I'd like to wish a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to anybody who manages to enter this blog. To date this blog has failed to attract any interest but I am hoping for better things in the new year. I feel that this is the best place for us to discuss the various classes and to expand on the material or even bring forward some new ideas to try out in following classes. Remember the class is an opportunity to talk English which is probably the most important part of English learning.

Enda

A Tongue Twister

A flea and a fly flew into a flue.

They tried to flee for their lives.

The flea said to the fly: "Let's flee!"

The fly said to the flea: "Let's fly!"

Finally both the flea and the fly

fled through a flaw in the flue.

I see the name of the blog has changed. But still no sign of the army. The latest idea is that each student puts up a description of their presentation. I'm not forcing anybody to make a presentation but it's good practice for public speaking and maybe should be availed of. Anyway, the earlier the better as first come first served for ideas.

Hi again

I think that this would be a good place for people to post their ideas about their presentations. Just give a short synopsis of your presentation idea and people can give relevant feedback. This is also a good place to ask for help with your ideas.

Enda

I hope a few people start using this and that I am not talking to myself here. It is a good habit for your English learning to start reading English articles from the Web and working with those articles. As I have said it is important to choose something that interests you and to print it. Then choose some useful phrases or chunks (see collocations, phrasal verbs, idioms and social formulas) and maybe some words that you want to make part of your speaking vocabulary. These should be collected in a separate note book. This note book should become your own dictionary where you store all the useful phrases and words that you want to make part of your speaking vocabulary. This is a life time process and not just a short term idea for this course. Then write a summary of the article in your own words, including those phrases and words that you have chosen. This then could be uploaded to this blog where I can give some feedback. Also include your list of chosen words for the same purpose. Others maybe can use the phrase and word lists to choose useful language.

Here is a list of what is needed for a learner to enable speech:

- a core grammar

- a core vocabulary of at least 1000 high-frequency items

- some common discourse markers

- a core 'phrasebook' of multi-work units (or chunks)

- formulaic ways of performing common speech acts (such as requesting or inviting)

- mastery of some features of pronunciation

As I said earlier you should now start work on making your own phrasebook which should include the core vocabulary, chunks and formulaic speech acts.

I'll be including some short 'motivational' texts now and again. I would also like you to use this blog to ask any questions that you have or anything else that you think would be helpful for all the students.

Enda

To whom it may concern. This is a good place to get feedback about the lessons and 'clear up' any doubts you have before or after a lesson and also anything to do with presentations and debates. I would like to thank Ed for putting this together and getting it up and running so efficiently. The idea is to have the debate next Thursday but we will see what happens on the day. There is no point in going ahead with the debate if there are people who are not properly prepared. Yes, some people can 'wing it' but I don't advise this as there is no extra learning involved. The idea is to 'find' new language and use every opportunity to practice using it. Anyway, let's see how it goes.

Enda