Tag Archives: listening

Conversation hour pronunciation practice

By Salsita Says | Published: April 22, 2009

Have you seen the video below before? It’s the flight attendant onboard a South West airlines flight who is ‘rapping’ the welcome aboard message.
Come along to conversation hour and learn how to ‘rap’ this song. I’ve posted the words below the video.
When? Tuesday 21st April, PST 11pm
Where? The airport at languagelab.com (Click here to teleport)
YouTube [...]

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TED Talks with subtitles

By Salsita Says | Published: April 6, 2009

I just stumbled across an interesting video about a project to make sure that all new TED talks have an English transcript as well as subtitles for as many languages as possible. The project doesn’t seem to be completely up and running yet, but I will certainly be keeping my eye out for it. Don’t [...]

Posted in English conversation topics, English resources | Also tagged , , | 2 Comments

Practicing listening, reading, writing and speaking integration tasks

By Salsita Says | Published: March 29, 2009

What is an integration task?
An integration task is a task where you must combine two or more skills such as listening, reading, writing and speaking. The TOEFL iBT requires that you complete several integration tasks, some in the speaking section and some in the writing section. To get a complete overview of the different questions [...]

Posted in English Classes, TOEFL | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

How to prepare for an English proficiency test

By Salsita Says | Published: March 24, 2009

Today in class we had an interesting conversation about the best ways to prepare for taking an English proficiency test such as the TOEFL iBT or IELTS. I asked the students what they thought was the best way to prepare for the test. Here are some of the things we spoke about:

You need to know [...]

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English conversation hour - The future of books

By Salsita Says | Published: March 24, 2009

Today we began to talk about the future of ‘the book’. When I say ‘the book’ I mean the traditional kind of book, with a cover, a blurb, a spine and pages that you can turn. Everybody present agreed that the convenience of being able to read online was somewhat marred by the unpleasantness of [...]

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60-Second Science podcasts for listening practice

By Salsita Says | Published: March 16, 2009

Do you need short lectures for practicing your notetaking and summarizing skills? Search no more! Scientific American now has a whole podcast dedicated to 60 second lectures about the latest news in the science world. The sound lectures include a transcript as well as a link to an article with more detailed information about the [...]

Posted in English resources, Listening | Also tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Using “Ted Talks” to practice listening and notetaking 1

By Salsita Says | Published: March 16, 2009

Practicing listening and notetaking is an essential part of preparation for doing both the TOEFL and the IELTS. Unfortunately, most of the example practice material is pretty dry. While it is still worth using the official practice example material in order to get a feel for the kinds of lectures you will be ‘forced’ to [...]

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