Posted in Advanced C1, Exam Preparation Class, Phrase of the Day, Proficiency, Vocabulary Classes

Proficiency Phrase of the Day #12: To prey on your mind

Worried bride” by spaceodissey is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Today’s phrase is…

To prey on one’s mind

Introduce it with some examples:

The problem has been preying on my mind for over a week now.

You mustn’t let past failures prey on your mind when making big decisions.

The expression is often used with “let” in imperatives: Don’t let it prey on your mind.

Lead students to the meaning: if a problem is preying on your mind it is worrying you or causing you anxiety.

Have students take part in a little therapy session in pairs or small groups:

  • Is anything bothering you at the moment?
  • Do you have any big deadlines or events looming on the horizon?
  • Do you have any big decisions to make coming up?
  • Do you have any regrets about recent things that have happened that you need to open up about?

Here’s the Quizlet set of all the previous phrases of the day.

Posted in Advanced C1, Exam Preparation Class, Phrase of the Day, Proficiency

Proficiency Phrase of the Day #11: There’s no telling/knowing

Today’s phrase is….

There’s no telling/knowing….

Introduce it with a few examples:

There’s no telling who’s going to win the next elections.

There’s no knowing how the situation in Ukraine is going to develop.

Lead students to the meaning: “nobody knows/it’s impossible to know”, point out that the expression is typically followed by a question word. Challenge them to work in pairs to complete the sentences below while covering a range of topics:

  • There’s no knowing/telling who…
  • There’s no knowing/telling what…
  • There’s no knowing/telling where…
  • There’s no knowing/telling how long….
  • There’s no knowing/telling how much….
  • There’s no knowing/telling which…
  • There’s no knowing/telling when…

Topics: politics, pop culture (music, films, video games, etc.), school/class/exams, class gossip, celebrity gossip, science and technology, finance and business, etc.

Here’s the Quizlet set of all the previous phrases of the day.

Posted in Advanced C1, Exam Preparation Class, Phrase of the Day, Proficiency, Vocabulary Classes

Proficiency Phrase of the Day #10: By the skin of one’s teeth

Today’s phrase is…

To do something by the skin of your teeth.

Introduce it to your students with some personalised examples from your own life:

I passed my driving test by the skin of my teeth, one more mistake and I would have failed.

My football team managed to win the league by the skin of their teeth, it came down to goal difference in the end.

Lead them to the meaning: by the thinnest of margins. Point out that it’s most commonly used in the contexts of exams/tests, elections or competitions.

The politician held onto his seat in parliament by the skin of her teeth.

The golfer qualified for the next round by the skin of her teeth.

I passed my Spanish speaking exam by the skin of my teeth.

Put students in pairs and encourage them to think of examples from their own life.

As a counterpoint, you could introduce the following opposite expressions:

  • to pass with flying colours
  • to sail/breeze through

Here’s the Quizlet set of all the previous phrases of the day.

Posted in Advanced C1, Phrase of the Day, Proficiency, Vocabulary Classes

Proficiency Phrase of the Day #9: Get out of hand

Today’s phrase is….

To get out of hand

Introduce it to your students with some personalised examples:

The party got a little bit out of hand after you left.

His Miley Cyrus obsession has got a little bit out of hand.

Help students to infer the meaning of the expression:

to become difficult to control

Have students discuss the following questions in pairs or small groups:

  1. Have you ever been to a party that got a bit wild?
  2. Have you ever attended or witnessed a celebration or protest that became difficult for authorities to manage?
  3. At school, were there specific times of day or times of the year when teachers had difficulty controlling students?
  4. Do you have any hobbies, tastes or pastimes that you think might be turning into obsessions?

Use this Quizlet set to recall previous phrases of the day.

Posted in Advanced C1, Exam Preparation Class, Phrase of the Day, Proficiency, Vocabulary Classes

Proficiency Phrase of the Day #8: Not be cut out for…

Today’s phrase is….

To not be cut out for something

OR

To not be cut out to do something

Introduce the expression to your students with a personalised example:

After just 2 days working for an insurance company, I decided I wasn’t cut out for an office job.

While at medical school my sister realised that she wasn’t cut out to be a doctor.

Have students infer the meaning: to not be the right type of person for that job/situation. Point out that it is almost always used in the negative and that it can be followed by “for” and a noun, or my “to” and a verb.

Put students in pairs and have them discuss the following jobs and situations. They should decide how suitable they think they are for them and to give reasons for their answers:

How well do you think you would cope in these situations?

  1. As a waiter in a busy restaurant on a Saturday night.
  2. As a board member of a big corporation.
  3. In an army on a battlefield.
  4. As an Olympic athlete.
  5. As a doctor in an emergency room.
  6. As an explorer in the 1500s.
  7. As a teacher in a class of 30 4-year-olds.
  8. As a teacher in a class of 30 14-year-olds.
  9. As a world famous celebrity.
  10. As an auctioneer selling world famous artworks.
  11. As a reclusive writer living in a cabin in the woods.
  12. As an astronaut piloting a rocket to Mars.

Use this Quizlet set for recall activities with previous phrases of the day.

Posted in Advanced C1, Exam Preparation Class, Phrase of the Day, Proficiency, Vocabulary Classes

Proficiency Phrase of the Day #7: Do wonders for

Today’s phrase is….

to do wonders for

Introduce it to your students with a personalised example:

“Getting away from the city for a couple of days did wonders for my mental health.”

Show them some more examples to help them grasp the meaning:

All that sunshine does wonders for your mood.

Yoga will do wonders for his fitness.

Fresh vegetables and pure water can do wonders for the liver.

Get a pet – my dog has done wonders for my soul.

The expression means to have a big positive effect on something. It’s most often used to describe positive impacts on physical or mental health, but can also be used to describe improvements to relationships or reputations.

The couples therapy did wonders for their marriage.

The announcement of the ceasefire did wonders for the country’s standing on the world stage.

Put students in pairs or small groups and have them think of some examples:

  1. A product or activity that has had a positive impact on their mental or physical health.
  2. Some advice you could give a couple who are going through a rough patch.
  3. Something that a celebrity did that had a really good impact on their career or reputation.
Posted in Advanced C1, Exam Preparation Class, Phrase of the Day, Proficiency, Vocabulary Classes

Proficiency Phrase of the Day #5: Contrary to Popular Belief, …

The phrase of the day today is….

“Contrary to popular belief,….”

Introduce it to your students with some examples:

“Contrary to popular belief, you can’t catch a cold just from being cold.”

“Contrary to popular belief, gorillas are shy and gentle creatures.”

“Contrary to popular belief, British cuisine is actually quite good.”

The expression is used to introduce a fact or statement that is the opposite of what most ordinary people think

Challenge students to be stereotype/myth busters. They can either choose to disprove a stereotype about people from their country/region using the expression, or they can disprove a commonly held theory or “old wives’ tale”.

Please post some of their example sentences in the comments!

Posted in Advanced C1, Phrase of the Day, Proficiency, Vocabulary Classes

Proficiency Phrase of the Day #1: Strange as it may seem…

I’m trying to introduce some micro-learning to my proficiency class by starting a “phrase of the day” system. I’ll collect them in a Quizlet set so I can revisit them.

The first one is:

Strange as it may seem, ….

OR

Strange as it may sound, ….

I’ll introduce it to my students in a sentence about myself:

Strange as it may sound for someone who is petrified of heights, I actually love rollercoasters.”

You can also use corpus websites like Skell, to show students more examples, though personalised sentences are always more effective.

Allow students to react to the meaning of the sentence. Do they think it’s strange that I like rollercoasters as Simeone who is scared of heights? How do I rationalise it?

Then have students come up with three examples about their own life. Encourage them to think carefully about some interesting or contradictory facts about themselves.

Have them read their sentences to each other and use it as a jumping off point for a short conversation. Can they find common ground? Who has the strangest fact?

Posted in Exam Preparation Class, Proficiency

C2 Proficiency: Exploiting Use of English Texts Further

This is a worksheet for students preparing to take the Cambridge C2 Proficiency exam. It serves as a way of extending use of English activities to further exploit the text. Download the handout below:

My students are using the official test book 1 to prepare for the June exam. This worksheet is based on parts 1 & 2 of test 2 from the book.

Part 1 – Multiple Choice Cloze

After they complete a part 1 task, either for homework or in class, I prepare an activity like the first one on the worksheet in which they’re required to use one more of the words from the multiple choice cloze to complete another sentence. This can help draw the attention to subtle differences in meaning and usage between the often confusing vocabulary items test in this part.

Part 2 – Open Cloze

After they’ve done a part 2 task, I create an inverted version of the same text by taking a photo of the original and running it through https://www.onlineocr.net/ to turn it into editable text. I then remove other words from the text, perhaps the delexicalized verb in an expression like “take into account”. Whereas in the original test the student might have been tested on the preposition: “take ….. account”, in the inverted version they might be tested on the verbs: “…… into account”

I also aim to remove some words from expressions that students may have overlooked in the rest of the text in their race to fill in the gaps. For example, this particular text contains the expression: “to all intents and purposes”, meaning “in all the most important ways”

If you create any similar training worksheets and want me to post them on the blog, feel free to get in touch via the comments.

Part 1

Use the extra words from part 1 to complete the sentences:

  1. During the Vietnam war thousands of American men were called …. to serve in the military.
    1. on
    2. up
    3. in
  2. She decided to wear a ……. pink satin dress to the interview.
    1. arresting
    2. catching
    3. fetching
  3. Undergoing a ten-week basic training course is …….. practice for anyone wanting to join the US army.
    1. native
    2. standard
    3. typical
  4. He was excited to see his cousins again but when he saw them he ……… all shy for some reason.
    1. came over
    2. gave out
    3. set up
  5. The paramedics did their best to save him but he was ……….. dead on arrival at the hospital.
    1. predicted
    2. entered
    3. pronounced
  6. They considered his political ideas to be too ……… for the group and his membership was revoked.
    1. basic
    2. radical
    3. central
  7. It suddenly …….. on me that he had been lying to me the whole time.
    1. started
    2. dawned
    3. birthed
  8. We thought we’d put the issue to ……., but it was brought up again at the next meeting.
    1. sleep
    2. bed
    3. ground

Part 2

Film music 

Any mention ….. the movie Star Wars instantly triggers the resounding opening bars of the film score, which signals the presence of the enemy. But can you ….. to mind who wrote the music? 

According …… the legendary film director Orson Wells, music ……… for half the work in a movie, mostly without the audience ……. knowing the composer’s name. The cruellest part of it for the composer is that, in a good film, that is how it ……. be. If the art of dressing well is to …. intents and purposes to dress in …… a way that others do not ……. your elegance, the art of a great music ……. is to fuse so perfectly with what is …… the screen that audiences are unconsciously …….. into the mood of the movie. ……. this reason, even great movie music ……. very little recognition to composers.

Key

Part 1:

  1. b – up – be called up to the military
  2. c – fetching – a fetching dress = an attractive dress
  3. b – standard – standard practice = what people normally do
  4. a – came over all + adjective = to react in a specific way to a situation
  5. c – pronounced – be pronounced dead = a doctor officially announces and records your death
  6. b – radical – radical political ideas
  7. b – dawned – if something dawns on you, you realise it is happening.
  8. b – bed – put something to bed – solve/resolve an issue/debate

Part 2

Film music 

Any mention OF the movie Star Wars instantly triggers the resounding opening bars of the film score, which signals the presence of the enemy. But can you CALL to mind who wrote the music? 

According TO the legendary film director Orson Wells, music ACCOUNTS for half the work in a movie, mostly without the audience EVEN knowing the composer’s name. The cruellest part of it for the composer is that, in a good film, that is how it SHOULD be. If the art of dressing well is to ALL intents and purposes to dress in SUCH a way that others do not NOTICE your elegance, the art of a great music SCORE is to fuse so perfectly with what is ON the screen that audiences are unconsciously SUCKED into the mood of the movie. FOR this reason, even great movie music BRINGS very little recognition to composers.

Posted in Advanced C1, Exam Preparation Class, Proficiency, Writing Classes

C1+ A Video Game Review

This is a lesson plan for C1+ students who are preparing for Cambridge exams in which they have to write reviews of video games. Students will learn about the storytelling technique “in media res” and analyse a model text of an informal video game review. Download the handout, PowerPoint and key below:

Overcooked: Cooperative Cooking Chaos

A bead of sweat rolls down your forehead as you frantically rush from chopping board to frying pan. “Two cheeseburgers with everything, then a pepperoni pizza, then two sushi rolls.” You hear your colleague, a raccoon in a wheelchair, shout. “Ok, we’ve got this” you shout back. Then, out of the blue, the kitchen splits in two, and a giant rat steals your tomato! Don’t worry, you’re not having a nightmare, it’s the new, chaos-filled cooking extravaganza that is Overcooked! If you’re a fan of fast-paced teamwork, hilarious mishaps, and delicious meals, this is the game for you.

In Overcooked, you and your pals take on the role of chefs working frantically to prepare and serve up tasty dishes. But it’s not as simple as just tossing some ingredients together and throwing them on a plate. Oh no, no, no. You’ll be tasked with all kinds of crazy challenges, from cooking on a pirate ship to dodging traffic on a busy street.

Now, here’s the real kicker: you have to work together to get it done. That’s right, it’s a co-op game, which means you’ll need to communicate, delegate tasks, and keep an eye on the clock if you want to succeed. But never fear, even if you burn the soup or accidentally set the kitchen on fire, it’s all in good fun.

The mechanics of the game are simple enough for anyone to pick up, but the challenges quickly become more and more demanding. You’ll need to chop, fry, boil, and plate dishes as fast as you can while avoiding obstacles. It’s easier said than done, but trust me, when you finally manage to serve up that perfectly cooked sushi roll, the sense of satisfaction is unbeatable.

Overall, I’d say Overcooked is an absolute blast to play with friends. It’s the kind of game that will have you shouting and laughing and high-fiving each other (or apologising profusely for dropping the pizza on the floor). I’d recommend it to anyone who loves a good party game or just wants to bond with their buddies over some virtual cooking chaos. So fire up the grill and get ready to serve up some culinary mayhem!

Read the text and answer the questions:

  1. What type of game is it?
  2. What cooperative elements does it have?
  3. Why is it fun?
  4. Who does the writer recommend the game to?