Artículos escritos por profesores particulares de Inglés nativos

“Germinal” in an epic film based on the novel by Emily Zola. It is a detailed, sweeping tale of French coal miners and their struggle against their exploitative owners, which resulted in catastrophe and hopelessness. The story is set in France, in the late 19th century. Emilie Zola, a French writer, decides to travel to a poor district of the country to observe the miner´s working conditions. On this trip, he details the experience that these br...

Play dough is a simple educational tool that promotes learning through hands-on playing. However, it is not very popular with teenagers and adults. In this post, I will describe five activities that you can implement with the grown-ups. Many of these tasks were originally used in Language or Arts classes, but you can definitely adapt them in any subject classroom with reading assignments or vocabulary that needs to be learnt. Playdoh Vocabu...

Last Saturday marked the celebration of La Noche de San Juan, the eve of Saint John the Baptist's Day, which also coincides with the shortest night of the year. The Summer Solstice (also known as Litha in many parts of Europe) is a pagan festival that celebrates the longest day of the year. Here in Spain, the Christian festival Saint John's Day and the Pagan Litha are combined to form the festivity La Noch...

Ahora que estamos en época de 'summer holidays', los siguientes 'grammar reminders' o recordatorios de gramática pueden resultarnos 'highly useful':   GO + VERB-ING (for activities or sports): - This summer we will go camping/sailing/snorkelling/hiking  - Let's go widsurfing/waterskiing today. - Shall we go scubadiving or sailing tomorrow? En español estas estructuras bien se pueden traducir por: "ir de" acampada, "ir a"...

As part of the learning process of becoming familiar with a language understanding the vocabulary is one of the most important points.  When I usually ask my students if they know the different types of vocabulary we have in English, they just think I'm talking about the specific vocab for a particular topic, but when I explain them that this is not enough....they look a little lost. The variety of vocabulary we can find in English are: Co...

Hi everybody ! My name is Monica and I am Italian ( I bet you can all guess that by my surname). Before I introduce myself properly allow me to answer the question I posed in the title. Not only do I think you can but I believe the more the better. I guess that having a few years of experience given also age, makes you wiser and more experienced in general but, depending on the life you live,  also a collector of new experiences.  How ...

Through teaching English and learning a new language myself, I have chosen 5 of my favourite methods for learning a language that you can apply to your own studies! I fully support textbooks and exam material but if you’re looking for something a little bit different, read on…   ·      Find material that interests you. There’s nothing worse than struggling through a text on something you have no interest in when you...

¿Qué es un mid-position adverb?  Es un adverbio que se coloca en medio en una clase. Los adverbios se pueden colocar en 3 posiciones en la clause: FRONT POSITION = Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend the meeting today. MID-POSITION = I always get up at 7 a.m. END POSITION = Have you read that report yet? TIP: Según el tipo de adverbio, puede colocarse en una u otra posición. Algunos pueden colocarse en distintas posiciones para da...

Languages had been a part of my life since I remember. Just the curiosity to know what other people are saying in other tongs, even today calls my attention.     I started at university studying psychology while teaching at elementary levels. Very shortly after that, I realize there was something missing. I realize I wasn`t studying what I love to do, learning and teaching languages. A few years later, wit...

We are going to talk about prepositions. When English speakers talk about time and place, there are these words that often come up: IN, ON and AT are among the prepositions that tell time and place.  In this post we are going to cover these three prepositions, talking about time.  Prepositions of time Let's start by looking at how we talk about time.  The preposition in - it is used to describe a general, longer perio...

Obviously, there are many ways to learn something, including a language. I often get asked what the best way to learn a language is. My simple answer is: practice. To learn a musical instrument, hours and hours of practice are generally required. You can learn to read sheet music, know music theory, but in the end, practice makes perfect! In my experience as a teacher, I constantly encounter people who have spent years studying English...

Cuando los nativos conversan entre ellos, rara vez los escucharás decir “I’m very tired”. No es que esté mal ni que sea formal, es sólo que a las personas nos encanta explicar las cosas de manera más simpática y desenfadada. En castellano ocurre igual y es muy común escuchar expresiones tales como “estoy muerto”, “estoy reventada”, “no doy más” ó “me caigo de sueño”, ¿verdad? Hoy te voy a explicar 11 maneras diferentes de decir “I’m very ti...

¿Has visto la foto que acompaña a este artículo? ¿Te puedes creer que alguien haya sido capaz de hacer un dibujo de su gato perdido y pegarlo en un árbol con la esperanza de que la gente del barrio lo reconociera  y le avisaran? ¿O será solo una broma? A veces se nos hace difícil creer lo que un amigo nos está diciendo o lo que vemos,  pensamos que nos está haciendo una broma y preguntamos ¿me estás tomando el pelo?. Curiosamente,...

Many of you watch TV series in the English language, which is a great and fun way to improve your listening. That said, several of my students have commented that some of the British dialects, particular forms of language pertaining to different regions and social groups of the UK, can be difficult to understand as, not only are the accents, the ways in which people pronounce English, unusual, but there are many words which aren't used in standa...