Humor4u

Halloween is right there, so if you are planning to go to a party and you want some ideas to dress up, you can't miss this Cosmopolitan link:  50 Cheap Halloween Costumes That You Can Easily DIY  . This article is suitable for C1 students. Halloween is an old tradition, whose origin can be traced to Roman and Celtic times, but it is deeply rooted in the Catholic tradition too, as Mary Reed Newland points out in her article, All Hallow's Eve  (for C2 level) . Halloween marks the beginning of winter, the season of cold and darkness, where misty figures stir people's imagination to inspire spooky tales of terror. You can find lots of Halloween folk stories, for example, on  American Folklore  there is a long list of creepy short stories that can be read in class to swop stories and do an information gap task. I have chosen  Jack and the Devil  and  The Lady in the Veil   , while other stories can be just played for fun, to listen to the sound ef...

El Pilar festival is in full swing after the pandemic. The streets of Zaragoza are packed with people enjoying the festive atmosphere, and relatives come to Zaragoza from miles away to celebrate October 12th and participate in the popular Offering of the Flowers to the Virgin of El Pilar , who is the patroness saint of Aragón and of the Hispanic countries.   In America there are parallel celebrations around this date, like National Hispanic Heritage Month , from September 15th to October 15th;  Columbus Day , held on the second Monday of October (10/10/22), which includes the famous Columbus Day Parade in New York City , broadcast live on ABC-7 New York, or the alternative celebration of  Indigenous People's Day , which conmemorates the history and contributions of Native Americans. If you are interested in reading further about the debate between Columbus Day and Indigenous People's Day in the USA, you can check the article What Indigenous Peoples Day is all about,...

  October 6th marks the 50th anniversary of the premiere of " Cabaret " in Spain.  This movie is not just a happy-go-lucky musical, but a dramatic story of how violence can shake the foundations of a free, democratic society when intolerance, defamation and poverty strike, as in Berlin in the1930's.  It is worthwhile to watch Cabaret again, so here you can find a Worksheet and Viewing Guide with a Key , to help B2 students discuss some scenes in the movie (with subtitles), and here you can read a recent article from BBC Culture entitled " Cabaret: How the X-rated musical became a hit ", where you will find interesting words like: a ground-breaking [film], to take on, a hit, a chilling [message], release, against the backdrop , uncompromising [hate], acclaim , packed audiences, in pursuit of, vibrant [gay scene], a misfit, the likes of [Sally Bowles], a supporting actor , a magnet, to barrel [into the abyss], to treble, to be purged, grim , prescient, doom , to p...

That is the question that some BBC reporters asked a few children back in 1979 for the programme Junior That's Life. The answer is this funny video clip about the perception of wealth by innocent children that can be found on BBC Archive .  Some of the most interesting words you can come across in this video are: cabbages, lettuce, carrots, a platinum ball, a display cabinet, a pistol, miserable, a piggy bank, a booby, jolly [rich], to polish, silly me! This video with subtitles can be watched by B2 students and above. This video can be used to end a class about the topic "Money" with a touch of humour.  Here you can find a speaking task to discuss "Attitudes to Money",   and you can add a split reading task about two historical figures of Capitalism in the USA, John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie , which come with a simple vocabulary matching task with a key entitled "The Birth of Capitalism (... and Philanthropy)" .  All these tasks are suitable...

Nasir is a Marketing student from Pakistan who has done an internship in the town of Fitero  for a university project called KiNESIS. In the video below, Nasir explains what the project is about and what he has learnt in the project.  In this entry you can find a listening comprehension task , and you can also find the answer key .  The vocabulary in the video (4': 41") is not really a barrier, and the video is divided into sections, which can help the learner to follow the narration, so the task can be recommended for B2 students, if they are familiar with the Pakistani accent. Otherwise, the task would be more suitable for C1 learners. The video has subtitles, which can be used after the listening exercise for consolidation.  Some of the most interesting words you can pick up while watching this video are: rural development, an impact, mayor, brand, heritage, gastronomy, professors, municipal authorities, a monastery, monks, landscape, to be interlinked, to perform...

" Antother Day of Sun " is the opening scene of the Oscar-winning musical " La La Land (2016) ", directed by Damien Chazelle , starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone . The scene was shot "on location in three shots edited with hidden cuts to give the illusion of a single six-minute take" , according to Wikipedia. " Another Day of Sun " is a a song of "hope, struggle and pursuing the dream", the story of a provincial girl who leaves her hometown and her boyfriend to chase her dream in Hollywood.  The scene begins with a raucous routine traffic jam on the highways of L.A., that the magic of Hollywood turns into an explosion of energy, dynamism and joy of life with a jaw-dropping choreography by Mandy Moore that celebrates racial and cultural diversity at start of a new day in Los Angeles. Here you can find a lesson plan with a fill-in-the gap listening task  which can be used with B2 students and above.  The full lyrics of the song are f...

Kimpton, Hertfordshire, claims to hold "the biggest village festival in the country". Here you can listen to a short radio interview (2':54") to Emma Rice-Oxley, one of the top organizers of the 2022 festival, on  Today , BBC Radio 4 .  And here you can find a lesson plan for B2 students . The interview has no script, but with this list of interesting words as a guide, it can be suitable for B2 students and above:  live events, to host [a village festival], to raise the flag to mark the start of the festivities, blessed [with the weather], brilliant, [quite] a claim, to proof your credentials, [a two-year] hiatus, the highlights, the procession, to parade, [up] the high street, moving, dressed up, floats, a Jubilee related [float], a cannon, to fire, rainbows and brownies dressed up as fireworks, a scout group, to bang pots and pans, theme, the UK Garrison , a charity group, Darth Vader , stormtroopers , Maypole dancing , a fun run, a hog roast , you name it. You can...

Earth Day is a worldwide initiative to raise awareness and take action to help the environment. Here you can find a lesson plan for a speaking and listening class for B2 students, which discusses environmental issues based on some of the materials published on the website of earthday.org. In this class students are likely to activate words like:  climate change, greenhouse effect, waste, pollution, overpopulation, ozone-layer depletion, consumerism, extinction of endangered species, deforestation, destruction of habitats, nature reserves, breeding areas, conservationism, fossil fuels, renewable energy, non-renewable sources of energy, harmful, toxic, overfishing, to raise awareness, water management, landfills, solar panels, wind turbines, to tackle the problem, threats to the environment. Whereas in the video "Plogging Paul" below, they will come across words like trash, plogger, windy (winding) roads, country lanes, bushes, to make the biggest impact, to create a ripple [...

This is a lesson plan based on the Common European Framework of Reference and the European Language Portfolio , which can help students to reflect upon their history as language learners, their goals, beliefs and interests, and to do informal self-assessment of their language level using the Self-Assessment Grid of the CEFR .  It can be used the first or the second day of the course, before starting with the textbook, but it can also be used as distance conversation practice in the topic "Languages". The questionnaire is supposed to be for C1 students, but, with minimum changes, it can be adapted for B2 and even C2 learners. Here you can find a link to the Questionnaire "Language Learning Experiences and Beliefs" for conversation practice, again the Self-Assessment Grid of the CEFR and a lesson plan with suggestions for teachers. The less frequent vocabulary includes the following words and expressions: concening, current affairs, delivery, [to be] implied, pred...

December is a good month for oral presentations. Students have a long bank holiday in Spain and not many university exams yet, so they can prepare a short, five-minute presentation about a topic of their choice. This activity takes only three lessons, one to give them encouragement and basic guidelines and two lessons for the presentations themselves, all in all, from 5 to 6:30 hours of classroom time and the results are always impressive. Here you can find a Lesson Plan for B2, C1 and C2 students which revolves around an Interactive Exercise that was originally published by Allyn & Bacon Public Speaking (www.abpublicspeaking.com, but this link is no longer available on the web), which has been adapted for B2, C1 and C2 students. You can also find the Key to the Interactive Exercise, which the teacher can use to give students the main guidelines for the task, and an Oral Presentation Checklist to help the teacher assess the presentations.  You can also find three more hando...

Autumn is coming to the Northern hemisphere, children are going back to school and coughing, sneezing or runny noses are also back in our households.  If you have any of those symptoms, you may also worry that you have caught the coronavirus. You can watch this short BBC News video (1':51") below to find out the differences between these three respiratory illnesses.  It is not very difficult, and there are automatic subtitles, so it is recommended for B2 students and above. You will come across basic health vocabulary like: a blocked nose, a runny nose, a sore throat, a cough, flu, (a) temperature, (a) fever, to self-isolate with your household, sneezing, to catch your sneeze, the spray, to infect [others], tissues, a loss of taste, a coughing episode, to have trouble breathing, to spread [covid 19], a nasty cold, to put you down, social distancing, masks, handy. If you want more information, you can read the written version of the story here, there are more new words, and m...

 One of my B2 students, José Manuel A. has made these tasks to learn phrasal verbs with five songs: " I Will Survive ", " Tears in Heaven ", " Bye Bye Love ", " Across the Universe " and " I Just Called to Say I Love You ".  Here you can find the introductions to the songs, the lyrics, the links to different versions of the songs, the exercises that are focused on phrasal verbs and the key.   I can only add that I feel proud and priviledged to have students like José Manuel A. This lesson is suitable for B2 students and above.

This article from a local newspaper in the state of Maryland, the Salisbury Independent, talks about Hemalatha Bhaskaran, an Environmental Science teacher at a local high school that has won the award of "Teacher of the Year" from the Wicomico County Board of Education.  Reading the article can give you insights about current key issues in secondary education in the USA: diversity, equity, excellence, leadership etc. Here you can take a look at the webpage of James M Bennett High School, where Mrs. Bhaskaran works:  you can watch a short video about school news by two students ("clippers" is the nickname of the students)  and the Principal (or Headteacher) Ms. Savage.  And you can take a look at the different subjects and school activities to see what an American high school is like. I have created some activities around the text to build a lesson which includes a reading comprehension task with its key, a vocabulary chart to highlight key words and expressions in e...

Song lyrics can stir the imagination of the learner. Rhythm & criptic allusions can immerse the listener in a hazy atmosphere in which eyes must be open wide to try to catch a glimpse of the meaning of the lines. Undestanding song lyrics is always a challenge.  Listen to this song by Lorde, try to guess its message and discuss your guesses with your partner, if you can talk to someone. Here, there is a the gap-filling exercise to help you follow the song . Your guess may be right or wrong initially, when you are learning a foreign language, that is not too important.  What is really important is that you have activated your guessing skills in your brain, which are essential to reconstruct fragmentary understanding of the flow of speech and the fact that you have produced some sentences to discuss your guesses with a partner.  Here, you can find a link to a Wikipedia article that gives some insights into the lyrics of the song . In short, the song expresses "detailed d...

The Anonymous mask has become a common brand to protest against tyranny, but, many people ignore that this mask represents Guy Fawkes, a Catholic terrorist who plotted to blow up the British Parliament in 1605 with 36 barrels of gunpowder. This article from National Geographic gives you more historical background to Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot (B2). If you want to do a B2 listening task  about the tradition of Bonfire Night in Britain today, you can follow this link to LearnEnglish, a section of the British Council website. The video alone can also be clicked directly below: Finally, you can also read this current report from The Sun about some violent incidents on Bonfire Night yesterday, when minorities of "yobs" (hooligans) threw fireworks at police officers and firefightes, and a "lad" (boy) was stabbed in Merseyside, near Liverpool. This report is a good example of sensationalist journalist style, the vocabulary is very snappy and colloquial, but it shoul...

Are there gender differences between men and women or are we just talking about sterotypes? Are there biological differences between men's and women's brains or are the differences social and cultural? Many English coursebooks for adults use this topic to raise debate in the classroom:  Gender or individual differences? Nature or nurture? Here you can find a selection of materials to teach a lesson about gender issues, which I have used to expand the reading " How Men and Women Argue " on p. 64 of Christina Latham-Koenig's & Clive Oxenden's, English File Upper-Intermediate, 3rd Edition , Oxford University Press: "Men & Women", a set of controversial statements which students can discuss, first in pairs and then, as a class. Some links to TED Talks videos that could be given for listening/oral homework (students are assigned one video, they watch it at home, take notes and in the first 15 minutes of the next class they share the information in...

This is a conversation lesson about "Cinema" which can be used with B1, B2 and C1 students (with adaptations). Here you can find the lesson plan, two lists of the winners of the Goya and Oscar Awards 2019, an article about the 2019 edition of the Goya Awards, a fill-in the gap task with the lyrics of the song " Shallow " form A Star is Born , and the full script of the lyrics.