The English Trainer

A few years ago there was a series of adverts by the drinks company Carlsberg. The punchline was "if Carlsberg did <supermarkets, golf courses etc>, they would probably be the best in the world" which was intended to show how great their lager was. The line, "if Carlsberg did..." seems to have made its way into common speech, to describe something that has or would work perfectly. My 'if Carlsberg did English lessons' happened today . We were discussing the difficulties of talking on the phone and what happens when you have to spell your name or address . One of the students said, "it would be great if you could tell us the words to help us spell the letters, like a is for apple etc". As it happens, I had the next part of the lesson dedicated to teaching them the phonetic alphabet for spelling. Afterwards, the student told me how useful it had been for her. It is incredibly useful to be able spell confidently and easily on the phone, as t...

Last and ago Last         (Long) periods of time before the current one year month week                 Seasons spring summer autumn winter                 Night                 Days of the week Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday                 *but yesterday is the day before today. Ago        Usually a specific length of time in the past                 5 minutes ago or 5 years ago                 Be careful with “I m...

It was the first of one of my English conversation classes after a long break and one of the activities I had decided to do was Taboo. It was a new class, and I wasn't sure how it would work as I didn't know the students. I modelled the basic idea behind the game, there is a word that people have to guess, for example, 'bones' but they cannot mention the 'Taboo' words such as break, skeleton, broken, dog. I split the class up into four groups as it was a large-ish class of 23. The students got the idea and were amazingly creative about how they described the words. This ability is incredibly useful when it comes to communicating and not knowing a particular word, should not stop students from being understood.