HALLOWEEN HANGMAN

Enjoy this Halloween version of a favourite game.

Click on the image to start.

Frightful fun, isn't it?!

HALLOWEEN (elementary video)

What does the word mean?

What are the origins of this celebration?

Watch this video if you dare...  
and find the answers.

HALLOWEEN SONG (subtitled)

Listen and learn this Halloween song created by KIBOOMU KIDS SONGS!

HALLOWEEN MAKE-UP: Parts of the face (intermediate video and activities)

Do you remember this animated fantasy film directed by Tim Burton and Mike Johnson? It was released in 2005.

(Did you know that Johnny Depp was the voice behind Victor?)


If you liked it, maybe you'll want to look like Emily this Halloween. If so, follow these instructions, step by step!

Write down all the body parts you can hear. How many are mentioned?





Watch the video again (this time with subtitles) and check if your answers were correct:

(Activate the English subtitles by clicking  on Choose Language (bottom left) and then English 100%).

I bet you noticed that some parts of the face were mentioned once and again but they didn't appear in the subtitles. That's because they didn't refer to parts of the body, they were different types of make-up or accessories. 

Do you think you can get them?

Let's go for it!

HALLOWEEN is here: ENJOY IT! (all levels)

(Video by the BBC)

BASICS OF ENGLISH: Three English lessons (lower intermediate)

Watch the video and answer the following questions.

Part 1:

1. Name the furniture and furnishings mentioned in the video. How many can you remember?
2. Add ten more to the list.
3. What is special about the plural form of the word shelf?
4. When do you say Pleased to meet you?
5. Do you know the opposite of heavy?
6. What is the teacher's name?
7. What is a contracted form?
8. List ten different nationalities.
9. Mention one word or expression which can be replaced by the pronoun it.
10. Mention two words or expressions which can be used instead of they.

Part 2:

1. What food and drinks are mentioned?
2. Can you think of ten more words in that category?
3. Can you repeat the family members mentioned?
4. How many more can you add to the list?
5. What is the opposite of difficult?
6. Which two pets are mentioned in this episode?
7. Do you remember the sentence used to introduce Elena to Victor?
8. What is a sitcom?
9. Listen again and write down the occupations you hear.
10. What is the meaning of greeting people?

Part 3:

1. Can you find synonyms for the adjectives handsome, clever and forgetful?
2. What is the meaning of Nice to meet you?
3. Which two future forms are used in this episode?
4. What is the meaning of the words kind and nice?
5. Do you know any other words to describe people's manners?
6. Think of ten countries and find out the language spoken in each one.
7. Rewrite these sentences using object pronouns instead of the words in red:

• I like English 
• Victor likes Elena 
• We like Victor and Elena 

Way to go!

LONDON interactive book (intermediate)

Visit this wonderful site and learn all the facts about London's recent past and present. You'll find lots of different activities, pictures and texts with information about the city.

Take a look:

This is one of the pages:

Click below to enter:

 

ENJOY IT!!

HALLOWEEN... The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde. (intermediate video)

You don't want to watch these videos, do you?
Are you sure?

A scary ghost terrorizing such lovely people. How dishonourable! Ghosts have lost their manners these days...

Ok, let's go. Hold on to your sofa...

(Activate the English subtitles by clicking  on Choose Language (bottom left) and then English 100%).

Here's horrible part two. Are you still there?

R.I.P.

OSCAR WILDE'S BIRTH: 16th October, 1854

Oscar Wilde was an Irish writer whose biography is a tribute to life: no boundaries could possibly put a limit to his thought or his actions. Only prejudice could, and it destroyed him.

His delicacy and his wit make his readers admire the man as well as the writer, because life and art were one in him.

You can read most of his work in this link:

 

Watch this video of one of his tales for children narrated by Stephen Fry, a famous English actor and writer who played the leading role in Wilde, a 1997 biographical film based on Oscar Wilde's life.

Learn about Oscar Wilde's times: Victorian England.

 

Read some of his quotes:

AUDIOBOOK: Listen to The Importance of Being Earnest.

I bet you won't be able to stop laughing with the following delicious scene of this masterpiece!

(You can activate the English subtitles by clicking  on Choose Language (bottom left) and then English 100%).

You can download this worksheet to read some of the most hilarious moments of The Importance of Being Earnest. You can also do some additional work to learn more about this book and its author.

Click on the arrow to download it.

(You need an account in http://www.4shared.com/. Sign up, it's free).

This is a preview of the film on Wilde's life:

Read some of Wilde's words about life, love, people and other topics.

 

If you want to read an excellent biography on Oscar Wilde, I strongly recommend this one:

ELLMANN, Richard. Oscar Wilde. London: Penguin Books, 1987.

Here are my impressions after reading it:

We can but highly recommend a magnificent biography of Oscar Wilde by the author of other excellent biographies, such as Joyce’s: Oscar Wilde, by Richard Ellmann. Ellmann offers us his profound knowledge of Wilde with the utmost credibility, unaffected by his obvious devotion towards the writer and the person. The riches and precision of the vocabulary that he employs and the vast array of facts about Wilde’s work and life give the reader a sensation of following Wilde and even being an observer of his contradictions, delights, afflictions, and, what’s more important, of his development as a human being.

Ellmann starts every chapter with a quotation of Wilde’s words and after that provides us with a thorough display of details of his writings, life, relations, joys, and misfortunes. Under this light we confirm what we could glimpse when reading every one of his books, that Wilde was pure excess, just like life, and he could not be stopped by morals, even though these could (and did) crush him. “Though he offered himself as an apostle of pleasure, his created work contains much pain” (p. xiv).                                                                                             

                                                                                                           He was the best company, witty and an unequalled conversationalist, always generous with his guests and acquaintances, lovers or even strangers. He didn’t receive the same token when he was accused of immorality and sent to prison. Most of his friends abandoned him and refused to help, and the few years he lived after being in jail he was ruined. He died in exile accompanied only by a couple of friends, Reggie Turner and especially Robert Ross, who never left him. His personality and his intelligence were not fit for the times, which were but rigid and hypocritical, and nothing was more alien to Wilde, whose passion for life was endless and could not possibly be hidden.

                                                                                                                           

Life or art, what comes first? Both were irresistible for Wilde, but there can be no doubt when knowing him in such depth as Ellmann does: Life is generosity and splendor, but it comes second, as it can only imitate art, and only the latter can come near perfection and is a mirror to life. Art is the true creator, and only creators can shape life. This explains why Wilde was so careful with every detail, every word he chose, every garment he wore, his hair, his surroundings, his home and its decoration, etc. Everything had to be perfect, a work of art, for life deserves no less. Morality is only a constraint and limits the creator. Only intelligence and taste can prevail. That’s why he never confined himself to one specific faith or group (he played with the idea of becoming a Christian and joined masonry at the same time!). Why not taste them all? He had to be sent to prison by the society that he had exposed to put limits to his passion for life, and that killed him. We can imagine the suffering of such sensibility imprisoned. No blue china, no champagne, no books, no words, no air. A man of his delicacy could not survive the lack of beauty and the fetid air of jail. His purity was suicidal.

“Essentially Wilde was conducting, in the most civilized way, an anatomy of his society, and a radical reconsideration of its ethics. He knew all the secrets and could expose all the pretense. Along with Blake and Nietzsche, he was proposing that good and evil are not what they seem, that moral tabs cannot cope with the complexity of behavior. His greatness as a writer is partly the result of the enlargement of sympathy which he demanded for society’s victims” (p. xiv). “We inherit his struggle to achieve supreme fictions in art, to associate art with social change, to bring together individual and social impulse, to save what is eccentric and singular from being sanitized and standardized, to replace a morality of severity by one of sympathy” (p. 553).

Wilde, we dare add, couldn’t possibly have had a more appropriate name and definitely honoured it, as Ellmann’s biography depicts with such precision and elegance.

To: Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, 

NIETZSCHE'S BIRTH. October 15th

Who is this man?

Friedrich Nietzsche, by Edvard Munch

What do you know about him?
When and where was he born?
Why is he admired?

FASHION (intermediate powerpoint)

How important is fashion for you?

How much time do you spend in front of the mirror each day?

Do you feel inferior when you don't wear "the right" clothes?

How much do you spend on clothes and accessories?

These questions and many others for you in this powerpoint:

FASHION ppt

More PowerPoint presentations from pilarmham

HOUSE (intermediate)

Could you name all the parts of a house? There are so many!
Look at this picture and find out:

You'll find the solutions at:

Oxford Advanced American Dictionary
(click on the picture of the house in the entry)

 

for additional practice

LOL 6

On the phone:

- "Who's THAT?"
- "IT's me"

Who can explain this? How can I be IT?

Watch and find out!

[Video by Electric Company]

THE SOUNDS OF ENGLISH: the schwa

• Which is the most frequent sound you hear when listening to English?
• Is it a vowel or a consonant?
• How is it represented?
• When can you hear it?
• Is it difficult to pronounce? 
• What makes it complicated?
• Find some words in which it is pronounced.

Watch this video to find the answers to these questions:

JOBS & PROFESSIONS (elementary ESL worksheet)

Do you want to check your knowledge of vocabulary related to jobs? If so, download and complete this worksheet. You can see how many of your answers are correct in the key on page 2.

LOL 5

FAMILY TREE GAME (elementary)

Follow the instructions and complete the family tree.

(Choose your level: beginner, intermediate or advanced)

I bet you could do it!

Visit this great site and try all their vocabulary games:

TEACHERS' DAY (October 5th)

(Source of image: http://elearningindustry.com/awesome-free-facebook-covers-photos-for-elearning-professionals)

(Source of image: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/72761350201335859/)

What makes a great teacher?