Library

We have been working with the language of instructions. Do the listening exercise on imperatives in Time4English, LOWER INTERMEDIATE - UNIT 2B - LISTENING 1. You will need a user name and password. Ask your teacher for it.

How many imperatives have I used in this post?
Have I used any conditional sentences? Write the answers in comments.

This week we started work on the library. We had our tour of the library on Tuesday and you have started preparing your library short talks about a book borrowed from the college library. Listen to one of the St George librarians, Patricia, and do the worksheet in it.

The librarians at St George are producing excellent tutorials on how to use some of their facilities. You can find them in their wiki, St George Library wiki. There is a permanent link to it on the right sidebar of this blog. Keep visiting it to learn how to put money in your TAFE library to photocopy or print from one of the library computers, searching skills, etc. Today I would like you to watch their tutorial on how to start your TAFE portal access and change your password (if you want).

When you have finished the above tasks (listen & watch) come to the teacher's computer and record a message in the voicethread world map.

Our new students can start creating their blogs today. Check out the video on How to create a blog posted two week's ago in Our Blogs.

Welcome to Semester 2!

Hi everybody. Welcome to Our Class 2009.

Read* the newspaper article above. Search the net to find out what blogs are. Check with your classmates and teacher to see what everybody thinks blogs are.


As blogs are written on a computer, the very first thing to think about is your posture. It's very important to sit properly and at a good distance from the computer. So let's start working:

• Read this information about Computer Health. Click on all the links (Stretches, Postures, Consequences)


• Do the Quiz. When you finish answering the quiz, print it and keep it in your folder in the blog section. Remember to get a ring folder to be well organised with your class notes. Andrew and I will be asking you to look at things done in previous lessons, so if you keep them in order, it'll be easy to find them quickly.


• Now let's start creating your blogs. Click on Create Blog (up on the top bar) and follow the steps. At home you can check this bloggerHelps' Channel video on How to create a blog.
  

Weekend Work

Read Marion's post to her AMEP-A students. It tells you about our work with blogging.

* We've been doing work with the language of instructions. Can you tell me what do all the words in blue bold type font have in common? Write your answers in the comments section at the bottom of this post.

Let's Talk!

To see the whole page click here.

Survey

Thanks everyone for answering the evaluation survey. Please answer the survey questions if you haven't done it: Click Here to take survey . We will do our best to improve so that we can help you better with your English learning.

Keep an eye on this post as I will publish a link to your last podcast about music.

Hato de Foces wins Prestigious Award

Most of the music in our podcasts (Let's Talk, We talk, Sydney's People Podcasts) is from family members: my brothers groups Hato de Foces & Tresena or my son's music from TraxSmiths or Mig.

Hato de Foces is receiving a prestigious award from the town of Huesca. They received the award for their 32 years of work promoting folk music from the region of Aragon. One of their recent projects has been the Folk Music Festival iberi@huesca.folk, which showcases folk music from all the regions/states of Spain.

You can listen to some of their music in the youtube video published in the local radio website. Congratulations!

Our class is coming to an end!

Semester 1 is nearly finished, which means many of you will move on and start new courses.

It's been a pleasure teaching you and I hope you have got something out of our time together.

It'll be very helpful for us teachers if you take a few minutes to fill in this evaluation survey to tell us your thoughts about the course.
Our Podcasts
Listen to the Health Expo podcasts in Let's Talk (there are two new ones The environment & Coast Walks).

Listen to Asha's (and Jovanna's) latest radio program about love. It's very interesting.
You can also listen to your interview with the dental nurse about dental care.
Another interesting program is the one on sports, prepared by Desire and Yun. Unfortunatley Yun couldn't be here to record it.
Finally we have Lina's program on Learning English. Most appropriate to finish our blog!
Well done everyone! I will publish the rest of your radio programs asap, so keep watching this space or Let's Talk if you are at home!

Narratives
Read your classmates' narratives (mostly murder misteries, but also a love story) in their blogs. I"m glad we had time to learn about narrative reading and even writing a narrative. Keep the writing going. You don't have to be in class to continue using your blogs. You can do it by yourselves!

Extra work
We didn't have time to finsih this last week, so finish it when you can.

Some people can't look after themselves because they haven't got the means to do so. A school girl has recently won a prize for creating the video below about poverty. Check it out and read the poem she posted with the video and all the comments form teachers everywhere in the world. Write your reaction to this video in your blog and, if you wish, in her blog comments.


We were also talking about how to discipline children. Check this video, read the comments below the video and then go to our forum and answer the questions there. Tell us what you think.

Narrative: Greek wedding

Congratulations on all your radio programs. Listen to them in We talk: hobbies, pets and food.

You can also listen to your feedback on the Health Expo here. Dont forget towrite about it and our excursion in your blogs.

By the way our ranking has gone up to 8 in the Languages category and 594 in overall categories of podomatic blogs in the world!!! Well done everyone!

We've been reading narratives in class. Listen to this story about a greek wedding. Print the worksheet and then fill in the gaps. Keep looking at this very good English website, Gapfillers!

Tallking about pets, I found this very funny application, talking photos. Have a look at a very clever little puppy! Click on the bottom left hand corner...