Back again

Sorry to be so quiet, but others have been working for me ;-)
Actually I had major computer problems and the only solution was to get another one. Now Im trying to gather together all my necessities from the old computer and put it on the new one - its not very easy, I can tell you! And to top it off, I installed the wrong keyboard, so no apostrophes, and exclamation points in the wrong place* (see?)

Actually, Id like to draw you attention to the wiki. You may have noticed that not just I have been adding pages. Two fellow teachers pitched in, and I strongly recommend that you take a look at them. Ive also added two crossword puzzles to have a bit of fun with, but no cheating* ;-)

You probably noticed the words and phrases in bold. This idea was given to me by John Potts (thank you, John*), one of the impromptu authors. These are common phrases and vocabulary that would be useful for you to try to use as well.

Finally, if you havent tried yet, use the comment function to comment on any of the posts. Its especially motivating for those who wrote them and they will be sure to comment on yours as well :-)

PS- how many missing apostrophes can you find?

As it is in Heaven

As it is in heaven

It’s a must for everybody who wants to watch such a marvellous and touching dramatic and humorous film.

The story is based on a famous star conductor who finishes his international musician’s career after a heart attack. He goes back to his “life roots”, the place where he grew up. Settling in the small Swedish village, he buys an old former school building and wants to start a new life. A short time after, he becomes the conductor of the village choir which sings very badly at the beginning. In this choir there are different singers, who have special characters. Some of them are witty, others are strong believers in God and one of them is physically disabled. But each of them plays an important role in this choir. In the choir’s rehearsal there are ups and downs. But the rehearsal is a very important part of their simple lives. Most of them had never left this village. Nevertheless, they take part in a choir competition abroad.

Firstly, I loved this film due to picturesque film scenes and the story, which contains countless humorous sequences of ordinary life. Secondly, I was very impressed by the good amateur actors and actresses. Thirdly, the funny and tragic story has a vivid atmosphere. In addition, the film shows how people first suffer from the “small village life” – everybody knows and controls each other – but at the end they free themselves little by little.

It’s one of the best films I’ve ever seen for the last 10 years.

It’s at the Atelier cinema in Lucerne (the 48^th week).

Written by Markus Meier

The British Council- a useful site

The British Council has a great website with lots of useful language learning sites, games and srticles, similar to BBC Learning English. It's called the 'LearnEnglish central'. Hmm Sounds quite similar, doesn't it.When looking through this site there is an extremely useful option you can use with it. You can double click on any word and you will find a dictionary entry.

Have a look around and I'm sure you'll find something interesting to do!

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A musical element

Since this class seems to enjoy music so much, the link of the week is to the English Language Listening Lab Online, also known as ELLLO.
As the name says, it's a listening lab, but you will also find a section called SONGS. Have a look and enjoy!

And, if you want to leave a comment, click on Post a comment. There you can write your comment, choose your identity, which will probably be 'other' at the moment. Then there is a code for you to write in. This is to keep spams out. And then click on 'Publish'. You won't immediately see the comment, but it will be published some minutes after.

CAE group started: Summary 5. September 06

A very motivated and sympathetic group startet CAE studies with teacher Illya Arnet-Clark.
We started immediatly, speaking to each other, presenting ourselves and asking al lot of questions to get more informations about the group. The result of our research: An average group member gets up at 6 o'clock in the morning, likes going back to nature in his spare time, is still dreaming of wunderful holidays and has never done crazy things.
Illya gave us a lot of informatin about CAE exams and explained the structure of the training during the CAE course.
After a break, we collected several types of texts we can use to get information. Then we got to know two techniques that help to extract imporant information out of a text in a short time:
Scanning is a method, to find a specific word or text: For example I am looking for a name in a telephone book.
Skimming is a method we learned and trained: You are skimming a text, when you want to find out quickly, what ist the most important informaion in this text.
At last, we trained a technique, to understand words we didnt kwow before. "Reading clues" is an ability, to find out the meaning of a unknown word with the help of the context in which this word is placed. It works pretty good and it's a lot of fun!
This first evening was interesting, I already learned a lot. I'm looking forward to go on learning in this group!
See you on tuesday ! Titus