Reading & Listening Practice

READING

Complete the text using the words given in the box. There are FOUR EXTRA words you don’t need to use.

Another     advice    benefits      cause      harmony       illness      in       insurance      on       other     patients    prescribing         proved        reason      recommends      surgery       therapies      treatment

Pros and Cons of Alternative Medicine
There are numerous_____0______ of using alternative medicine, but as it goes for most things in life, there are also some key factors to take into serious consideration. Just like any other conventional treatment, alternative ___1___may also have their side effects, drawbacks, as well as a few other significant aspects to keep in mind. Listed below are the most important pros and cons of alternative medicine that you should be aware of, before undertaking any new___2___

Pros

Alternative medicine is based ___3__the use of natural and herbal remedies and on the principle that health can be restored by bringing our body’s energy back into balance and ___4___.

•Body and mind. Alternative therapists focus on treating the whole person, and not just the symptoms of a disease or___5___. They believe that mind and body are closely connected and that patient’s emotional and spiritual health is of extreme importance when starting a physical cure. They encourage people to lead a healthy life and concentrate on what has actually caused the disease and led to imbalance.

•Stress. Stress in an important ___6___of many health problems and it considerably weakens the immune system. Conventional medicine doesn’t take it much into account when ____7____treatments, while most alternative therapies are instead based on reducing stress and emotional tension, in order to combat illnesses.

•Prevention. Another great pro of alternative medicine is that it considers prevention as one of the major prerequisites of good health. It teaches ____8____to focus on preventing illnesses before they occur and encourages them to take constant care of their body and mind.Contrary to conventional medicine that intervenes only when an illness has developed, alternative medicine uses a preventive and holistic approach and ____9____a responsible lifestyle.

•Chemicals and toxins. Contrary to conventional medicine, alternative medicine treats patients without overloading them with chemical medications, which usually lead to a buildup of toxins in the human body.
Cons
Before starting any alternative therapy, you should also take into consideration all of its pros. But we should also consider the drawbacks.
•Limited scientific research. Many forms of alternative medicine have not yet been scientifically ____10____and there are many questions that have not yet been answered. However, there are several studies currently under way, examining the efficacy and safety of certain therapies.
•Government approval. Most alternative medicine methods are not approved by any governing body and there aren’t any health ___11___companies that provide coverage for them.
•Long-term treatments. Conventional medicine treatments have relatively immediate effects, while alternative medicine therapies require a longer time to heal a problem. Alternative medicine is focused on treating the cause and eliminating the problem at its source, and thereby needs more time and cannot cure instantly.

•Emergency cases. Alternative medicine cannot intervene in emergency cases, such as car accidents or other circumstances that require immediate pain relief and instant action or ___12___.
•Effectiveness. Some people do not react at all to certain alternative therapies. A healing method that can be useful for one person isn’t necessarily effective for___13____.

0   benefits
1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12
13	SOURCE:http://youqueen.com/life/health/pros-and-cons-of-alternative-medicine/

LISTENING

Lucinda talks about using natural remedies to maintain health.

Answer the following questions about the interview.(CLICK!)

1) What does Lucinda say about her family?
a) Her aunt is  path-finder.
b) Her aunt is a homeopath.
 c) Her aunt is a doctor.

2) What does she say about Echinacea?
a) It is a rare treatment.
 b) It is a plant.
c) It gives you a boost.
3) What does she say about Western medicine?

a) She is allergic to it.

 b) She would use it if she needs it.

c) She only will take natural medicine.

4) What does she say about natural medicine?

 a) Doctors dont't like it.

b) You can get it at Starbuck's.

 c) People are against it.

Source: ello

Did you find that too difficult? LISTEN NOW to this other piece...

ANSWERS IN CLASS!!!

Have a nice weekend :-)

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Answers to homework- Reading Practice

Text 1  Q&A  NATURAL DISASTERS

A volcano, an earthquaque, a landslide, a tornado, a drought, a flood

ANSWERS

     a)  

          PREVENT: to keep from occurring; stop

MELT: to (cause to) become liquid by heat

DEEP adj.  extending far down from the top or surface

 ERUPT to burst forth, come out

 EVAPORATE: (cause to) change from a liquid or solid state into vapor or gas

     b)      and c)

 1D (No, they can’t, but they can predict which places are going to be hit sometime in the future)

2B (We can plant more trees)

3A (They can be caused by earthquakes under the ocean, a landslide or a volcano erupting)

4E (Yes, it is)

5C (The sea level will rise around the world and a lot of towns and cities round the world will be flooded)

d) 

  1 Because the ocean is less deep there. 2 Because the water isn’t held in the ground, so it evaporates. 3  Over 50%.  4 The Caribbean, Chile, Indonesia, Japan and North America.   5 On average the world’s temperature has increased by 1.5ºC in the last 150 years and eight of the ten hottest years have been recorded in the last two decades.


____________________________________________________________________________

Text 2  
Join up... The campaign against waste starts today!

ANSWERS

         1.       1 environment   2 recycling    3 over-consumption    

                 4 waste    5 amusing    6 landfill site    7 solution      

                 8 retailer

      

        2.      1F  2T   3T   4T  5F  6T  7F  8T  9F

This Week: Becoming Greener

Have you ever heard about  'Ecological footprints'?
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Do you know what yours is?
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How many planets would we need if everyone lived like you?
.
 An ecological footprint measures the total amount of land and resources used, It includes your carbon footprint but it goes further. 

• Find out what your ecological footprint is by answering questions about your lifestyle. See how your choices affect the environment and whether you are living beyond the capacity of the planet!

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> Go and FIND OUT HERE! <




Source >  Bestfootforward 

E

Why did they call you that?

Hello!

Here you have the answers to exercise 3 (READING & VOCABULARY) > Unit  0

a) (Your own answer)

b)   A4    B3    C1   E2

c) 1. Elizabeth> successful;  Sophie> attractive; Ann>less desirable
    2. Sophie , Ryan and names beginning with A or B (especially in US)
    3. Because Ellie sounds like electrician..
    4. A disadvantage.
    5. J.O.Y or F.U.N.

e)  1. RESEARCHERS     2. EVIDENCE     3. SURVEY    4.THE AVERAGE    5. SCALE    6. RANK    7. LIKELY    8. OVERALL     9. BEYOND


Another interesting text about names...by Belly Beth Cooper

Why I changed my name

Changing my name was a complicated process that took lots of things into account. It’s difficult to really point to one reason that made me do it. Here are some of the contributing factors, though.

My old name was hard to spell and say

Corina isn’t too unusual a name, but my spelling can be. It’s often spelled with two r’s or two n’s, or with an a, as in Carina. My original surname, Mackay, also has it’s problems. My dad told me once when I was a kid that he thought it was a Scottish name that had been brought to Australia generations ago and the pronunciation had been mangled, so we actually said our own name wrong. Who knows if that’s the case.
Anyway, the way we pronounced it was ‘mack-ay’, even though it’s spelled more like ‘mack-eye.’ So quite often it would be pronounced wrong by others, or it would be spelled McKay, or MacKay. The fact that Australia actually has a city called Mackay that’s pronounced ‘mack-eye’ didn’t help.
Needless to say, this got pretty tiring as a kid. When all you’re trying to do is fit in at school and seem cool, the last thing you want is to have to wrestle with every teacher over how to say or spell your name.

SOME REVISION BEFORE "CERTIFICACION"

For some revision you can do these activities:

To practise listening, visit the British Council , the "learning English" section in VoaNews, elllo.org....

If you want to practice the different skills, click on the following link and find certificate exams that have been done in the various language schools around Spain.Have a go!

Canary News

Hi everyone!
       You have probably come across one or two free newspapers in English we have in Gran Canaria. One of them, The Canary News, can be read online here. You can also read News in the Sun. There's another one, but I can't recall its name, does anyone know? 
       Moreover, you might also have a look at Tenerifenews and Sur in English) and Round Town News to find out what's going on in the south of Spain.
       It's a great way of keeping up to date with local news while practising your English, isn't it?

GENERAL STRIKE

OMG!
It's Wednesday night, the general strike has just started... but the BBC has nothing on its webpage, nor do "The Times", "The Independent" or "The Guardian"!!!  Well, at least "The Telegraph" mentions something, it focuses on the flight cancellations, but that's about it.


As regards the USA, nothing is mentioned in either the "The New York Times"or "USA Today".  However, the CNN does! Thanks God someone remembers us! You can read the article here (there's a video as well). And ... "The Washington Post" also devotes this article to our country, which offers quite a good general overview.


And all this makes me wonder, does the rest of the world really care about our situation? Will anyone help us out or is it up to us to get out of this crisis just by ourselves? Will the reform be implemented? Will the trade unions succeed? In what ways? What would you do if you were in power?  


Please leave a comment with your opinion on any of these topics; it'll be interesting and excellent writing practice for you! You can remain anonymous if you wish (but if you let me know which comment is yours, it'll count as one more writing task for this term)

AND THE OSCAR GOES TO....

Hello again!
To practise your listening, please watch Mery Streep's speech here (BBC)

These are the pictures of the celebrities described in the photocopy we saw in class, just match them and indicate who's who. This is the text, just in case. Answers will appear in a comment in a few days!

By the way, in this post from EOI Guía you will find an interesting link to the English blog where they give interesting information about leap years and a funny tradition in the British Isles.

NOVEMBER CELEBRATIONS

There are a couple of common celebrations in Britain which you may not be so familiar with: Guy Fawkes Night and Remembrance Day, a.k.a.* Poppy Day. The former is celebrated on November 5th, the latter is on November 11th. To find out why, just follow the links from Wikipedia above.
This is a video of the Guy Fawkes celebration in Victoria Park in London. Enjoy! You can also visit our post last year here.
* also known as

FILE 5 (English File Intermediate Plus)

In this unit we are revising quantifiers and relative clauses. You can do some more exercises here and here. 

You can also do this crossword on animals. Besides, for further listening practice, you can do this listening from your MultiROM CD.

Remember you can do some more reading practice here, just choose the texts from unit 5.

We've also done some work on the environment. This is some simple vocabulary, and this is a more complex exercise. This is the listening we did in class about deforestation.

CLOTHES AND MUCH MORE

In file 4A we've seen how to describe clothes. If you want some further practice, you can gossip here to see who (according to the Mirror newspaper) were the best and wrost dressed actresses at the Oscars last Sunday. For difficult vocabulary, remember you now have a dictionary online in this page, just RIGHT-CLICK on it, so that you have it in a new tab and you don't leave the blog. For the actual list of winners, click here.

We've also practised passives, for further practice go here, or here. Theory and lots of practice here, here, here, and this link and this other one are on "to have something done".

Here's a song by Katy Perry which was sent to me by Sara for you to sing along and practise. Don't you love it?

In file 4B we'll discuss about men and women, but just to look at the fun side of it, you can watch this sketch explaining the differences between men's and women's brains. Hilarious!

part 2:

Did you like it? Any comments to make anybody? :-) 

FASHION and SHOPPING

In File 4A we're discussing fashion, shopping, etc. Then you may be interested in browsing the British version of Vogue magazine. For the latest trends, go here.

This post by Teacher Melanie talks of last year's Fashion Week in New York City. It includes some interesting vocabulary.
You can also watch this video from Learn English, a great and easy way to learn some new expressions:

Now you can listen to these activities from the BBC page:
- "Buying a pair of trainers" and "Buying some jeans" are easy conversations, and you can complete the conversations
- "Where to shop in London"  and "Oxford Street crime" are readings with comprehension questions for you to practise
Then you can listen to this podcast from ESL Pod, but don't read the transcript until you've heard it at least twice! After the dialogue they explainall the vocabulary, nice!

Do you know what is the in thing right now? What would you NEVER wear, no matter how trendy? Please leave a comment...

Silence, I kill you!

Hi
Noel sent me this hilarious video, I hope you enjoy it...

If you want to read something funny and really odd, here's a piece of news about a cat being summoned for jury service! Have a good week!

New Year's resolutions

HAPPY NEW YEAR and welcome back everyone!

Have you made any New Year's resolutions, or not yet? If you want to hear again the recording we listened to in class, visit the BBC page here.

Maybe one of your resolutions is to stop smoking, especially after the new anti-smoking law came into force on Jan 2nd.  This is what the BBC says about it. You can also read this article. This video from videojug proposes some techniques or tips to quit the habit.
What's YOUR OPINION? Please leave a comment (and sign it), speak your mind!

Finally, if you want to revise some narrative tenses, go here, here, here, here or here. This page and this one are also good practice. Good luck!

Text-building unit 5

Click here for the text-building exercises for unit 4. Select the text you want to reconstruct and off you go...!

Extra practice for rainy days

Are you bored because there is no English today? Here are a few ideas for you to practise from home on your computer.

Although the schools are closed for two days, people literally crawl to school in the UK before they close them! Watch this clip from the BBC news.

Here's another link to a news report about freezing cold weather in the UK. Don't forget to watch the video of police officers sledging on their riot shields!

If you want pronunciation practice so people can understand you when you speak English, why not try these online pronunciation quizzes? Click here.

Happy New Year 2010

So it's a new year and a new decade! And what shall we call it? The first decade of the new millennium seems to be called 'the noughties' - a play on words as '0' is 'nought' but 'noughty' sounds like 'naughty' suggesting we've all been behaving badly for the past 10 years. But what shall we call this year and this next decade? Here is an article from The Guardian about this problem.

Don't forget classes start again on 11th January and one week later the 'prueba de dominio' begins... that is, the mid-year exam. So now is a good time to get those books out and brush up on the last few months. See you in a week!

UNIT 3A: Car Stories

Here are a few exercises from Unit 3A. You can practice the narrative past tenses by clicking here. To practise the vocabulary for cars and driving, click here. And to try to reconstruct the two texts about 'Bad Car Journeys', click here.

And finally, if you want to sing along to the song by Madness, 'Driving in My Car', then here is the video of this fun band from the '80s singing this hit.

Are you a perfectionist?

If you want to try to reconstruct the text 'Are you a perfectionist?' from unit 2C, you can do this exercise. Click here. Don't forget, there are two parts: part 1 and 2.

Eternal Youth

And for those of you who want to recycle to structures and vocabulary from the text in 2B about eternal youth, here's a reconstruction activity. If you like this, you can also change the option to do the same activity for part 2 of the text.