Happy Year of the Rat

Happy Chinese New Year! Perhaps Saiying will enjoy this little film about a two-stringed instrument. Is it the same one she and her husband know how to play?

This week we looked at evocative photos that elicited interesting language. One category of word or phrase that came up was interjections and exclamations. Here is a little lesson on some of them.

Here is a short tour of Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, the one Huarong visited with his family. It is fascinating!

Tour of Monument Valley is below. Turn on Closed Captioning / subtitles.

Click HERE to visit the Plan Your Trip page of ViaRail's website to see where they go and how much fares are. Explore destinations in Ontario and Quebec.

Enjoy your new year's celebrations, Chinese students.

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.

Between Presentations and Travel

Hello, students of the seniors' class!

We are finishing up our module on nutrition labels. We are learning how to give feedback that is kind, specific, and helpful. Next we will learn a bit about planning summer travel by train.

Here is a video about making a presentation that is not boring.



Here is the contact information for CAA in Windsor.

Visti the VIA Rail website to see where you can go on the train this summer.

Some students could use practice with vowel sounds. Is this interesting to you?

Air Travel

Hello, students of the seniors' class!

Most of you voted for us to study travel and transportation, especially the listening, speaking and reading skills needed to navigate air travel this summer. Even though this is a repeat lesson for most of you, you've told me you want to do it again. So here goes!

Bone up on your air travel vocabulary using Oxford Picture Dictionary and this website.

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, "Did they just call our flight?"

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.



This one has on-screen

Welcome Back, Seniors!

Welcome back, class. I hope you had a great summer break. I certainly did.

Next week we are doing our "show and tell" presentations about our summer activities. Our topic is travel and recreation.

If you wish to work on your presentation, you may do that. Call me over to your workstation if you need my help.

VOCABULARY

Here is vocabulary for talking about the beach or ocean.
These words are useful when talking about camping.
Click here for air travel vocabulary.
These words help you talk about land travel.
Rebecca can teach you about the prepositions of travel.
If you travelled by sea, you may need these words.

GRAMMAR

Using prepositions of place in, on and at:
Generally speaking, this sums it up.
Here is another nice summary of these prepositions in use.
Crown Academy of English has a nice video lesson on this topic.
This illustrated lesson has a quiz after it.

Do You Remember Your Air Travel Vocabulary?

Hello, students!

I hope you are having a nice summer. Mexico was VERY HOT. I have written about my trip on my personal blog. You can look at pictures from my trip if you want to. Mostly I wrote about the food and the birds. It's HERE: http://bordercitiesblooming.blogspot.ca/2014/07/mexico.html
And it continues on the next nine posts.

Everything we prepared for in class happened to me!

When we arrived in Mexico, we didn't get our bag. It was lost. After two days, they delivered it to us.

Because our flight from Phoenix, Arizona was late getting to Charlotte, North Carolina, we almost missed our connecting flight. But we didn't. We ran fast from one gate to another. The airline representative was very happy to see us coming. She said, "Great! That's everybody." They were waiting for us before closing the door!

And then our bag was again delayed. When it arrived, they drove it all the way from Toronto to Windsor and delivered it at 3:47 in the morning!!!

Can you remember the names of the things in the pictures? Please leave a comment and describe these pictures.

What do you see in this picture? Where am I? What am I doing?

Picture A

How about picture B? Where am I? What am I holding?

Picture B

And picture C? What am I opening? I hear the flight attendant coming. She has pop and peanuts.

Picture C

And how about picture D? You are right. I am finally in sunny Mexico. I am birding. I am wearing very strong sunblock.

Picture D

Many funny things happened on our trip. For example, we forgot to book a hotel room in Chicago for our nine hour layover. So we had to sleep on army cots in the airport. That was not much fun, but it makes a good story now. Now we can laugh.

Also, my boyfriend was stung by jellyfish while swimming in the sea. He is okay now. In addition to this, I forgot to load Mexican maps onto my GPS before we left. We had to buy a map at a convenience store.

When we come back to school in September, I am going to ask you about any trips you took this summer. Don't forget all the words we learned for travel! You will have to tell your classmates about your trip, especially any mishaps. Do you know the word "mishap?" It's a great word.

Please leave a comment today.  Thank you.

Kelly

Summer English Practice #1 - Air Travel

Hello, students!

Xiumin said she wanted more practice with TRAVEL English. So...

Go to THIS WEB PAGE.  First do the pre-listening exercise.

Next scroll down and play the conversation.

Answer the questions.

Finally, do some grammar and vocabulary exercises.

Don't forget to APPLY all the travel English we learned when you travel this summer.  Enjoy your trip!

Welcome Aboard

Hello, LINC Seniors!

We have been studying a lot of English for air travel. Yesterday we listened to some pre-boarding and flight announcements.

Today I will play some REAL boarding announcements.  I will give each of you a boarding pass with your flight number and destination city.  Here are the questions we will practice:

To your travel companion:  "Did you catch that?"

To your travel companion: "Did they just announce our flight?"

The answer will probably be, "No, I didn't."  "I'm not sure."   "I couldn't understand a word of it."

So now we have to know how to walk up to a stranger or an agent and ask:

"Excuse me, did they just announce flight _____ to _______?"  This question just became your best friend.

These are two of the four recordings we listened to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRmEMPhmY0I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8E5vP4FEXk

Stress and Flap T

Hello! I hope you enjoyed your long weekend.

Monday we talked about true t and flap t. The symbol for "true t" is /t/. The symbol for "flap t" is /D/. We practiced saying two columns of words to listen for a difference in how "t" is pronounced. In the first column we had words like: talk, toy, telephone, attack, photography, retire. In the second column we had words like: butter, pretty, litre, bitter, batter, letter.

We decided that the "t" in the words in the first column really sounds like a T. We held paper in front of our mouths and saw the paper move. There is a lot of air coming out with this T.

We decided that the "t" sound in the words in the second column sounds like a quick D. This is called "flap T" or "tap T." We make the sound by quickly tapping the tooth ridge with the tip of the tongue.

Next we tried to discover the rule for when T is /t/ and when it is /D/. Bashar said that it is true /t/ at the beginning of words. That's right. It is also true /t/ at the beginning of a stressed syllable.

What about a rule for the second column? When does T become flap /D/? We decided this happens when the T sound is between two vowel sounds AND when the previous syllable is more stressed. Bashar said he noticed that the following syllable often had schwa in it. That's a good observation.

We talked about the fact that a Level One teacher might pronounce "daughter" with a true /t/. But that is just because she is trying to pronounce things very carefully for beginners. We also sometimes speak carefully like that when speaking to children. But when adult Canadians talk to each other, we pronounce "daughter" with the flap /D/.

Next we practiced stress in numbers, contrasting the zero numbers (20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90) with the teens (13, 14, 15, 16, etc.) The teen numbers have a true /t/. The the zero numbers have a /d/ or flap /D/. Seventy has a /d/ sound; eighty has a flap /D/ sound.

We practiced a little dialogue about the VIA Rail schedule for trains that run between Windsor and Toronto.

Finally, we did an information gap activity. I gave you each a train schedule, but each of you had different pieces of information missing. You had to go around to your classmates to find the missing times on your timetable. This was a good chance to practice saying "9:15" or "9:50" correctly.