Express Publishing (ELT)

Apologies to all you Trekkies out there, but Space is not the final frontier; that space is reserved for death: “the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns.” – Hamlet

Is it a bit of a taboo subject in class – death?
Well, if the only two sure things in life are death and taxes, and we can at least try to fiddle our way out of the latter, why not think a bit about the former, which we cannot wriggle out of.

We may not be afraid to die, but we probably don’t want to be there when it happens – unless it’s Robert Patterson sinking his canines into your neck perhaps.

So, doing death in class. (Not the practical!)
First a warning! Do not use activities which might upset students in your culture! You have to be sensitive when dealing with death, ghosts, vampires, zombies and intolerance.     read more >>

This text and exercise can be used with higher level classes as a fun activity. After the matching task, they could try and make up their own silly author names and books or share any amusing names in their own language.

What do you call some of the most unlucky people in Britain?

Justin Case, Barb Dwyer and Stan Still. It sounds like a bad joke, but a study of online telephone records has revealed that there really are unfortunate people with those names in the UK. Joining them on the list are Terry Bull, Mary Christmas, and Anna Sasin. And just imagine having to introduce yourself to a crowd as Doug Hole, Tim Burr or Dawn Hobbs. Researchers also scoured phone records in the US and found some unlikely names there too. Spare a thought for Anna Prentice, Annette Curtain and Bill Board the next time you sign your name.     read more >>

Get your pens out
When I was at school dictation meant learning a passage or list of vocabulary at home in preparation for a test the next day. The teacher read out the text or list piece by piece, pausing for us to write what we heard. Our scripts were taken in and marked. A point from a total of 20 was taken off for every mistake in spelling, punctuation or missed out word. If you had over twenty mistakes you got a minus score – which meant a student who wrote nothing could score higher than one with a lot of mistakes!     read more >>

Read the passage and answer the questions which follow:

This gro I folled in the bion. I sok a trisy vene drog. The grask was trisy lirkening. I did not dring it. A jovind Kar and a jovind Kari were pristing deree me. They were gribbling alty. I sorb trisy forban. I possi not vree the skadis. I vridi trun. I grokki ta the Kar and the Kari forbenly. They did not gof nol drinkleton. Wi the hin I possi not wilk it. I vridi trun ves. “I possi not vree a palav!” I lind forbanly.     read more >>