#7 Go out and teach! Games

❗️Some teachers use them a lot, others think games are only for kids. Here are some points for you to keep in mind:

🔎 Not knowing games is an excuse! There’s a huge variety of games to choose from. It’s easy to find ideas, just google “games for English class” or “ESL games”. Try what sounds interesting to you and don’t be afraid of changing the rules.

🔎 Save your games to the end of the class. That way you can reward the class for some less exciting activities. If you play games in the beginning or middle of the class you may find it difficult to calm the students down again.

🔎 Games don’t have to be childish. Choose language games, not games just for entertainment. Make sure your games help the students practice their language skills, ideally relating to the lesson content.

❗️The traditional idea of ‘no pain, no gain’ isn’t always right. Your students can have fun while learning. As a good teacher you use games, but always with a purpose!

👉@afandi_english👈

#4 Afandi Quiz: What’s the word?

Today’s quiz is about frying eggs on a spade.

▶️ Being a soldier isn’t always easy. Not only may getting killed be part of your job, you also have a hard time staying in the field and not having the comforts of your home. And then this – you manage to get a hold of a few eggs but now what? You don’t have a kitchen, no cooker, no frying pan, no nothing really. You hungrily think for a long second and – tadaa – you come up with a solution. You make a small fire, wipe off some spades you have among your equipment and fry the eggs on them. Job done!

Now what do we call this creative activity of finding ways to do something without the right equipment or materials?

👉@afandi_english👈 #word_quiz

Not bad but there’s only a relative majority for the right answer!

👍 The correct answer is indeed improvising. When you lack the right stuff but manage to do your thing anyway it means you improvise. Russian speakers had an advantage here.

👎 Stimulating was wrong for two reasons – 1) it means making someone or something excited / active / grow, etc. and 2) it’s a transitive verb that needs an object. You cannot say you’re stimulating without saying who or what you are stimulating.

👎 Marinating is a cooking term and means put meat or fish into a marinade (mixture of spices and oil). Oops!

👎 Instigating is also transitive (needs an object) and has a negative meaning of causing bad actions, e.g. “instigate terror”.

#40 Our favourite mistakes: Pronunciation

▶️ Try pronouncing the following words:
• abroad
• August
• automatic
• born
• bought
• brought
• course
• daughter
• law
• pause
• raw
• saw
• sauce

❓What sound do these words have in common?

❗️They all contain the long vowel [ɔ:], as in “boring” or "tall". Pay attention to this sound:
• abroad – correct: abr-ɔ:-d
• August – correct: ɔ:-gust
• automatic – correct: ɔ:-tomatic
• born – wrong: burn, correct: b-ɔ:-rn
• bought – wrong: boat, correct: b-ɔ:-t
• brought – correct: br-ɔ:-t
• course – wrong: curse, correct: c-ɔ:-rse
• daughter – correct: d-ɔ:-ghter
• law – wrong: low, correct: l-ɔ:
• pause – correct: p-ɔ:-se
• raw – wrong: row, correct: r-ɔ:
• saw – wrong: sow, correct: s-ɔ:
• sauce – correct: s-ɔ:-s

👉@afandi_english👈 #mistakes #pronunciation

#6 Education Video: Success at school vs in life

❗️There seems to be a big problem in education – schools and real life are too different from one another. Life doesn’t always reward the good students, and bad students often get away without punishment. Why is that and what can we do about it? Watch this video to find out!

▶️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Egxm5QuW9o

👉@afandi_english👈

#21 Spot Afandi and his donkey: Afandi arrives in Fergana

❓ Can you spot Afandi and his donkey in this picture?

❗️If you can, follow the instructions in #1 (see pinned message) and win 5,000 Paynet-soums!

👉@afandi_english👈 #spot_afandi

#14 Tongue twister: A bit of spice

❗️Challenge yourself and practice your pronunciation with this tongue twister today:

▶️ There is a minimum of cinnamon in the aluminium pan.

Translation:
Aluminium tovada minimal miqdorda dolchin bor.

❗️Pay attention to:

🔘 Pronunciation – Make sure you pronounce [ɪ] in minimum, cinnamon and aluminium. There is no sharp [i] sound here. Check #37 Our Favourite Mistakes (from 17 September).

🔘 Linking – Same or similar consonants and end-consonants with start-vowels are linked with one another:
There is ͜ a minimum ͜ of cinnamon ͜ in the ͜ aluminium pan.

👉@afandi_english👈 #tongue_twisters

#14 University Vocab: Academic Writing

❓Most students would agree that this is the hardest part of their studies. What’s there to know about academic writing?

🔎 A piece of academic writing is often called a paper. There are term papers, also called final papers, that focus on content of a particular course and research papers that require independent research.

🔎 Essays are usually shorter and less scientific. In certain types of essays you may also be asked to state your opinions, which is quite different from research.

🔎 At the end of your studies you most likely have to write a thesis paper, or simply a thesis. Depending on the degree this can be a bachelor thesis or a master thesis. For PhD level we usually speak of dissertation.

🔎 Published papers are called articles, and they are published in academic journals.

👉@afandi_english👈 #uni_vocab

#5 Afandi Quiz: Mysterious song

Today’s quiz is about a mysterious song from a mysterious country! Can you find the right country? Pay attention to the language and style. You have 2 hours for this!

👉@afandi_english👈 #song_quiz

🥳 Congratulations, most of you got that right!

👍 This song is indeed from Croatia! We all know enough Russian to hear some Slavic (=the language family that Russian is in) words in the song but it’s still quite different from Russian. Croatian is a Slavic language of the Southern branch.

👎 The style of the song probably made some of you choose Greece. Unfortunately that was wrong. Yes it sounds very ‘Southern’ and maritime (=about the sea) but Greek language is nothing like Russian.

👎 It couldn’t have been from Latvia, not from a linguistic point of view – Latvian is a Baltic language and not so close to Russian – and not from a musical point of view either – the style is clearly Mediterranean (=from the sea between Europe and Africa).

👎 Only few of you thought the song was from Ukraine, possibly because you heard some Russian-sounding words in it. But Ukrainian is much closer to Russian as both of them are Slavic languages of the Eastern branch.

#41 Our favourite mistakes: Vocabulary

▶️ Please translate the following sentence:
Afandi ko’p ishlaydi va oyligi ham normal.

❌ Perhaps you think it is:
Afandi works a lot and his salary is also normal.

✅ Well, it should be:
Afandi works a lot and his salary is also normal good.

❓Why?

❗️ Unlike in Russian, normal doesn’t have a positive meaning in English, it just means usual or ordinary.

❗️ It could even be negative. If you ask your friends “How are you?” and the answer is “Just normal” then that could mean they find their life boring. “Don’t be so normal” also means “Don’t be boring like all the other people”.

👉@afandi_english👈 #mistakes #vocabulary

#13 YouTube Channel Recommendation: CrashCourse

⛓ Link: www.youtube.com/user/crashcourse

📊 English Level: Advanced, some technical terms

🔤 Subtitles: Available

💬 Topics: School subjects (history, natural sciences, maths, literature), technology, psychology, astronomy, etc.

💡 Content: CrashCourse features a huge range of videos and the channel has been around for several years, constantly adding new videos. The audience is clearly native speakers and you may find some videos hard to understand because they are about difficult subject matters and the hosts speak very quickly. Nonetheless you can greatly benefit from their videos if you are interested in those topics as they are hugely informative and done really well. Some hosts and animations are also really funny.

👉@afandi_english👈 #youtube