Preintermediate progress until Saturday 12/12/2015

Dear Trainees,

Peace

It has been a hot minute since my last post. I am glad to see that you are posting your article points and letting us know what you have been reading thus far.

Since my last pot we pushed through quite a few Units.

For my Morning preintermediate session we have looked at Units 4 through 9. The most important items that we saw, grammar wise, were:

-Count and uncount names. The respective use of many and much..

-Some verb patterns. Such as the What do you like doing/what would you like to do formulas. I hope by the end of the sessions we will all be able to pronounce “patterns” like it’s supposed to be pronounced. Otherwise, I am having quite a bit of fun listening to you twist it out nonchalantly :)

-Comparative and Superlative. (Remember, there is no “gooder” in the english language!!!! the comparative is better and the superlative form is best…)

Both my morning and night sessions touched on the present perfect. This is a new tense. Please read up on it (Unit 7) so that you do not confuse it with our other tenses.

Remember, the question isn’t about which tense to exclusively use to express which meaning/situation, it is a rather softer choice of which one is more suitable while many are correct.

Only during my 9-11 did I speak about first conditional (if+V_present_+, will…).

Let’s remember to show appreciation for the presenters. Let’s keep it light for now. Maybe next month I will give a debate training session and we can all go hard arguing :)

Respect,

MFA

Garden City is one of the finest neighborhoods of Cairo, the Egyptian capital founded by Khedive Ismail Smirmas near the hotel to live by the upper class of the society for the reception and hospitality of foreigners at the opening of the Suez Canal, and has been designed so that neighborhood streets be circular. And form neighborhood even be on a dedicated street and all the layers of certain supplies, there was a street Guard and street stables and street served

preintermediate session5 december9/2015 preperation

Now let us get a little ready for tomorrow:

-Choose an article, read it and come prepared to make a presentation about it. The link of the guardian is below:

http://www.theguardian.com/uk

We will be studying Units 4,5 and 6. These three Units are quite easy. They are about count/uncount nouns, some common verb patterns (would like to do…) and lastly about expressing comparative and superlative.

-Read the Grammar references about Units 4, 5 and 6. We will be practicing the following exercises:

Hopefully we will be left with some time for some more exam prep and writing.

See you tomorrow for another productive session.

Firas.

PS* exercises courtesy of the Headway pre intermediate workbook.

preintermediate session4 december7/2015 overview

Dear trainees,

salam

After our last session we effectively covered a significant part of the English grammar. Previously we looked at the present simple/contenuous. Now we have studied the Past tenses (simple and continuous). This means we have covered Unit one through Unit 3 in your student book.

Please review the grammar references at the end of your book and do not hesitate to read the entire Units on your own. I will gladly answer any question. For the past tense cases of use and choice between simple and continuous I refer you to page 132.

Just to solidify our lesson plans that you are probably getting accustomed to by now:

We Spent the beginning of class hearing and discussing your fellow trainees’ Guardian articles’ presentations.

Then who moved on to presenting the rules and manner in which to conjugate verbs in the simple past tense. Remember, there are regular verbs that assume an -ed form in the past and irregular verbs that change otherwise when conjugated (Exmpl: To be in the past is either was or were, review the list I printed for you for the most common irregular verbs).

Do not feel too pressured to learn the whole list. In reality reading and listening to native speakers will help you know how to conjugate irregular verbs in the past “by ear”. If it were hard to learn them naturally then we would have been handing out irregular verbs lists to babies.

Don’t forget to finish your past tense exercises. I would gladly go over them for you outside of session time.

Finally we did some exam preparation through Questions 26 and 27. I will post the exam on a separate post soon when we progress through enough units so you can also prep on your own time.

We did not manage to find time to make our own written productions so I hope we manage to do that tomorrow.

Wishing you a healthy night of sleep,

Your trainer

Firas  

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preintermediate session4 december7/2015 preperation

Dear trainees,

Let us now look at the desired goals from next session and what you should prepare:

In terms of grammar we will be studying the past tense (unit3).

-Like in the last session, prepare your notes and presentation about your chosen Guardian piece.

-Review the rules and uses of the past tense from the back of th3e headway student book. I posted them at an earlier post. You can also find the relevant pages attached to this post below. I will also print them for the sake of convenience.  

-Bring the Exercise packet that I handed out last session. We will be using it and solving the questions together in class.

-Bring/review the list of irregular verbs with you as it will be very practical when conjugating verbs that don’t just take an -ed but have special forms.  

We will go through the patterns and ways to build the simple and continuous forms of the past tense.

We shall use the exercise packet for the practice and discussion. I have also picked two questions from the exam to continue our exam prep.

I am also hoping that we manage to leave 15 minutes at the end of class to work on our writing/production skills together.

Peace and see you tomorrow inshalla,

Your trainer

Firas