Casual Conversations & Recounts

Talking about what we did on the weekend is something that we often do when we meet our friends, classmates or work colleagues. Last week we started writing about our weekend on our Wallwisher. Some other people have left their messages & links too. Read them and write about your weekend on it.

We also tend to tell anecdotes, which are short funny stories (i.e. recounts) of something that has happened to us of people we know. Anecdotes are part of what we call casual conversation. Today you can listen to a very good example of a casual conversation with an anecdote. Listen to this podcast of two TAFE teachers, Wendy and Gihan, having a chat during their coffee break. Do the worksheet and choose a classmate to practise anecdote telling later in class.

Bloggging at home

This week you are going to work independently from the comfort of your homes. Keep watching this space for more ideas. First click on post a sticky at the bottom of the board below. Then follow the intructions on the board.

Word Processing & emailing

Can anyone guess where these photos were taken?

Write your answers in comments.

Today Shaoming is going to teach you how to use Microsoft Word for typing. He will give you some instructions to read and if you follow them, you should be able to do the following:

• Open a word document.


• Type a recount about your weekend. Remember to use the past tense. You may be able to use some past continuous to practise the grammar we have been learning for the last 2 weeks.


• Save your word document on the desktop to find it easily


• Open your email account (the TAFE one or Yahoo, hotmail, gmail,etc)


• Write me an email


• Attach your recount


• Send it

If you have spare time, please look at past weeks and do any outstanding work.

For the weekend

Lina told us how she used Audacity to practise her short talk. What a great idea! For those of you interested in doing the same, here is a link to tutorials that may help you with it and other things you can do on your blogs. Check the ones with audacity and or podcasting in the name of the tutorial.

Recounts

Hi to all our students


Today I would like you to publish your recounts. Some of you have written about your first day in Australia and others have written about an anecdote ( a funny short story) that happened to you in the past.

An English teacher, Wendy Tanner, has left a comment in one of our posts. Read it. She has a fantastic wiki for her class. Feel free to read it, listen to the songs and everything else in it. We are going to try and work with her class. Do you have any ideas? Write them in comments or in our wiki esol f2f. I will show you how to do it.

I told you about looking up the pronunciation of new words online. This is one of many dictionaries you can use: dictionary.com. Check out the pronunciation of some of the new words from yesterday lesson: condition, blaze, battling, firefighters, drought.


When you write in English you have to make sure you don't have any spelling mistakes. I know it is quite hard to know how to spell things correctly. Read this post on spelling mistakes from a primary school teacher. You will see that spelling is difficult for everyone. Some people would like to change the rules and make it more phonetic/phonemic (spell things as they are pronounced).

This week you have started 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.

Give your opinion in last week's forum if you didn't do it then.

We should try to write/record a message in the voicethread world map. Dina managed to join and leave a message.
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.

Challenge

Try to write a sentence with the words in the pictures below. Put them together. Do you know what this is? Tell us in comments.

(you will need 2 she for picture 1)