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  

Nawaat – Mediterranean: will Demographics demolish the iron-wall?!

firasophy.wordpress.com‏

The history of the cultures and nations present today on the northern and southern banks of the Mediterranean are interwoven. Through the complex interactions of people living on both sides emerges...

1

What the experts said: Routes into medical research careers

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

preintermediate session3 december5/2015 overview

Dear trainees,

salam

I am very glad to see that our sessions are increasing in productivity.

Let us review together last Saturday’s activities:

In the beginning, we heard an expose from our fellow trainees about their chosen Guardian piece. Thank you very much for these who read and these who posted article reviews.

We then moved to talk about some grammar. The goal was to cover the present tenses and the past tenses. As we realised together, this goal was not realistic.

However we managed to speak at length about some general notions such as personal pronouns (pp) , the nature of words (verbs -V-, nouns -N-..).

We discussed the use of A/an or the before nouns.

Grammar-wise, we covered the essential of unit 2 which is about the present simple and present continuous. We elaborated on the rule and saw how to constitute the present continuous (To be-conjugated in the present- + V+ ing).

Specifically we discussed the different uses of the present simple (general truth…) and these of the present continuous (ongoing present action, near future plan…).

Please remember that the word now is our cue to use the present continuous.

I handed out some exercises (about the past and the present). I asked you to finish the exercise accompanied by an image in a cafe. There are also past tense exercises in the packet, take a look at them as we will be solving them tomorrow inshalla.

I printed a list of irregular verbs, you can also access it below after the end of the post.

Regarding the exam prep, we solved Q19 (a true or false question). As you may have realised, the exam will be quite an easy feat for you fast learners :) :)

Throughout the speaking (Guardian) and grammar we grew our vocabulary lists. Please review them and try to see if you can make phrases using the new words. Post your phrases on the blog and I will review them and correct them for you.

It would also be wonderful if you post your favorite new words for your fellow trainees to see as well.

Your comments, thoughts and advice on how to make the lesson more fruitful will be very welcome.

Peace,

Your trainer

MFA

VW sales drop 20% in UK as diesel emissions scandal hits carmaker

New car registrations in November for car maker's brands all tumble year-on-year in best gauge yet of scandal fallout

Volkswagen sales branded cars fell by 20% year-on-year last month in Britain tumbled the diesel emissions scandal has hit the German brand.

Other car brands also recorded a fall in sales in November

The VW crisis appears to have had a limited effect on sales of diesel cars in general, which rose 3.6% year-on-year in November. 

VW is one of the biggest-selling car brands in the UK. The VW Golf was the fourth best-selling car in the UK last month,

session3 december5/2015 preperation

*please read the previous post bellow this one first.

Now, Let’s see what we need for our upcoming session on Saturday:

For the pre intermediate group, we will need to cover 2 units from the Headway student’s book. Unit2 pertains to the present tense and Unit 3 is about the past tenses.

You do not have the books yet so please review the following pages:

to practice Unit2 (present) and Unit3(past) I will be handing out the following printed exercises. However you can read them, solve them on your own and get familiar with the prompts/prepare your questions:

-Please Read your articles from the guardian. If you figure it out, post the link of your chosen piece on the blog with a little introduction and prepare notes about your pieces (synonymous to article) on your copybook so you are ready to discuss it in class.

As we have seen today, some articles are quite lengthy. Yoiu can portion your reading as you please, read half or just a third of the whole article.

Use google translate and the dictionary to help you understand the ambiguous (antonym clear) terms. Please have your list of questions about terminology and anything else that you wish to ask so that I can help you clarify and understand them.

Again, please make sure the article you choose interests you. We do not want our reading to be a chore but rather a joyous activity that still contributes to our learning.

Saturday will be a busy session. I am looking forward to it being very productive as well.

Peace,

Your trainer

MFA

PS* pages courtesy of the Oxford Headway preintermediate student's book

Session2 December2/2015 overview

Dear trainees,

salam

Thank you for a wonderful second session.

To recap what we have done:

We made sure that everybody had access to the blog and knew how to navigate The Guardian’s ecosystem.

We were mostly successful in this technical quest. For the few of us who did not have viable access to an email account, by next session inshallah you would have caught up with the group. Please ask these around you to help you out. If your kids have some of these fancy phones or tablets, then they surely know how to set up an email. Please pick passwords that you can remember as well. Otherwise, and if you did not manage to get over the technicalities, please come a little early and ask someone here at the center to help you in the computer lab (where we had our last session). Ask for Salim, I already agreed with him and he is an invaluable resource. If If you still don’t have access by Saturday’s session, come to me to explain your difficulties and we will work on it together and make sure this side is done with.

As some suggested to me, Having the gmail, blogger and guardian applications on your portable devices will make access very easy and seamless. I encourage you to download the aforementioned apps from the playstore, the appstore etc.

We read the first post together. Thus we started working on our reading skills, comprehension, pronunciation, vocabulary and a little bit of grammar.

Keep the vocabulary list growing. Most of you had their copybooks which is essential. Regarding the pre-intermediate student’s book I have been informed that they will be provided no later than Saturday. Please pick them up before we start our session.

Please read the next blog post to get a head start on our Saturday session.

Peace,

Your trainer

MFA