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