in English, write in English (here in this blog for instance): do things you enjoy doing and do them in English, and don’t worry too much about getting a perfect accent or being totally accurate, after all you can have a successful Hollywood career without that!

clj

Public Speaking Skills

Speaking in English is, for most of us, one of the most demanding things. As advanced students of English you are expected to talk fluently and in such a way that not much effort is required from the listener to understand you.

You are expected to give clear, systematically developed descriptions and presentations, with appropriate highlighting of significant points, and relevant supporting detail. You are also expected to give clear, detailed descriptions and presentations on a wide range of subjects related to your field of interest, expanding and supporting ideas with subsidiary points and relevant examples.

When you are taking part in a conversation you are expected to communicate with some confidence on familiar routine and non-routine matters, to exchange, check and confirm information, deal with less routine situations and explain why something is a problem.

I understand that reading this can be distressing, but if we don’t set ourselves high standards we´ll never improve and, we want to improve, don’t we?

You can  download and print a PDF document which gives you ideas on how to prepare a short speech and a checklist of things to be taken into account.

PUBLIC SPEAKING SKILLS