Thanks for reading our School Blog in 2011 – almost 87,000 views over the last year. We appreciate it every time you visit and we sincerely hope that you enjoy the posts and improve your English a little bit every time you read, listen to or watch one of our blogs. We put a lot of effort into making the blog as interesting as we can so that you, the students get the most benefit. Below are some of the best and most viewed blogs from 2011 that you might have missed and here’s to an even better 2012.
Bren – mp3, Beckham and The Queen’s received pronunciation
- A problem for thousands of learners of English is how to pronounce -ed endings. Explanations, mp3 and David Beckham here!
- When do you use Present perfect, past simple or past perfect? With the story of David Beckham’s baby (and mp3) you can find out here.
- One of the most commonly used words in English ‘get’, gets an mp3 examination in this post as Germans get it all wrong about Spanish vegetables here.
- Do you want to learn how to speak like the Queen? 3 video examples of received pronunciation show you how here.
Gavin – Film/weather/journalism vocabulary, relative clauses & Steve Jobs
- Film-buff, Gavin reviewed one of the best films of the year, The King’s Speech, along with some useful film vocabulary here.
- Also, contrary to bad public relations that the British weather receives, Gavin explained that the weather in London was extremely nice in April this year (with all the weather vocabulary that you need) here.
- Gavin’s vocabulary explanations continued (with journalism as the theme) as he explained one of the biggest stories of the year: the phone hacking scandal here.
- Gavin is not just a vocabulary master though! In another of the year’s biggest stories, he outlined the grammar explanation of relative clauses with an interesting post on 5 Things you never knew about Steve Jobs here.
IELTS Speaking test – sample questions & answers, teacher help, tips and guidance
If you are studying for the IELTS exam, then you should check out our popular IELTS blogs from 2011. Some of the most read posts on the site this year were our series on tips for the IELTS speaking test, filled with IELTS sample questions and answers.
- IELTS Speaking Part 1: The Introduction and Interview – Tips, 3 sample answers on mp3 and how to get out of problems in the IELTS speaking.
- IELTS Speaking Part 2: The Long Turn – more tips, lots of example questions of possible subjects, a full sample answer with mp3 and more advice on how to deal with problems.
- IELTS Speaking Part 3: The Two-way discussion (part 1) – Seriously useful information on how to score high marks in the IELTS speaking test and how you can improve in each category (Fluency & Coherence, Lexical Resource, Grammatical Range & Accuracy and Pronunciation)
- IELTS Speaking Part 3: The Two-way discussion (part 2) – Using all the information and guidance from part 1 you can practise with over 25 example IELTS questions for the final part of the speaking test. There is also an mp3 of a great sample answer and then teacher comments on why it would score very high marks in the IELTS exam.
Barney – Predictions, protests and the environment
- We had Barney making predictions for 2011 in terms of protests. Was he right? Find out here. There’s also words describing ‘going up’ and ‘going down’.
- The environmentally-friendly, Barney also looked at renewable energies and how to express quantities here.
Student Testimonials
Last, but absolutely not least, find out what some of the SGI students said about the school here.
