Travelling Around

Hello, students of the seniors' class!

Most of you voted for us to study travel and transportation, especially the listening skills needed  in an airport and on a plane.

Use this website to practice some air travel vocabulary.

This video teaches air travel phrases and terms.

We cannot study ALL the announcements you may hear over the intercom while traveling through airports and while on board your flights. Our energy will be better spent learning how to ask the person next to us such questions as, "Excuse me, did they just announce the flight to Toronto?"

However, you can read through all of the most common air travel announcement scripts HERE.

Here is an in-flight announcement LISTENING text and quiz.

If you want to listen to some airport and in-flight announcements while reading them, click here.

Here's a great video to help you get ready for your summer airport experience.

We Can Bargain at a Yard Sale

Here is the audio file for the listening assessment (if you have issues with Flash, try using MS IE instead of Chrome).


Audio recording and upload >>

At the Pharmacy

Hello, students of the seniors class!

This week we honed in on the topic of talking to the pharmacist, reading the label, and asking questions. We want to be active participants in our own care.

We had our listening assessment based on these four recordings of patients being advised by the pharmacist regarding their new prescriptions. These audios are from Queens University "English for your Health" series, which we use a lot in this class even though we find the odd typo or factual error.

After the listening test, you assessed your own ability to understand this level of audio text without being able to see the speakers using a self-assessment multiple choice list.

Here are the audios again.

Patient 1
Patient 2
Patient 3
Patient 4

Enjoy!

Snow Day

Hello, students!

Only five students were able to make it to class due to the snowfall.  We decided to deviate from the plan and instead studied weather forecasts.

We listened to this audio:


Record audio or upload mp3 >> ..
The script and questions can be found in this PDF document, LINC 3 Classroom Activities, page 106.

REMEMBER: There is no morning class on Monday, February 29th.

A New Listening Resource!

Hello, students of the seniors' class!

I know you are on break, but I also know that some of you are using this blog to practice your listening skills over the summer.

Guess what?

I have found a wonderful resource to help you with listening.  Here is the site: http://www.cdlponline.org/

First, choose a topic from the top of the page.

Next, choose a story from the STORY LIST to listen to. These are true, interesting stories!

Use the "LISTEN," "STOP" and "NEXT" buttons to navigate the activities.

There are many activities to do after you listen to the story a few times. There is a vocabulary activity, a spelling quiz, a definition matching game, a comprehension test, and an essay box. Just keep clicking NEXT to go to the next activity.

These stories are short and interesting, just the way you like them. And there are SO MANY choices under each topic.

Have fun!

Our Listening / Speaking Strategies

We have begun Listening Boot Camp!

What is a boot camp?

It is intensive training for new military recruits with a strict drill sergeant. Sometimes health clubs also offer boot camps for people who want to get in good shape fast. The personal trainer is there to motivate people to work hard for quick results. The personal trainer doesn't let you make excuses or take the easy way.

I am here to motivate you to awaken and strengthen different areas of your brains. We have agreed to close our bilingual dictionaries during listening lessons. The dictionaries can distract us from the main goal: improving listening and speaking skills.

This week we started building our tool box of L / S strategies. We can:

• Guess an unknown word from context. (Remember the Shillybog!)
• Listen for the gist.
• Use repair strategies. (Communication is a two-way street.)
• Talk around a word we do not know by explaining to the listener what we mean.
• Tune into CONTENT words.
• Practice good linking and prosody so your brain is prepared for the way native speakers really talk.

Here Rachel teaches you about consonant sound to vowel sound LINKING.

Watch this video about HOW TO GUESS A WORD FROM CONTEXT.  Here is another video about the same thing. There are many!

This is a great video on keys to improve your listening comprehension.

If you want to print the words to one of the 265 Short Stories on Mr. Zhang's Listening Page, call me over and we can do that together.

Lots of Listening - Doctor

Hello, seniors!

Teacher Stephanie has a lot of listening activities on her blog. Her class is studying health now, too. Take a look!

Also: Maritza Goes to the Doctor

See you Monday.

Kelly

Cas' Class

Hello, Cas' class!

Option 1: Compositions

Today please feel free to work on your compositions using MS Word. As you know, Word can help you spot spelling, grammar and punctuation errors. Please let me know before you print anything.

Here is an article about how to plan and write an essay. There are many more articles on the web about writing compositions and essays. If you want to, you can use Google to search for some.

Option 2: Listening lessons

Listen to a podcast about an emergency room visit here. ESL Pod has lots of listening lessons. The learning guides cost money, but you can listen to the podcasts for free.

The website 5-minute English has lots of listening lessons here.

Of course, you can use Ellis software or any link in my sidebar.

Call me over if you need any help!

Kelly

Tornado Alley

Let's listen to this VOA News podcast about tornado season in the U.S. The Windsor-Essex area also sometimes has tornadoes, as Leamington did two years ago.