Nik's Daily English Activities: May 2009

Learn English in a Football Community

One of the great things about English and the Internet is that they both allow you to connect with and share your interests and ideas with people from all around the world. Whatever your interest is, there is sure to be an online community that allows you to share your interests in English. That is never more true than in the case of football (or soccer if you prefer) .

So, today's task is based around joining an online community to share your interests and communicate with others in English. This can help you develop your vocabulary, help your reading and writing skills and may even help you to make some new friends.

Task:

Go to: http://www.footbo.com Make sure that you have selected to view the site in English by using the small icon at the top left of the screen.

Now complete the free sign up form. You just need to create a password and add an email address. You must be 13 years old or over though to access the site. Once you have completed the registration you'll get an email with a link . Click your link to activate your account.

You can then start adding information to your profile. This includes links to your favourite sites as well as information about yourself. You can skip this if you prefer.

You can also add favourite teams and favourite players to your profile as well as selecting players to be part of your dream team.

To start interacting with other members of the site you should go to the 'Forums'. here you can start adding questions and answering questions.

You can also play a game and try to predict the results of future matches by clicking on 'Predictions'

Or if you prefer you can click on Teams or Players and get information, images and watch video clips.

This is a great way to enjoy using and improving your English and sharing your interest in football.

I hope you enjoy it. Here you can find game related activities.

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Nik Peachey

Create Your Own English Comic Strip

The phrases and expressions used in written English are often different from those that would be used in spoken English, so remembering spoken English phrases is very important.

Today we will look at a fun way you can use spoken phrases to create comic strips using the Make Belief Comix website. You can use these either to remind your self of any new phrases you are learning, or just to enjoy creating your own comic strip.

Task:

Go to: http://www.makebeliefscomix.com and click on 'Enter Here' below the comic strip.
You will then be able to see the comic creator. Think of some spoken phrases that you have learned recently. Think about how they would be used in conversation and how the people you are talking to might respond.
Now create a comic strip using the phrases and making them part of the dialogue. It's simple to make a comic strip. You just click on the first character you want to use, then scroll through different emotions that you would like them to have.

Once you have the one you want, just click on the person and they will appear in the comic strip. You can drag the person to the position you want them. Add other characters and text balloons for your dialogue.

When you have finished you can print up or email the comic strip to yourself and keep it as a reminder.

If you enjoy this activity, there are also some story ideas that you could try. Try the first one 'Tell your life story'. This is a nice way to tell people about yourself.

I hope you enjoy this activity. Here a some more activities that use cartoons.

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Nik Peachey

The 100 Most Common Words in English?

It's great to learn new words and structures in English, but sometimes it's also a good idea to go back and review what you already know.

Today's activity comes from the Sporcle website and is a quick test to see if you know the 100 most commonly used words in the English language.

Task:

Go to: http://www.sporcle.com/games/common_english_words.php You will see a grid with 100 space and a time limit of 12 minutes set and ready.

Before you start, think about what some of the most commonly used words might be in your first language. In English articles, pronouns and prepositions are used in almost every sentence, so you might think about starting with those.
When you are ready click on 'Ready? Click to Start'.

Start typing words into the box. Correct words will appear in the grid. If not you will have to delete the word and try another one.

After 12 minutes the correct words will appear. Good luck.

I hope you enjoy this activity. Here you can find more Quiz Activities or you could search the Sporcle site for more language related quizzes

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Nik Peachey

Poems for Pronunciation

Reading short poems is a really good way to develop your vocabulary and reading skills and even your pronunciation. Poems are also good because many are quite short so you can read them quite quickly.

Today's activity will show you how to get a new poem each day from Every Day Poets and how you can get help with the pronunciation of the words and then record yourself saying the poems.

Task:

The first thing you will need to do is to go to: http://www.everydaypoets.com/ This site publishes a new poem everyday. If you add your email address to the subscribe box you will then receive a new poem everyday in your email.

When you receive your poem, or using the one on the website, try to read it out aloud. You can check the pronunciation of any new words by using http://www.howjsay.com/ just type in any word you are unsure of and you will hear someone saying the word.

Once you are sure that you can read the poem and pronounce all the words, then go to: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ Here you can download a small piece of software that you can use on your computer to record and listen to yourself.
Once you have downloaded the software, simply open it, make sure you have microphone ready and then click the red 'Record ' button and read your poem. As you read you will see a sound wave being created.

Once you have recorded the poem press 'Stop' and then listen to yourself by pressing the greeen 'Play'. If you are happy with the poem save it, if you want to try to record it again and make it better, click on the X to delete the file and record again.

Be sure to save your recordings and come back and listen to them again a week or two later. As your pronunciation improves you might want to record them again. You can save the recordings by going to the File menu then clicking on 'Export As WAV'.

I hope you enjoy this activity and record a new poem everyday. Here you can find more Pronunciation Activities

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Nik Peachey

Write a Song in English

Not everything you do when you are learning a language as to be serious. It's great to use the language you are learning to have fun and to communicate with people.

In today's activity we are going to use one of my favourite websites Let them Sing it For You to have some fun, create some songs and listen to famous people singing them.

Task:

First you need to write a song. This doesn't have to be difficult. You can write a song about yourself or a friend by using their name.
You simply create a sentence about the person using the letters of their name to start the first word of each line.
Here's how it is done using my name (Nik). I have three lines, each beginning with the letters of my name.
N
I
K

So a make a line about myself starting with each letter.
Not very good at sport
I like to go to the beach
Know a lot about different websites

Once you have your short song, go to Let them Sing it For You and type the words into the field and click on the arrow.

The site will then convert you words into a song that you can listen to. Here's mine.
Nik's Song

You then just email the song to your friends or yourself.

If you want to hear other songs you can go to a Lyrics website like A-Z Lyrics and copy and paste the lyrics to create songs to share with your friends. You could also send them some singing messages instead of emails.

I hope you have fun with this website and create lots of songs in English.

Here you can find more Song and Music Activities.

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Nik Peachey

Take and Make a Quiz

Quizzes can be fun ways of finding out about yourself and other people and learning new vocabulary and questions.

In today's activity we are going to look at a range of quizzes from FunQuizCards and then you can try to create your own.

Task:

First I have selected some quizzes for you to try, so you can see how they work and what you can learn from them.
Take these tests and find out:

Which music suits your personality?
Are you a couch potato?
Do you look older than your age?
Do you deserve promotion?
Are you a good student?

Now think about your own quiz. Here are some topics you could make a quiz about:

- Your country - Questions about special places or significant events
- Your favourite singer / movie star / artist - Questions about their achievements or personal information
- English grammar - Questions about verb tenses
- Food that you like - Questions about ingredients
- New words your have learned - Questions about word definitions
- A special topic that you enjoy - Questions about specific information about that topic
- You and our friends - Questions about your likes and dislikes - You could share these with each other and find out how much you know about each other.

You can use Wikipedia to find detailed information and check your facts.
Think of about 5 - 10 questions. Now go to: http://www.funquizcards.com/qc/step1.php
Enter a name and an email address, then give your quiz a name and choose the number of questions your quiz will have. Then click 'Continue'.

Now enter your question and three possible answers. Click the button to show which is correct.

Then click on 'Continue' This will show you all the questions and answers you have added. If you are happy with them click continue again. Now you will see a link to your quiz. Click the link and try the quiz to make sure it is correct.

Now you can either share the link with friends by email or post it to your blog or MySpace or any network that you would like to share the quiz with.

I hope you have enjoyed this activity and found out more. Here you can find more Quiz Activities.

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Nik Peachey

Develop Your Marketing Vocabulary

For people who want to use English within their profession, it is becoming increasingly important to be able to develop your English within specific work related topics. So in today's activity we are going to look at how you can do that.

Today we will be looking at how you can develop you listening and vocabulary knowledge of marketing and particularly online marketing. We will be using a listening and script from the Double Click website as well as some web based tools to help you learn, record and remember new words.

Task:

Go to: http://www.doubleclick.com/nervecenter/ Here you will see an image of Carl Hendra. If you click on one of the topic areas on the left hand side menu you will hear her talking about those marketing topics.
As you listen you will see keywords on the right of the screen. Listen and try to understand what you can.
Once you have listened once download the tapescript and listen again. This time you can follow with the script as you listen.

To download the script you will need to click on 'Download Transcript' and then 'Carla Hendra'

Once you have done this, copy the first section of the script and go to the VocabGrabber website.
Paste the text from the script into the field and click on 'Grab Vocabulary'.

This will produce a 'word cloud' of the words in the text.

Now you can click on each of the words to get a definition of the word and some information about related words. You can also see examples of the words in use. If you want to be sure to remember these words you could use Wordie to create a word list. There are some instructions on how to do this in the List Your Favourite Words activity.
Lastly, listen through to Carla Hendra talking again without the script and see how much you remember. Write a summary of the main parts of the talk using FutureMe and send it to yourself so that you receive it in two weeks time along with the link to the DoubleClick website.

Then you can check your notes and listen again. This will help you to see how much you remember and refresh your memory of the vocabulary.

Hope you enjoy listening and learning more about marketing. Here you can find more Business English activities.

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Nik Peachey

Test Your British vs American English

As most students of English know, it can be spoken differently in different countries or even in different parts of the same country. The differences are not only in the grammar and pronunciation but also there are differences of vocabulary.

Today's activity tests your knowledge of British and American English vocabulary.

Task:

Go to: http://www.sporcle.com/games/usuk_words.php
Take some time to look through all the British English words and see if you know or can remember the US word for the same thing. If you aren't sure, you might want to check in a dictionary or you could go to the British to American translator at: http://www.translatebritish.com/index.php

Use the translator to check any words you are not sure of. When you are ready, click on Ready to start.

Try to type in all the US words as quickly as you can. You will only have five minutes.

If you can't get all the words in 5 minutes, don't worry, you will see the answers at the end. You can always try again another day until you can remember them all in 5 minutes.

Hope you enjoy this activity. Here you can try some more Daily Vocabulary Activities.

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Nik Peachey

Driving and Listening in English

Do you ever drive while talking on the phone? In the UK it is both dangerous and illegal. To prove to people that they can't drive effectively and talk to someone on their mobile phone a short game has been created.

In today's activity you are going to play the Driving Challenge game and see if you can listen and complete the challenge.

Task:

Make sure you have the volume on your computer turned up.
Go to: http://www.dft.gov.uk/drivingchallenge/ listen and follow the instructions.

The test is to count the number of different colour T-shirts you see, but I would like you to also listen and try to remember what questions the woman on the phone asks you while you are driving.

Good luck. I hope you enjoy this activity. Here you can find more Games to Improve Your English.

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Nik Peachey

PS: Here are the answers upside down.

¿ʞɹɐd oʇ ǝɹǝɥʍʎuɐ ɟo ʞuıɥʇ noʎ uɐɔ
¿ƃuıuǝʇsıן noʎ ǝɹɐ
¿ʇɹɐʇs ʇı sǝop ǝɯıʇ ʇɐɥʍ
¿pooɟ ʇnoqɐ op oʇ ʇuɐʍ noʎ op ʇɐɥʍ
¿puǝʞǝǝʍ ǝɥʇ ɹoɟ ɥsɐɔ ʎuɐ ʇuɐʍ noʎ op
¿ʞןɐʇ oʇ ʎɐʞo ʇı sı
¿ƃuıʌıɹp noʎ ǝɹɐ

Find Out More About Texts

Reading is a great way to improve your vocabulary and the more variety of topics and types of text you read the better your vocabulary will become.

Today's activity uses a tool called WordSift that can help you learn more about the vocabulary you find in the texts you read online.

Task:

Select a text that you have read recently. You could try reading then taking a text from the magazine section of the British Council's LearnEnglish website.
You could try this text about Surfing or search the archives.
Once you have read go to http://www.wordsift.com/ and copy the text into the field. Then click on 'Sift'.

This will sort the vocabulary from the text and show you the 50 most common words in the text.

You can then click on any new words and then move down the page to see more information about each word.

You will find images, a word web with definitions and if you go further down the page you can find example sentences from the text that use the word.

This can make it much easier for you to understand new words and make notes of them. You can get help with this if you check out the activity on How to Remember More Vocabulary

Use this tool regularly after reading a text and you will soon see your vocabulary beginning to improve. Here you can find more Daily Activities to help build you vocabulary

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Nik Peachey

Read Along With Films and TV Shows

Watching films and TV can be a great way to improve your language skills and it can also be a lot of fun. What you are watching can really help you to understand the language and how it is used in context.

Watching films and TV can be made more productive though if you have a script to help you understand what you are hearing, and even more so if you have a translations of the script.

Today's activity looks at a site called Cswap that can help you with this.

Task:

Go to: http://www.cswap.com/ and search for the script to a film that you like. You can either do this using the search or browse through the alphabetical listings.

Once you have found one go to YouTube and see if you can find some clips from the film.

1. Watch the clip and see how much you understand.
2. Read the script in English and check your understanding, then watch the clip again.
3. Click to get a translation of the script into your language and read and compare with the English script.

Here's and example of this: Watch this clip from Toy Story 2

Now read the section of the script in English: Toy Story 2 Script
Now read the text in your own first language.

You can try doing this for just one clip or try to watch all the parts of a film, but only do a small section each day. Try to go back to the beginning of the film each time and watch without any support.

I hope this helps you to enjoy the films and learn more from them.

Here you can find more Video Activities to Improve You English

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Nik Peachey

Nik's Daily English Activities

Pages

Learn English in a Football Community

Create Your Own English Comic Strip

The 100 Most Common Words in English?

Poems for Pronunciation

Write a Song in English

Take and Make a Quiz

Develop Your Marketing Vocabulary

Test Your British vs American English

Driving and Listening in English

Find Out More About Texts

Read Along With Films and TV Shows

For Teachers