Lesson Links

Basic

Demonstrate and practise using comparative adjectives with Lesson Links teacher's notes, and worksheets for your students.

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Lesson Links teacher's notes & worksheets

Intermediate

Help your intermediate students understand when to use there is and it is with Lesson Links teacher's notes, and worksheets for your students.

Download the unit in colour or black & white

Lesson Links teacher's notes & worksheets

Grammar Tips

It's not always easy to explain when you use a particular grammar structure instead of another - but collect these handy tips and you'll soon have a useful bank of ready-made explanations! You can also print them out and give them to your students.

Use these handy tips to help your elementary to intermediate students understand the difference between themselves and each other, as well as how to use the and a superlative adjective without a noun.

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If your intermediate to advanced students need help understanding how to use a conjunction between two clauses or how the third conditional works, then they need these handy tips!

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Better to be safe than sorry

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Paolo and Jun are talking about safety in their city. What do you do to make sure that you and your family are safe?

Choose the correct answer. "Precaution" means:
1. early warning of danger
2. an action taken in advance to avoid danger
3 a person who protects others
4. safety inspection

Tipping point

The point of no return. The point at which something tips over into a new state, or something becomes dramatically more common - 'something has reached the tipping point'. The idea started in physics where a small amount of weight added to an object in a balance causes it to topple over, you know, add a little bit and it's alright, add a bit more and it's alright, add a bit more and it's alright, and then suddenly, whomph! - over it goes. That is the tipping point.

So it started in hard science, but then it was taken over by sociology and popular psychology. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a bestseller in 2000 called 'The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference'. And it became a very attractive notion and everybody suddenly started using this phrase. And you hear it a lot in the news now, when suddenly something causes a fuss. For instance, people talk about the build up of immigrants in a country being steady and then suddenly, there's some panic because there's trouble somewhere, and they say 'we've reached the tipping point'.

I guess I've heard it most often recently in relation to global warming. Global warming seems to have reached 'the tipping point', at least as far as the mind set of many people is concerned. In fact, it's used so often these days that it's almost a cliché. It's as if 'tipping point' has reached its tipping point!

Downloads

Transcript (pdf - 42k)

Lesson plan - Teacher's notes, student worksheets with answers (pdf - 39k)

Audio - Professor David Crystal on "Tipping point" (mp3 - 529k)

Asking someone out

In a different episode of How To we looked at how to chat someone up - that is, how to make someone interested in you, in a romantic way! Let's imagine you have succeeded in getting someone interested... now it's time to ask them out. Is it possible to do this in a way that avoids embarrassment?

Don't forget to practise what you've learned with the activity further down this page.
Download - mp3 (1.8 MB) Script (pdf - 23k)

You can listen again to the conversations featured in this programme, below.
Download - mp3 (560 KB) Script (pdf - 16k)

For each question choose the best answer.

Download quiz (17k)

Fred and Betty: Is this the End?

Episode 1: Betty's Angry

Betty: Fred, I found out about you and that other girl. How could you do this to me?!

Download audio (mp3 - 172kb)

Download this page (pdf - 57k) ________________________________________________________________ FIND OUT ABOUT

Meaning: if you find out about something, you discover a fact or information that you did not know before, often because someone was keeping it secret.

Grammar: This phrasal verb needs an object. You can not separate the verb from its particles.

He found out about the theft - RIGHT

He found out about it - RIGHT

He found the theft out about - WRONG

He found it out about - WRONG

He found out the theft about - WRONG

He found out it about - WRONG

Example sentence:

Jonathan didn't find out about the missing money until the police wrote to him. ________________________________________________________________ Synonyms: discover, catch on to, detect, unearth

Dictionaries and How to Use Them

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Daren and Jun are playing Scrabble, they are using a dictionary to make sure their spelling is right.

What does the word "Inquiry" mean?
1. A formal investigation
2. A gentle reminder
3 A formal dinner
4. A word of advice

International trade - PowerPoint Presentations

Download the latest lesson:
November - International trade