Improve your skills: writing and speaking

Telling a story.

The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary defines the term story as a description of events and people that the writer or speaker has invented in order to entertain people; that would be true provided the story is imaginary. That's why another definition is provided: an account, often spoken, of what happened to somebody or of how something happened; this definition would be the correct one for real stories.

Now we will have a look at some of the aspects that should be taken into consideration when writing or telling a story. First of all we need to express the order in which the events occur; some of the basic expressions we can use for sequencing include first, next, last, before, sometimes and now. But in order to improve the quality of our story some synonyms should be used:

- First: the first thing, at the beginning, in the first place.

- Next: then, after a while, shortly afterwards, as soon as.

- Last: at last, in the end, after a long time, eventually, finally.

- Before: earlier, formerly, not long ago, previously.

- Sometimes: at times, from time to time, periodically, occasionally.

- Now: recently, by now, currently, until today, meanwhile.

Another aspect we must pay attention to is tenses. Look at this video for a quick explanation of tenses. Since our story (either real or invented) is usually something that refers to the past, the use of narrative tenses is considered to be a must. The following are examples of different narrative tenses:

- Past simple: I spent last summer with my grandparents at their house by the lake.

- Past continuous: My friend Joan and I were swimming in the lake when we saw an enormous...

- Past perfect: We had never seen such a big...

- Past perfect continuous: We had been waiting for an hour to be rescued when Joan noticed something...

When telling your story your main objective should be to catch the attention of your audience. You would want your story to sound as exciting as possible, to appeal to your audience interests and make them reflect on what they have just read or listened to. Appropriate vocabulary will make the story more interesting, therefore we should choose adjectives and adverbs carefully in order to add that element of excitement. Use strong adjectives rather than gradable adjectives to emphasize what you are trying to say: shattered, freezing, terrified, disgusting, starving, gorgeous, fabulous, hilarious, delighted, awful, fascinating, terrific, huge, tiny, devastated... Use adverbs to add more information, especially adverbs of degree: absolutely, particularly, extremely, remarkably, fairly, terribly... and adverbs of manner: awkwardly, fortunately, mysteriously, suddenly, unexpectedly...

And finally use linking words to add coherence and cohesion to your story. Connectors can express: reasons (due to, because, since, as), results (therefore, consequently, as a result), contrast (however, nevertheless, despite, although), giving examples (for example, for instance), adding information (in addition, furthermore, moreover, besides).

To practise this here is a writing prompt that can be used in class with B1-B2 students:

You wake up in the boot of a car after two days missing. With you there is a bag full of money, a plane ticket and a wallet with a fake ID card. Little by little you start to remember things. Write the story of what has happened to you in the last couple of days.

Lesson plan: JK Rowling

Taking an interview with JK Rowling, famous writer of the Harry Potter novels, I have created this lesson in which students will practise reading, speaking and writing while reviewing past modals of deduction. This is to celebrate International Women's Day.

The lesson is appropriate for level B2 and you will need to allow 35 minutes to complete the tasks.

The reading activity is an interview with the author with a multiple matching exercise. Students must match the questions to the answers. The text is completed with a grammar point where students will review the use of past modals of deduction following an inductive approach. In the vocabulary section they must find the verbs that match the definitions.

In the speaking sections students aregiven for newspaper headlines and they must make deductions about the story based on the headlines.

Once they have worked in pairs to guess what the stories are about, for homework they must write the articles following their deductions.

You can download the activity here.

10 Most Common Mistakes Spanish People Make in English

We are all agree that making mistakes is part of the learning process. The Spanish people is aware of some of the mistakes they make when speaking or writing in english, and no matter wich drills are used in class to correct those mistakes, students seem to repeat them again and again. 

Despite of the fact that most of them learn English since many years ago, some mistakes seem to be rooted in their linguistic repertoire and I would say they feel /comforteibol/ making them. Thus, we can to argue that the solution to this problem does not depend only of the teacher but there are other factors involved such as L1 interference (negative transfer).

The factor of negative transfer makes us to think that certain mistakes are more likely to occur on speakers who share the same L1. Let's have a more closer look at the 10 most common mistakes Spanish people make.

Connectors

All teachers must have seen their students saying or writing despite of. This is due to a negative transfer since in Spanish we say a pesar de, and the preposition of is explicit. This also causes hypercorrection with the connector in spite of as most students tend to drop the preposition of. 

Verb patterns

Spanish students are taught in early stages of their learning process that the verb like is followed by a noun or another verb in -ing. When presented with another structure with like such as would like, some students tend to overgeneralize and use a verb in -ing as well. On the contrary we can see an example of hypercorrection when students use an infinitive after look forward to instead of -ing. 

Articles

Using the definite article when talking in general is probably another example of negative transfer as the definitive article is widely used in Spanish, even in situations in which we would not use an article in English.

Modal verbs

A common mistake is also using infinitive with to after modal verbs such as can or must. This may be due to overgeneralization since students feel that there should be to before an infinitive as with most verbs.

Infographic made with www.easel.ly

Subject-verb agreement

People is is a very frequent mistake among Spanish speakers. In Spanish the word people is often translated as gente which is followed by a singular verb.

Comparatives

Another example of overgeneralization is using a double comparative with a short adjectives (more faster). This is quite frequent in early stages but it is then corrected.

-ed/-ing adjectives

Confusing -ed and -ing adjectives is also very common. Spanish students tend to simplify and use -ed adjectives for everything and say things like the film is bored.

Now let's have a look at the top three mistakes. The ones that probably annoy teachers the most, or at least me:

Vocabulary

Using the verb to be before agree is something teachers are used to correcting at different stages. This is due to negative transfer as it is traslated in Spanish as estar de acuerdo with the verb to be explicit in the structure.

Pronunciation

Certain words ending in -able such as comfortable and vegetables are pronounced by Spanish people like table. This is due to a wrong hypothesis that makes them think all words ending in -able are pronounced that way.

Tenses

And finally it is time for my favourite: using the present simple with since and ago. This structure is very common in Spanish (Vivo en España desde hace 5 años) and students copy the structure in English word by word. Usually the also mispronounce the word since saying something like /sains/.

We can see students making these mistakes at different levels so we can assume they are also examples of fossilization.

There are also some other recurrent mistakes that didn't make this top 10 list but that could be included as well:

- Using the preposition of after the verb depend as they would say in Spanish.

- Dropping the first -h- from the relative pronoun which (wich). Obviously this is only found in writing.

- Saying for to + infinitive or for + -ing when using the infinitive of purpose: I went to the park for to see my friends.

- Using the verb have when talking about their age: I have 34 years old.

- Using the verb lose (sometimes loose) when miss should be used: I'm late because I lost the bus.

- Using to infinitive after make me or let me: My parents make me to tidy my bedroom every week.
- Saying use to + infinitive to talk about present habits. This mistake usually happens after explaining used to + infinitive to talk about habits in the past.

If there are any other mistakes you think are worth mentioning or should be on the list please add you comments below.

WRITING A SUCCESSFUL CV

Over the past few weeks I've had the opportunity to get immersed in ESP, English for Specific Purposes. I was the instructor of a workshop aimed at students at my school on how to write a successful CV. Several students have had the possibility to attend these classes where they learnt the different parts of a CV, the layout and design, tips to catch the attention of potential recruiters and specific vocabulary and key expressions that would to improve the quality of their CV.

IMPROVING STUDENTS' READING SKILLS WITH FLIPBOARD

I've recently read an article talking about how new technologies and social networks could be introduced in the classroom to improve teacher-student interaction and motivate them with apps they are familiar with. 

USING POSITIVE LANGUAGE - HOMES

This is an activity I really like to use with my students, it is suitable for B1-B2 students. They'll be able to practise three of the four skills, reading, speaking and writing, while they learn new vocabulary. 

QUESTION TAGS: LISTENING + SPEAKING

Whenever I had to teach question tags I always found it a little bit boring for the students, and they never understood the purpose of using them. They were quite happy saying: "Your father is a pilot, no?" You English teachers should be familiar with this, shouldn't you?