About Me

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Portugal
I am from Coimbra, Portugal, and am currently teaching in a school in Soure, about 30 km away from Coimbra. I have been a teacher of English for over 20 years and have already taught different levels and age groups. After all this time I can say I love working with adult groups because there are no coursebooks and I can create my own resources. I am an avid reader, a blogger and very curious about free tools and their implementation in the classroom.

Friday, May 25, 2012

Vocab Review on Transport

My latest resources were meant to be review work with vocational classes... yep, that's right! They can surely be used to introduce vocab on means of transport but my classes are so weak that they didn't find them as easy as one might think.
Right now I'm teaching the topic "Communication in the Professional World" and one of the coursebook texts is about business travellers. Before introducing the text, I planned some review work focusing my attention on vocabulary. To boost their interest, I chose a short excerpt of the movie "Up in the air" in which Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is a corporate downsizing expert who travels around the country not only firing people but also giving motivational speeches on relieving one's life of excess physical and emotional baggage. Having said this, you might want now to have a look at the excerpt I used in class:


This would also be a good movie to talk about jobs / unemployment / technologies / priorities in life...

If you wish, please have a look at my worksheets available in the ISSUU shelf above (disclaimer: last page contains two adapted exercises).

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Readers

“Readers may be divided into four classes:
1) Sponges, who absorb all that they read and return it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtied.
2) Sand-glasses, who retain nothing and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting through the time.
3) Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read.
4) Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I would like to believe I belong to the last class... what about you?

Friday, May 18, 2012

Summer Courses for all

This is not the first time that I write a blogpost about International House and surely won't be last! In the past, Dave Tucker and all the staff at IH Coimbra welcomed me and my students for interactive sessions and last year there was even a most generous offer of a summer course to an adult learner of mine as posted here.
Soon I'm planning to take there my vocational students (among them are some lucky ones who met Dave and Jenny 4/5 years ago and just can't wait to see them again) but, in time, I'll write about it; right now, let me call your attention for some mail/info I got from them.
(Please click on it to enlarge)
The end of the school year is approaching and, as you can see, there are many different courses suiting all ages and needs: English for kiddies, teens, adults, intensive courses, exam preparation, business english...  IH also offers online teacher training - check ihlondon.com/online-training but why don't you go to R. Antero de Quental, 135, 3000-032 Coimbra, see for yourself and ask all the questions you want to ask???

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