HAVE FUN WITH ENGLISH C1

Hi, everyone! Welcome to another post on my English teaching adventures! Today, I'm excited to share an activity about understanding cultural nuances in the English language classroom. This idea sprang from a particularly inspiring experience I enjoyed a few weeks ago: the " II Jornadas de Escuelas Amigas " at EOI La Carolina, where I participated in many interesting workshops. These were not only enlightening but also deeply encouraging. So, I just can't wait to tell you! The workshops underscored the importance of motivating students and designing attractive activities... and here I am:  brimming with the new ideas I discovered then and eager to implement them in my classroom. Thanks to Cristina Cabal, Carolina Sáez, Olga Peláez, Marisa Rodríguez, Javi Rico and Ana Pérez for their inspiring sessions! I wish I had had the opportunity to attend many more! In fact, the activity I'm about to describe is a direct result of the inspiration I drew from Cristina’s metho...

OMG! Time does fly! It has been ages since I last posted on my C1 blog. I have been as busy as a bee and had no time at all to devote to my facet as an amateur blogger. My apologies, everyone! Nothing can be done now but just... mend my ways! So, here comes a new update!💪 Going back to the grind in class after a holiday break (we have just enjoyed our Easter week!) has always proved to be challenging. Unfortunately enough, most students have got into the mood of getting away from their learning😉. That is why setting up the right class atmosphere on the very first session after the holiday is always on my top-priority list. No wonder some retrieval practice will do the trick!  So, I entered my classroom with a very positive mindset, determined to grab my students' attention and kick-start the lesson with a retrieval quiz. I designed it on @genially_es (I simply love it for quizzes!) to recall some of the expressions regarding fast fashion and social responsibility we had been work...

We have all been there staring at a blank page or a computer screen ready to plan our next class unable to think about how to come up with an idea to wrap up a unit that is about to finish. I usually tend to finish most of them up with a range of activities that consolidate knowledge from previous lessons. So, now that I am ready to complete Module 2 with my C1.1 Blended English Course I have just decided to conclude with a couple of fun class games. Here is how they go! I will start by getting students to recap all the things we have studied in the Module : education expressions, attitudes to ageing, benefits of having children, life stages, idioms related to age, syllabic consonants, conditional sentences,... You name it! Students will be given a certain amount of time to work with the person sitting next to them to shout out as many items as they remember, trying to get the highest number. Do not forget to keep a record of each team´s answers on the board! As soon as winners are ...

 👋 Dear school community! Welcome back to a new school year at  EOI Pontevedra . I am so looking forward to welcoming you all back to our friendly school! Above all, our newcomers: our blended English course students! You deserve a special mention this year as you are going to take part in a new promising experience. A new academic year is here and I have been working hard to get everything ready to meet you all! This year will certainly be strikingly different. Even so, motivation and hard work will be basic and will definitely have a significant impact on class performance. Again, my main priority as a teacher will be striving for a class atmosphere that fosters self-reliance, self-confidence, and a love of learning. I know I have made up my mind on a highly ambitious goal but promise to fight tooth and nail to stick to it! I hope this new course suits your needs as C1 English learners. Let´s roll out the red carpet and set the new course in motion. Here is our first challe...

It is that time of the year again and I have been racking my brains for an idea to welcome my students on their first day at school. In a flash of sheer inspiration, I just came up with this activity after recalling a video published by @esBritish  in January last year.  The start of a new year might be the perfect opportunity to set new learning goals and help students become more conscious about their learning chances. Let's give it a try! I will kick off by presenting this slide  to play the video a couple of times and, fingers crossed🤞, it will hopefully spark some interesting discussion. Students will be able to complete the first two questions by getting ideas from the video and some more debate will also come up regarding the last question on the slide. If everything goes as planned, some interesting learning tips will turn up! Once students are in the mood, I won't let this great opportunity pass by! They will have to take on some strong long-term commitment to t...

Have you ever wondered how to survive the C1 speaking test without killing yourself in the process? Not only can you survive, but you will also definitely succeed if you follow the steps in the presentation below. Top tips and tricks to do great and get your certificate... as easy as rolling off a log! 

In the  mediation  tasks of the C1 exam, both oral and written, you might be asked to either give a short descriptive speech or write a short descriptive report based on visual information or data. This visual information will be most commonly presented as line and bar graphs , pie charts or tables . You will definitely be asked to describe and analyze the information provided by selecting and reporting its main features. In the presentation below, I will be focusing on some of the key factors to be considered when dealing with data analysis. First of all, you will learn how to look for the most obvious information to eventually find out what the numbers on a graph are referring to. Our final goal would be coming up with a structured piece of text on the data analysis, which you will also be able to find out by clicking on each of the graphs! Ready? Pull your socks up and go! This presentation is based on the writing activities in Unit 4 of New Language Lea...

The C1speaking test in Galicia will definitely include a new task this year: Mediation . Students will have to mediate with each other and will be assessed according to their performance. But what does that exactly mean? They will be exposed to a text on a particular issue and will have to relay information and discuss the writer's attitude. Luckily, there are some useful expressions and collocations students can use to manage to pass on the information and convey the writer's message. This game below may help English students organize the chunks they can use to mediate effectively and pass the exam with flying colours!. Once the meaning is clear, just be ready to invoke the muses to inspire you during your exam!! 

My students have been working hard these days and the resulting work is as awesome as the padlet board below. They have been debating about a huge mass tourism project a real estator is planning to develop on Granville Island, a tropical haven in the Caribbean. Regional authorities, conservationists and journalists held a real meeting... in class! The students performed different roles to try and reach an agreement on whether the whacking seaside resort should be developed, which will also help them rework modal verbs. Anyone asking for more!?

Last week´s class with our language assistant was lots of fun! We learned quite a bunch of new words related to personality traits and used them to talk about different occupations. What is a politician like? What makes a good leader? Use the words below to brush up on your personality adjectives!

As a teacher, I am particularly interested in finding a balance between education technology and more traditional teaching methods. I am deeply concerned about using technology as an empowering tool to increase students' engagement and retention and enhance significant learning in class. But am I going too far with it? Am I shaping technology to my teaching style or is it just the other way round? I have asked my C1.2 students to prepare their initial assessment monologue on the issue. Their performances will  help me assess their level and also find out what their real motivations are and how suspicious they can be on using technological devices in class. I will also use their contributions as a guide to my own attitude towards using technology with them! I´ll keep you informed!

We have worked in teams in today's class. The goal of the task was to find out how many useful expressions we remembered that helped us build structured speeches. Being able to produce well-organized presentations is a must this year! After letting the groups cooperate for a while, here are the expressions they came up with. All in all, not bad after all! Have a look at the publication here to judge for yourselves.

According to the  Common European Framework of Reference for Languages  (CEFR) there are six standardised levels that a learner can aim at when studying a foreing language. It describes C1 level as follows: " the ability to communicate with the emphasis on how well it is done, in terms of appropriacy, sensitivity and the capacity to deal with unfamiliar topics ". Are you perfectly at ease with the language? Do you understand its subtleties and registers and do it without losing a hint of your motivation? If so, you have already achieved a high level of English ability to be used in both academic and professional contexts. If you don't... just don't panic! You have just enrolled the perfect course to meet the challenge and achieve the goal. You will not only gain certification for an advanced level test but also prove your high level of achievement in English. Follow the tips on the video below and you will rock! Be prepared for both academic or prof...

Beleive it or not, the school year is about to finish. It´s been almost eight months of hard work, studying and learning together. At this stage of the course, I always find it useful to look back and reconsider how much my students have evolved in the year. With this idea in mind, Padlet has just come in handy! I started the course recording some of my students' performances and uploading them on Padlet and I would like to get to the end by doing just so.... and then you can judge by yourselves. The board below will give my students the chance to compare their monologues at two different stages of their learning: the beginning and the ending of the school year. Hopefully, they have improved, progressed and matured and, most important of all, they might have also enjoyed the journey! Pity that farewell time is just round the corner... Anyway, I will always remember this as my first C1 teaching year. There'll be more students to come, and we will all benefit from th...

Part of this week´s classes have been devoted to try and figure out how to succeed in the C1 oral test students are about to take.  Certification Exams in Galicia are held at EOIs every June and EOI teachers assess candidates according to the standards given by the Xunta de Galicia . So, what are the main goals of these standards? How can students acknowledge what they are expected to do? Analysing the grid EOI schools use to assess their oral exam and discussing the pros and cons of a monologue performance in class have both been really inspiring activities. Here is what my students came up with after discussing the statements in the oral assessment grid in groups: With these ideas on the board, students assessed each other's performances and got very stirring feedback from their peers! Most important of all, they have learned how to enhance their speeches avoiding sloppy language:

I just love it when my students work in teams and the resulting work is as amazing as the padlet board below. We have been discussing a huge mass tourism project a real estator is planning to develop on Granville Island, a tropical paradise in the Caribbean. Local authorities held a real meeting... in class and we performed different roles to try and reach an agreement on whether the whacking seaside resort should be developed, which also helped us revise modal verbs. Anyone asking for more!?

Hi everybody, now that we almost know the goals we are aiming at this year, here are my students' first attempts at a monologue. You will be able to find the task on Unit 1 and I have collected all the resulting monologues in the padlet presentation below. Judge by yourselves! I think that this is the perfect start to a C1 course! Thanks to every single one of my students for their dedication and effort! I would just like to ask them for one last favour: Will you listen to the monologues and rate them for me, please? Add your comments and suggestions to every single monologue in the presentation and let's improve together! Enjoy!!