Is education killing creativity

Here's another interesting talk for you to reflect on and, maybe, discuss in class

Hi everyone,

This is the youtube clip that I have been trying to get onto the blog during the last few days, to no avail. Apparently there have been problems at google.

TED talks

Hi everyone,

Here is a website with short talks on a range of subjects, which you will find fascinating in themselves and helpful as a source of the kind of expressions that will make a good impression when you are doing your two-minute monologues. Enjoy!

Verbal reasoning practice for the CPE exam

This is a webpage that I mentioned to some of you last week. If you look at the list of types of tests on the left-hand side. I mentioned the verbal reasoning tests as good practice material for the reading comprehension paper in the CPE exam. But some of the vocabulary tests are also both useful, and good fun. Enjoy!

pronunciation practice

Hi everyone,

Here is a link to some pronunication activities which you might find helpful

Best wishes

Roger

Writing skills

The Mock exam is now over and done with. I thought it might be a good idea to use the blog to focus attention on some issues that have arisen from the different parts of the exam. To start with, here is a link to a site that you might find helpful as an overview of the types of subjects that come up as ARGUMENTATIVE essays or articles. Look at some of the essays themselves. You will find lots of good examples of the kind of language that is useful for expressinig your opinions.

a great source of idioms

Hi everyone,

Here is a great source of idiomatic expressions, courtesy of THE FREE DICTIONARY. The link I have provided is to expressions based on the word "WORD".

Enjoy

Flo-Joe exam practice

Good evening everyone,

Here is the exam practice website which I mentioned in class today. I suggest that you try the use of English paper, and try to do it in the time available in the exam.

Some more information for you. I suggest that we do the Mock exam between Wednesday February 9th and Monday 13th. Please let me know if these dates do not suit you.

Best wishes

CPE essay for next week

Hi everyone,

Just in case you have missed either of the last two classes, let me just remind you that I would like you to do the essay on p 77 of masterclass. Note that it is an ESSAY format. Please look carefuilly at the example that you have on page 76. Study the questions on page 76 relating to this example.

Here is another example of the same kind of essay. The subject is GLOBALISATION and it was written by someojne who was preparing for the IELTS exam.

Enjoy

Roger

The population time bomb: is it a myth?

Hello everyone,

Here is the article I showed you inclass today. As well as being interesting, it could prove to be a good source of the kind of language that could be used in your essay. I will post some other links to help you with your essay during the next few days.

Best wishes

Roger

10:10 global warming awareness raising campaign

Last week, and next ...

Good evening everyone,

Last week the first exam focus was the first part of the Reading paper. This is the exercise consisting of three texts (in the exam the texts will be completely unrelated). We did some work from some worksheets which I gave you and also from the first two pages of chapter 5 in the book. We also did the vocabulary work on these texts on page 68.

The second exam focus was the first part of the Use of English paper, the open cloze, as it is sometimes called. We used another worksheet for this, based on a cloze passage that had been used in a CPE exam. We noticed that the main difference between the gaps in the first part of the reading, and the first part of the U of E is that the former is mainly LEXICAL while the latter is GRAMMATICAL.

For homework I asked you to do the cloze text on page 69 in the book.

The topic we began to look at last week was the environment, a topic which often appears in the CPE exam. As well as the texts I have already mentioned, we also watched the video which I have already uploaded on the blog.

Tomorrow we are going to focus on ways of talking about the future. We will use some of these forms to talk about what changes we anticipate in different areas of life during the next 50 years or so.

I will be giving you the first composition topic of this term either on Wednesday or Friday. It will be an ESSAY. In the meantime, think about different aspects of essay writing. Think about these questions:

• What are some of the differences between an essay and an article, report, proposal or letter?
• Who is an ESSAY usually addressed to? Who is the target reader?
• Is it more important to organise an essay into paragraphs than any other writing-task format?
• In preparation for writing a good essay, find examples of good writing practice in (short) articles about the environment in magazines like THE ECONOMIST. Letters to the editor in magazines and good newspapers are often good sources of fairly short texts with good vocabulary and useful expressions.

Our environmental future?