Archive for abril 2014

Quotes and proverbs.

I think a teacher must always be inspiring and motivating. Integrating quotes, proverbs and aphorisms in your English lessons will improve your students´ vocabulary, spelling and, what is more important, they will take...

Quotes and proverbs

Phrasal Verbs (video)

One step beyond phrasal verbs. Hope you find it useful. (Level: intermediate to advanced). ...

Listening

Antonyms

An antonym is a word that means the opposite of another word (love/hate, cold/hot, after/before). You can also get an antonym by using prefixes (happy/unhappy, possible/impossible, visible/invisible. legal/illegal, honest/dishonest, responsible/irresponsible, typical/atypical, understand/misunderstand). The...

Vocabulary

Always let your students express themselves...

Teacher: Tell me a sentence that starts with an "I". Student: " I " is the.... Teacher: Stop! Never put 'is' after an "I". Always put 'am' after an "I". Student: OK. I am the...

English is fun

Oh, my God! English Language R.I.P? OK, I´ll go to the funeral...but first...let me take a #selfie.

(From The Guardian)

"Selfie" (a photograph that one has taken of oneself with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website) has been named word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries editors, after the frequency of its usage increased by 17,000% over the past 12 months.

Other words from the list:

- bedroom tax, noun, informal:

(in the UK) a reduction in the amount of housing benefit paid to a claimant if the property they are renting is judged to have more bedrooms than is necessary for the number of the people in the household, according to criteria set down by the government.

- binge-watch, verb:

to watch multiple episodes of a television programme in rapid succession, typically by means of DVDs or digital streaming. [ORIGIN 1990s: from BINGE + WATCH, after BINGE-EAT, BINGE-DRINK.]

- bitcoin, noun:

a digital currency in which transactions can be performed without the need for a central bank. Also, a unit of bitcoin. [ORIGIN early 21st century: from BIT, in the computing sense of "a unit of information" and COIN.]

- olinguito, noun:

a small furry mammal found in mountain forests in Colombia and Ecuador, the smallest member of the raccoon family. [ORIGIN 2013: diminutive form of OLINGO, a South American mammal resembling the kinkajou.]

- schmeat, noun, informal:

a form of meat produced synthetically from biological tissue. [ORIGIN early 21st century: perhaps from SYNTHETIC and MEAT, influenced by the use of "- -, schm - -" as a disparaging or dismissive exclamation.]

- showrooming, noun:

the practice of visiting a shop or shops in order to examine a product before buying it online at a lower price. [ORIGIN early 21st century: from SHOWROOM, "a room used to display goods for sale".]

- twerk, verb:

dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance. [ORIGIN 1990s: probably an alteration of WORK.]