Categoría: B2.1

• READING

KEY The Sea Mammal Institute

• LISTENING

KEY Eating habits

KEY Places and buildings

Hello guys! How’s it going? Here is the work for the next few days.

EXERCISE FOR ALL B2.1 STUDENTS WHO WISH TO TRY TO IMPROVE THEIR MARKS IN READING AND/ OR LISTENING 

Please send me your answers by email no later than Thursday, 21st May.

Make sure your answers are clearly labelled and numbered, so that I can easily spot which exercise they belong to.

• READING:   

The Sea Mammal Institute

Multiple choice reading exercise on the topic of unit 6 Open World, «Closer to Nature».

• LISTENING:  

Eating habits      audio       Multiple choice listening exercise.

Places and buildings      audio      Match speakers and items.

TASK ONLY FOR B2.1 STUDENTS WHO WISH TO TRY TO IMPROVE THEIR MARK IN WRITING and HAVE NOT SENT ANY WRITINGS YET.

Deadline: Thursday 21st May.

Email of complaint

My piece of advice is that, as we do not know what the future holds, it is worth making this little effort now. Anyway, it is your own decision.

Let’s see what our regional Education department has in store for EOIs. Time has almost run out! This week they will have to tell us about at least part of it, whatever it is. I will get in touch to let you know.

Keep on taking care!

Hiya! How are you all keeping?

Here is this week’s homework. I hope that you have some spare time to study and do at least part of it. If you are pushed for time, choose whatever you find more useful or more doable.

• LISTENING practice and GRAMMAR work

– The music industry. Video activity. Listening practice combined with work on relatives and question formation. The link to the video is in the exercise, as well as the answers.

The music industry

– Relatives. More exercises on this grammar point + key. (pdf)

Practice on relatives

• LISTENING COMPREHENSION 

– Animals. This is a true/false listening test on the topic of wild-life animal protection. Key included (no script)

Animals: exercise      audio

– Being a volunteer. Listen to five people talking about their experience of being a volunteer and match each speaker to the idea they express.

Being a volunteer: exercise       answer key      script      audio

• PRONUNCIATION: -ed

The following are some resources on the pronunciation of -ed in regular past simple and past participles that I recommended doing at B2.2. If you feel that you are not sure about how to pronounce the ending -ed, save a little time to watch these videos and do the exercise.

– Videos: Watch these three online videos, which clearly explain the rules of pronunciation and give examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh_DM7qJGWo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0nF-xNWd2A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWuS7rfZlDQ

– Exercise: 

rules of -ed pronunciation      exercise      key

• SPEAKING SKILLS practice

On the webpage British Council LearnEnglish Teens, there are loads of activities, many of which -though primarily intended for teens- can be of the interest of all ages. There are fabulous activities to practise Reading, Listening, Speaking and Writing at different levels. B1 and B2 resources can also be helpful if you are studying for Certificación.

Why not start trying this level B2 listening and speaking interactive video:

Discussing exam results

Do the listening/use of English exercises following the instructions on the page, and then try taking up the role in the conversation yourself, as suggested. This is a good chance for you to develop your speaking skills in sort of ‘real’ informal contexts, and good practice for the Interaction paper in Certificación.

• REAL WORLD, Open World: Going into the wild in… Florida

If you find the topic of this lesson appealing, give the exercises on pp.92-93 a try, while this way you kind of round off the unit and the contents seen in B2.1 throughout the year.

– Ex.1 & 2, p.92. Match the photos with the reading texts. Have you done any of these activities before? Would you like to? If none of them is appealing to you, why is it so?

– Ex.3 is a vocabulary exercise, while the task in ex.4 is similar to a kind of work you may be asked to do in Mediation: read through the texts and decide which place is more suitable for each family and why.

– Ex.4 & 5. Listening. There are two different tasks here. First complete the table and afterwards do the matching in ex.5 and check your answers paying attention to the expressions in A-F used in the conversation.

– Ex.7. This exercise is the most interesting one in the section. It contains very common expressions you need to know. Go through it and focus on the phrases and their exact words and structures.

– VIDEO: Florida. As usual, watch it several times and make notes about the  listed things. Possible answers:

Cities in Florida: Orlando- theme Park capital of the world;  Miami- one of the USA’s most visited cities

Land animals: butterflies, rattlesnakes and flamingos

Underwater animals: manatee (or sea-cow)- grow to around 3 metres long; alligators, turtles

Diving in Florida: divers can explore the wrecks and reefs and see the clownfish and the sea anemone

This is the full video script.

If you cannot read the video QR for any reason whatsoever, use this link

http://www.cambridge.org/OW_First_Vid19

I’ll be back soon. Move cautiously and safely into Phase 1 of deescalation! Are you able to explain in English what we will be allowed to do in this phase? Read EL PAÍS in English and find out!

Ready for this first de-escalation week’s homework? I expect so ?

Here you have the weekly LESSON PLAN.

• Relative pronouns and relative clauses

– Open World. Grammar reference Unit 6, p. 217. Read the brief explanation that reminds you of the difference between a defining and a non-defining relative clause, and then watch the *Grammar on the Move video on p.87, or the other way round, as you prefer, before doing the two exercises on p.217. Note that in ex.2 n°4, the pronouns who/that can be omitted, as they are the object of the clause (this option is not in the key).

*If for any reason you cannot read the Grammar on the move QR videos, you can see those in this unit through these links:

p.84 Prepositions   http://www.cambridge.org/OW_First_Vid17

p.87 Relative clauses   http://www.cambridge.org/OW_First_Vid18

Go back to Relative clauses p.87 and do the exercises there, 1 to 5. Notice the use of whom, which you might not have come across with till now. In ex.4, sentence 5, both who and whom can be used with exactly the same meaning, being whom the most formal option. In exercise 5 you will practise some expressions with which and whom; in these phrases only whom is correct, but not who.

– Check out these links if you need to learn more about whom

who vs whom: grammar rules

whom: exercise 1       whom: exercise 2

– Here is a useful video about relatives, which I guess will help you a lot

Relatives: grammar lesson

– And these are some extra exercises to practise relatives more in depth

Relative clauses: rules+online exercises with answers

Stonehenge: relatives who/which -exercise with answers

Relative pronoun: necessary or not? -exercise with answers

Relative clauses: online test with answers

Relatives: exercises+key (printable pdf)

• Vocabulary

– An unforgettable experience. Open World, p.88. Do the exercises devised to help clarify the difference between pairs of words such as sensitive and sensible, which are easily confused. Take your time to reflect upon the examples. Note the spelling and how you would pronounce them too (use a dictionary with pronunciation audios if needed). Any doubts? Let me know.

– An influential environmentalist. Open World, p.90. This short cloze text tests relatives and prepositions mainly. Fill in as much as you can. Read the words before and after the blanks carefully in order to find clues about what part of speech is needed.

• Extra listening practice 

exercise + key     audio 1      audio 2

Enough for now, but there will be some more next week!

Hiya,

Here is the homework I told you about. This is the last leg of the school year, so just a little bit more of effort!

• Open World

– Progress check 2 pp. 80-81. You can do all of the exercises so as to revise  the vocabulary and grammar of units 3 and 5. In ex.3 you have guided practice on how to write an informal email.

– Grammar reference p.216: Prepositions. Watch the video on p.84 and the read the grammar explanations and do the three exercises on the page. Go back to p.84 and do the exercises there as well. Correct them all and let me know if you have any questions or problems.

• Extra practice

– Online listening:  Attitudes to friendship  (with audio, key and script)

– Grammar presentation:  Relative clauses

Watch the power point slides several times to revise relative structures and possibly learn new things about them. You’ll be doing more work on them next week.

•  Writing: A Review.

Revise the exercises you did in previous posts and the review sample texts in Open World unit 5. Remember you also have examples of a book/film review in the Writing Bank section of this blog.

Afterwards do the following WRITING TASK:  A FILM REVIEW

If you wish to send it in, please do as soon as you can write it and, if possible, before Friday May 1st. Remember to use about 160-180 words.

This is an example of a film review you may be helpful. You can use it as a guide for yours:  Skyfall

That’s it! There’s more to come next week!

A brand-new week has just began, so here is the HOMEWORK plan for this sixth week of lockdown. I hope you have been able to do at least part of the tasks in previous posts and feel like going on working now that the school year is not far from its end.

• Open World

– VOCABULARY p.74, ex.1. Complete the table and check your answers. Then think about other possible adjectives to add, for example: positive– wonderful, great, spectacular, marvellous; negative– monotonous, disappointing, heavy-going. Use the vocabulary in ex.1 to fill in the blanks in ex.2, where you will find useful sample sentences that can be used to review films, books, etc.

– Move on to Push yourself to C1. p.74. Do the three exercises in the section. It is very good practice of the vocabulary of Reviews.

– SPEAKING p.75. Reaching agreement. In this section you will practice phrases to be used during the process of trying to take a decision together. Although EOI exams are different from Cambridge ones, this is a key element in the Interaction part of the speaking paper in Certificación, and, of course, an indispensable skill in real life conversation. Think about the questions posed in ex.1. The paintings in the photos could be described as: 1. Abstract, 2. A landscape, 3. A still-life, 4. Child-like.

Listen to the conversation in ex. 2, 3 and 4. Pay special attention to the phrases in 3/4. Go through the script and try to memorise the expressions you find easier to remember. Move on to ex.5, which focuses on some interesting adjectives used in the listening exercise to describe the photos.

– EXAM FOCUS. Writing: Review. Skip p.76 and go to p.77. Read the Exam tips about how to write a review and the task proposed you will find at the bottom of the page, A concert review. Afterwards, see the model review on page 304, which answers the writing task.

– LISTENING p.77. Maybe not exactly the same number of speakers, but this type of listening exercise is very common in Certificación exams. Do it, check your answers and read the script thoroughly to get ideas about the topic and get familiar with the vocabulary.

– REAL WORLD p.78. Making arrangements in Bristol. Read the introductory information about Bristol in ex.1 and the three texts from a guide book. Their aim is to attract visitors and therefore they use positive language, a mix of fact and fiction. Pay attention to interesting vocabulary such as » a must-see», «miss out on», » treat to», «get the most of», » home to»or the use of relative clauses to pack in more information within a limited extension. Work on the vocabulary more in detail in ex.3.

Ex.4. Listen to two friends making arrangements for the weekend and complete the missing information. Do then ex.5, where you are asked to match the informal expressions in the dialogue to their less informal alternatives; revise those structures you already know and try to pick up a few ones, either informal or neutral.

Video: Bristol. p.79. As usual, watch the video several times and try to extract the information the exercise asks about.

Sample answers:

The city of Bristol- Located in South-West England, population of about 400,000, largest manufacturer of hot air balloons.

Famous ships- The SS Great Britain, first steam to cross the Atlantic in in 1845, now a museum.

The Clifton suspension bridge- crosses the River Avon, took 111 years to build.

Festivals- Harbourside: it takes places every year and celebrates the city’sconnection to the sea.

Music and art- Victoria Rooms: built in the 1800s, home to Bristol University’s music deparment; Bristol is famous for its organised street art.

After several runs, you can click on the link below for the whole script. Read it carefully and watch the video once more to check if now you understand everything:      Bristol: video script

•  Extra practice: Listening

«A festival organiser«

exercise       audio      script and key

«Lifestyles«

exercise and key       video

That’s all for the moment! I might get in touch again throughout the week, via this blog or email, to keep you updated on any news relating to the school year and assessment that you need to know, if there is any. Stay connected!

Keep safe!