Sunday 11 October 2015

Pronunciation Practice: the -ed ending

The simple past is used principally to describe events in the past. As you know, we can classify verbs into regular and irregular. 

What can we say about irregular verbs? They are a pain in the neck for most of you because there's other way than learning them by heart. 

Regular verbs, on the other hand, are a piece of cake. We only have to add -ed to the base form and voilà we have the past of that verb. However, it's not that simple, isn't it? Here comes the problem of pronouncing them...because -ed endings may be pronounced /d/, /t/ or /Id/ depending on the last sound of the verb in the infinitive. 

Watch the following video and classify by pronounciation all the regular verbs you can hear.



Thursday 1 October 2015

Happy new school year!

It's been two weeks since we started the new school year. 
There are new students and even new teachers but the enthusiasm and willingness hasn't changed. 

"A Whale of a Time" starts this academic year 2015-2016 with a quote from Mahatma Gandhi:

Live as if you were to die tomorrow, learn as if you were to live forever.


This is for all of you, for all of us and especially addressed to my oldest students, who are learning and studying this universal icon.