Free Games for Practising English

Do you know that one of the best ways to improve your English is to play with it?
Below you can find some funny sites! Enjoy and let me know which one you like best!

• English Online: Grammar of Doom and Shoot a Sentence.
• BBC Skillwise
• ESL Games Plus
• British Council Learn English
• ESL Games World
• Vocabulary.co.il
• Grammar Ninja

Do you have a cashmere garment in your closet? Don’t you love its softness?

Cashmere is one of the most rare and special wool in the world and also one of the most valued. It is soft, silky, light and good thermal insulation.

Cashmere wool comes from the innermost layer of the hair of a goat, which originally could only be found in isolated local populations in the mountains of Tibet, on the southern slopes of the Himalayas and in the Xinjiang region in China, mountain areas with sub-zero temperatures.

This inner layer of hair is separated from the outside, protective and thicker during the moulting in spring and only after a manual combing work and classification. Over two goats are needed to make one sweater. If we add the low rate of world production (approximately 6,500 metric tons of pure cashmere by year, instead of 2 million tonnes of sheep wool), we can understand its relatively high price compared with other fibres and its use as a sign of class, luxury and distinction.

Its name comes from a region of northern India. The cashmere is manufactured in Mongolia, Nepal and Kashmir since thousands of years ago to make fabulous scarves and shawls. This fibre is also known as pashmina (Persian wool).

In the fourteenth century, Ali Hamadani reached Ladakh region with 700 weavers and artisans from Persia, discovering the goats of the region and its soft wool. Legend said that he took some yarns and knitted a pair of socks as a present for the king of Kashmir. The sultan loved the quality and allowed Hamadani starts a weaving industry of shawls with this wool.

The shawls were introduced into Europe when the Commander in Chief of the French campaign in Egypt (1799-1802) sent one to Paris. The arrival of the shawl was an immediate success and manufacturing started in France. Trading in commercial quantities of raw cashmere between Asia and Europe began with Valerie Audresset SA, a French company located in Louviers, being the first European company to commercially spin cashmere. Years later the Scottish textile manufacturer Joseph Dawson discovered the Indian pashminas and began importing the material to its factory in Scotland. Dawson sells these shawls to the British upper class women, who appreciated the fabric for its softness and warmth. A piece of high quality cashmere can be up to eight times warmer than sheep’s wool despite its lightweight.

Texture, colour and fibre length affect its manufacture and its price. The more white cashmere fibres require less dye, minimizing the damage that causes the colour to its natural softness, and they are the most appreciated. The quality also depends on the region in which the wool is collected. In Inner Mongolia, for example, winters are harsh and goats have a poorer diet. They produce a finest hair, perfect for the garments of the highest quality.

China has become the largest producer of raw cashmere, but Europe is who controls the spinning and manufacturing methods, and it has cornered the market on high quality products.

One brand that currently manufactures wonderful cashmere shawls is Burberry. This season has presented a new section on its website, “Bar Scarf”. There, fans can customize the classic checks scarf classical of brushed cashmere, adding their initials embroidered. For this campaign, Burberry has made this video that I share with you, because apart from an exquisite aesthetic, you will see the whole making process the shawls in Scotland.

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Now that you are aware of cashmere's history, write ten questions whose answers are in the text. Make sure that the most important information is in your questions.

20 Words and phrases English owes to Shakespeare

A foregone conclusion (Othello) – said when the outcome of a situation is clear from the beginning.

The truth will out (the Merchant of Venice) – meaning that the truth will eventually come out, no matter what you do to try to hide it.

I haven’t slept a wink (Cymbeline) – meaning not to have slept at all.

Too much of a good thing (As You Like It) – used to warn against excess. Too much of a good thing can be bad for you.

To wear your heart on your sleeve (Othello) – meaning to show your emotions, especially romantic feelings, openly.

There’s method in my madness (Hamlet) – meaning that beneath apparently chaotic behaviour there is some kind of order.

The green-eyed monster (Othello) – meaning jealousy (jealousy and envy are associated with the colour green in English, as in ‘green with envy’).

The world’s your oyster (The Merry Wives of Windsor) – this means being able to do anything you want because you have the opportunity to do so, either through talent, looks, luck, power or money.

To make your hair stand on end (Hamlet) – used to describe something very scary.

They’re all still in common use today, so why not try throwing one or two into your conversation?

Surprising facts about the English language

1. Although the official language of 56 countries around the world, English is not the official language of the United Kingdom; that is, it has no legal official status, although it is, of course, the de facto official language. The same is true of the United States, New Zealand and Australia. The languages with legally official status in the UK are Cornish, Welsh, Irish, Ulster Scots, Scots and Scottish Gaelic.
2. Despite the fact that ‘e’ is the most common letter in the language, novelist Ernest Vincent Wright once wrote a novel of 50,000 words – Gadsby – that did not include a single letter ‘e’ – a no doubt amazingly wondrous orthographical act but fully and thoroughly lacking a point.
3. Shakespeare couldn’t spell his own name. Or at least, he never spelled it consistently. There are six surviving signatures by the Bard of Avon, and he spells his name differently each time: Willm Shakp, William Shaksper, Wm Shaksp, William Shakspere, Willm Shakspere and William Shakspeare. However, this is partly because it was common practice at the time to abbreviate names in signatures and partly because English spelling had yet to be standardised. A teacher of mine used to call him Old Billy Waggledaggerinstead. Can you work out why?
4. There’s a reason why we don’t eat pig and cow but we do eat pork and beef. It harks back to the Middle Ages, when Norman French was the language of the nobility in England and English itself the language of the peasantry. On the farm the animals were referred to by their Anglo-Saxon names, but by the time they reached the dining table they were being tasted and talked of in French.
5. Even though ‘it’s raining cats and dogs’ is one of the best-known English idioms, very few people actually say it these days or even know where it comes from. The most commonly accepted explanation is that English homes in the past had thatched roofs, and domestic animals such as cats and dogs would often hide in them, only to be washed out of the thatch, or to flee it in search of better shelter, during times of torrential rain.
6. English has more pronouns than y’all learned in school. Unlike many languages, modern (but not Old or Middle) English lacks a distinct pronoun for the second person plural (at least as far as ‘standard’ English goes). ‘You’ is used to address both one person and more than one person (compare Spanish ‘tu’ and ‘vosotros’). This obvious gap has been filled in numerous creative ways by different groups of speakers. Most of you will be familiar with the US pronouns ‘you guys’ and ‘y’all’, while in the UK it’s not uncommon in certain regions (and within my own family) to hear ‘youse’ or even ‘you lot’. In some parts of the north of England, the otherwise obsolete familiar second person pronouns ‘thee’and ‘thou’ are also still alive.
7. Perhaps not one of the most surprising facts about the English language, but one in four of the world’s population speaks it either fluently or to a useful level as a second language, with non-native speakers currently outnumbering native speakers by four to one. This reflects not only English’s status as a true world language, but the growing need for non-speakers to learn it in order to be able to operate in an increasingly globalised world.
8. Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia is a word in English meaning ‘fear of long words’. Although it’s obviously a term that has been coined for ironic effect, it’s based on the genuine medical term sesquipedalophobia. Neither term is helpful if you have to explain your condition at the doctor’s, especially not if ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ is playing on the radio.

Ten funny English common sayings

I have just come across this website where you can find funny common sayings with images which are used in colloquial English.

--> Follow the link and enjoy!

Can language be inclusive?

From your composition I've noticed that when you want to refer to man, woman, boy or girl in general you use the Catalan formula "he / she" or "the boy / the girl / the son / the daughter" and I've thought it could be interesting to let you know which is the English one. 

If we are referring to "he / she" we can use the plural pronoun "they". 
The "he / she" formula can also be written in the "s/he" form, which it's said to be more inclusive.

Can you please explain me what does the term "inclusive" mean?
Write down something inclusive  – not necessarily a pronoun —, think about whether it's relevant or not in our society, and take note in which cases this can be useful, for instance in the use of terms that describe people such as job titles.

Space facts

Did you know Venus spins in the opposite direction to all the other planets in our solar system and there are thought to be trillions of diamonds on Uranus?

On the following link you'll be able to check many special and weird facts about space and the universe.
Pick up your favourite one and write down in 75-100 words why is that.

Christmas Homework

In order to revise your knowledge of English during the Christmas holidays I propose you to train to a spelling competition we'll have after Christmas. In class we'll watch Spellbound, a documentary film on the subject. I hope you'll enjoy!

Check out the trailer right here --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkbJWZvBVvk

Guess what has been the word of the year 2015...

Any guesses?

Follow the link and enjoy doing the quiz!

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/11/word-of-the-year-2015-emoji/#quiz

Grammar YUniversity

Have you ever visited a page that gathers cool tips in order to remember grammar rules properly? 

Follow the rabbit through the link! Visit it from time to time, or at least once in a blue moon.

--> https://twitter.com/The_YUNiversity

Effects of digital worlds on human behaviour

For nearly 30 years now, Sherry Turkle, professor of social psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been exploring the effects of digital worlds on human behaviour.

Her books, have charted the seductions of “intimate machines”, the advance of social media and virtual realities and the all-pervasive internet, and the effect these things have had on our culture and our lives.

 Her latest book, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in the Digital Age, is a call to arms to arrest what she sees as the damaging consequences of never being far from email or text or Twitter or Facebook, in particular the impact it has on family life, on education, on romance and on the possibilities of solitude

She measures these effects in a breakdown of empathy between children, in the consequences of increasingly distracted family interaction and a growing need for constant stimulus. Her antidote is a simple one: we need to talk more to each other.

This interview took place by telephone last week.

You have been writing about these issues for a long time now. Has it always felt like a losing battle?


Less so now. In the beginning I thought I was saying things people didn’t want to hear. I think more people see something happening now that they don’t like, but they don’t know what to do about it. This new statistic seems telling: 89% of Americans admit they took out a phone at their last social encounter – and 82% say that they felt the conversation deteriorated after they did so.

It is captured by the story I tell of the young girl saying: “Daddy! Stop Googling! I want to talk to you.”

It is interesting to note that quite a lot of the antipathy towards being “always online” comes not from adults but from children. I suppose we have assumed that these habits would only become more ingrained among people who have grown up with them, but your work shows that is not necessarily the case.
Absolutely not. I was so impressed by kids who said: “I want to raise my children not the way I’ve been raised, but the way my parents think they have been raising me: in a house of conversation.” That was stunning.

But what if children haven’t had any experience of sitting around a dinner table, or of talking to their friends without a iPhone to hand? How do they know what they are missing?
That’s the danger. But I believe that we are resilient. I like the study that shows that after five days away at camp without connections you see the empathy markers among children rising. The ability to recognise the emotions of somebody in a video or a story go right back up. I believe we are wired to talk. It is a Darwinian thing.

I guess we are also wired for novelty and distraction…
Yes. But I feel we have now created an environment that will distract us to distraction. My recipe does not involve my giving up my phone. It’s too useful. But it means not using it on occasions like this when I am trying to give you my full attention. The human voice occupies a lot of bandwidth if you listen to it properly. If I was also texting, you would not be getting a sense of me.

I’ve worked in a newspaper office for 20-odd years. In that time, like all offices, it has become much quieter. Everyone used to be on the phone, now they are often emailing. Do you think something is lost in that?


If you sent me 10 email questions, you would get very different answers from me. Typing is not the same as talking. Students increasingly say they don’t want to see me in person, they just want to email me. When I ask why, they basically say they want to get their questions perfect, so I can make my answers perfect. They want my perfect to meet their perfect.

Email allows us to give the press-release version of ourselves?


Yes. But that is not who we are. It’s an algorithmic view of life. Who ever loved learning because they asked the professor a perfect question and the professor gave a perfect answer?

Certainly when I think of teachers who inspired me I couldn’t tell you precisely what they said, but I can certainly remember the tone and the circumstances in which they said it. It’s the fact you were there and thought: could I someday be like them?

I have to fight the impulse to use my phone as an alarm clock rather than leaving it in another room. If I don’t I will wake up in the middle of the night and think: I’ll check my messages. Or the number of my book on Amazon. If I start checking my phone at two in the morning I suddenly find it is four in the morning and I have to get up in two hours.

People really struggle. I have interviewed several people who say they now have to go to remote country cabins to get any concentrated work done. Then they find themselves driving around the neighbourhood trying desperately to find an unlocked Wi-Fi signal. Knocking on doors.

The scary thing about that is that these people are adults. Children have much less opportunity for self-control.
Yes but the thrust of my argument is not that we have a device that has constant conversation on it. It is with the fact that there are no limits on that. It is with the father who checks his email while giving his two-year-old a bath when he used to play with her. Those are the lost conversations I am worried about. The fact is we need to design around our vulnerabilities.

But there is no sense that the corporations that make billions of dollars from these habits are going to adopt that idea willingly.
I like to look at the food industry and how it has evolved. My mother, when I was growing up, adored me but she also fed me white bread, tinned vegetables, potatoes that she made from flakes, TV dinners. It was a profit-centred industrial kind of machine that led her to do that. But a young mother today – if that was what she was feeding her child – you would know she was not with the programme. How did we turn that around? It certainly wasn’t because the food industry said “Ooops!” It came from people seeing the effects of this diet. And that is how I think this will go also. There is study after study saying the same things: talk to each other, experience solitude, experience boredom. Boredom is your imagination calling to you. I think it will happen slowly.

I suppose in the case of nutrition there are physical effects that can be measured, though; isn’t this more intangible?
I’m not sure the effects of not talking are hard to measure. The interviews that I did in business settings, people said people come to them for jobs and literally don’t know how to have a conversation. I mean if you take a baby and put them on a baby bouncer that has a slot for an iPad, instead of taking time to have eye contact and reading to them, and then they go to a school where most of their instruction is on a screen, why be surprised when they show up as sixth-graders [those in the first year of secondary school] looking down at the floor and being unable to speak? I came across many kids who are set homework on tablets but can’t concentrate on reading it until they print it out. I am sympathetic to that. I know for a fact that it’s hell to try to read complicated things on a machine that also gives me access to every other thing in my life. We are asking kids to read homework on a device that also gives them access to everything that matters to them: Facebook. It’s sad to witness that struggle.

How did you negotiate these things with your own daughter?

I have two daughters, 16 and 12, and my experience is that you have to choose your battles…
We did the sacred space thing. And it mostly worked. No computers or phones in the kitchen, at the dining table, or in the car. Those are the places I think where you create family space. The car is very important. I don’t think it works if you talk about set hours or whatever. And it is of course crucial that you apply the same sacred space rule to yourself as to them. The issue is not that your child loves using their screen to write. The issue is that they should not be doing it when they are talking to you. I never friended my daughter on Facebook; that wasn’t our space to share things. Instead I had dinner with her pretty much every night. I am not anti-technology, I am pro-conversation.

Do you encounter hostility to that message?

Much less than five years ago. When I wrote my last book, Alone Together, people were angry. The dominant emotion I encountered was irritation: “Give it a rest.”

Isn’t that a classic symptom of addiction – people don’t want to be told that the thing they are in thrall to is harming them?
I wouldn’t use that metaphor. If you are addicted to heroin you have to give it up completely, go cold turkey. Here it is a different assignment. I am not planning to give up my phone. I just need to know what it is good for.

If people start to buy the idea that machines are great companions for the elderly or for children, as they increasingly seem to do, we are really playing with fire. I think the stakes are very high. But the good thing is we don’t have to invent anything to turn it around. We already have each other to talk to.