Thank You, and Merry Christmas!

I generally enjoy my job, but this term has been particularly good for me, blessed as I have been with some really great classes of really great students. Thanks everyone for being so participative, for your enhusiasm, for trying out some of those wacky ideas and putting up with the wacky results, for your humour and acceptance...

Wishing you all a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, 2006.

Mark

CP2 - AC2.2 Christmas Homework

Very very important not to lose contact with your English over this next three weeks, especially if you're seriously intending to do the exam in June! Don't forget you have a mock exam at the British Council next term, too!

1. Homework number one is detailed below on the blog - contributing a post and making at least one comment on someone else's post on the britishcouncilhub blog. This is an assessed piece of work!

2. It's time to get our teeth into the real stuff. Can everyone please buy the following book: Cambridge Certificate of Proficiency in English 2 With Answers, Examination Papers from the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-75109-8.

Over Christmas, you should do Test 1, Paper 1, Reading (pages 4-13) and Paper 3 (pages 16-23). I suggest you do at least half a paper at a time, and only check the answers when you have completed the whole paper, not after each question. It is important to do it this way, as if you check after each question, you are not really doing exam practice. Summaries to be handed in to me.

I suggest you do the papers under exam-conditions (ie try to do it in the time, no dictionary etc), but check your answers later with a dictionary, give yourself more time if necessary (make a note of how much) and make any corrections you want to before you look at the answers.

When doing the summary question, I suggest you use a highlighter pen to highlight (because that's what highlighter pens do) the key points in the question and the relevant parts of the texts. Remember, you are not usually summarising the whole of the text or texts in this question - part of the question is extracting the correct information.

We will check the papers together, looking at problem questions, in an early class in term 2.

I will be setting a composition from Paper 2, Part 2 (page 15) early in Term 2; if you want to get ahead and do one over Christmas, go ahead.

3. I strongly recommend you read a book or at least start reading a book in English if you are not already doing so. One suggestion would be 'Absolute Friends' by John le Carré. I've already recommended this. Can't someone start a Blog thread about recommended reading?

That's it. Should keep you usefully busy during those boring post-Christmas-bacalhau moments...

FastMind - Sneaky Mind

I have been receiving invitations from some students to join a programme called FastMind. Please be very careful with this invitation if you receive it. It will come as if from a known contact, but in fact the email address is of the provider of this programme, eg

From: "snowfinch@yahoo.com" invite@fastmind.net

If you reply to the invitation you will be letting fastmind.net know you exist.

If you click on the link, you will find that the programme asks you to provide your email address, AND YOUR PASSWORD. Please, NEVER NEVER NEVER give your password to anyone else. They could do all sorts of nasty things using your email account if you do. Be warned!

Mark

Christmas Homework for ALL CPE STUDENTS

More coming up, but to get you started, here is a task for Christmas.

First one, very important is the following. Think of a topic which interests you or motivates you in some way. It could be a hobby you are really into, such as birdwatching or dancing, something you have an intellectual interest in (for example, the administration of the postal service of western Mongolia or the history of post-Stalin Russia); something which really motivates you (like meditation or your church), or something that makes you want to take action against it, such as child-molesting or domestic violence. It might just be a story that has inspired you, such as the story I read yesterday about a man who became totally paralised just 6 weeks after getting married, and how he and his wife have built a new life out of this situation.

Once you have your topic, write a paragraph of about 50 words, giving your opinion on the topic, and/or saying why it is important to you.

Post it on the BritishCouncilHub blog!

Next, add a comment to at least one other students' post. Preferably comment on more than one.

This is a homework! I will be checking to see who has and hasn't posted something! If you're still not a member of the blog, join it; if you haven't had an invitation, mail me. If you STILL can't publish your post, then email it to me, and I will post it for you. But DO try to do it yourself first.

Happy posting!

Mark

Advance your Vocabulary

Tuesday/Thursday CPE1 students have agreed to buy the book 'English Vocabulary in Use Advanced' by Michael McCarthy and Felicity O'Dell, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-65397-5 We will use this in conjunction with the coursebook.

CPE2 students, you might like to take a look at this book if you see it in a bookshop, and consider whether you would like to use it either for self-study, or as a class book. I will feed back on this in the first lesson in January.

Tookie Williams case: Your views

Don't post here. Share your views with a bigger world.

http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=573&&edition=2