Practise listening

As some of you asked me about some more material in order to improve your listening skills, here you have a couple of videos taken from BBC Learning English.

Both of them have to do with topics regarding tourism, they are short and easy to follow.

The first one deals with Venice and the second one is about floods in Europe, a natural disaster.

Protecting Venice

Floods in Europe

Merry Christmas!!!

Hi, students and friends, I wish you a very Merry Christmas and all the best for 2014!

Please click on here.

I hope you like this one too.

 Best wishes.

Applying for a job 2013 - Europass

Have you ever heard of the Curriculum Vitae Europass?

It is a EU initiative to increase transparency of qualification and mobility of citizens in Europe. It aims to be a Life Long Learning Portfolio of documents containing the descriptions of all learning achievements, official qualifications, work results, skills and competences, acquired over time, along with the related documentation. The aim is to make a person's skills and qualifications clearly understood throughout Europe.

 Once you know how it works you can either fill in yor CV now here or download  the template, instructions and examples here.

These documents can also be very useful:

For students of 'Tourist Accommodation Management':
EDS in Tourist Accommodation Management

For students of 'Travel Agencies and Events Management':
EDS in Travel Agencies & Events Management

When it is ready, send me your CV by email. The name of the file should be: 

• For Tourist Accommodation Management students: cv_tam_2013_yoursurnameinitialofyourname

• For Travel Agencies and Events Management students: cv_ttaaem_2013_yoursurnameinitialofyourname
 

Deadline: By Friday 15th November 2013

JUST GIVE ME A REASON (BY PINK & NATE RUESS)

Click on the image and practise listening with this song by Pink and Nate Ruess. It is the same song we have been listening to in class.

INTERVIEW AT BARAJAS AIRPORT 2013

This is a compulsory task for students of the formative cycle of Travel Agencies and Events Management and an optional task for students of the formative cycle of Tourist Accommodation Management.

Here you have the document with the guidelines you need to do the project.

Good luck and enjoy it!

PROJECT

A PASSENGER SURVEY AT BARAJAS AIRPORT

 

Assignment: This project should be carried out at Barajas airport. You (each student) must interview one person and ask for permission to video-record the interview. If not, at least ask permission to record the sound. I recommend you to do it in pairs but each student has to carry out an interview. Some interviews will be published on the blog http://www.agr8tourblog4u.blogspot.com/ for educational purposes.

Aim: To use English as a tool for communication and to get to know the people who visit our country (nationalities, reasons for travelling, accommodation, expectations…)

Assessment criteria: It will be graded from 1 to 10 and will be part of the mark of the oral skills.

Deadline: By Friday 15^th November. You will have to send me the files (with an extension I can see and listen to) and the transcription of the dialogues. We'll probably do it through the Moodle platform. The files have to be named as follows: yourname_surname_age_13_14. This assignment won't be corrected if it doesn't follow these rules.

You can begin like this:

Good morning/afternoon/evening. I’m a student of Travel Agencies and Events Management / Tourist Accommodation Management / Tourism at Hotel Escuela High School, Madrid. We are doing a project about why people travel. Would you mind answering a few questions? If you don’t mind, we would like to record the interview as a class practice. Thanks a lot.

POSSIBLE QUESTIONS: CHECK-IN/DEPARTURE AREA

1. Where are you from?
2. Where are you travelling to? What’s the name of the airport?
3. How long have you been here?
4. Have you been in Spain before?
5. Where did you stay? (Accommodation)
6. What’s a hotel for you?

a) A bed for the night	¨	c) A bit of luxury once in a while	¨
b) The office when away from the office	¨	d) Home far from home	¨

7. What is/was the purpose of your visit?
8. How often do you travel abroad?
9. Which countries have you visited?
10. What did you like most about Spain?

         Thanks for your help. Have a nice trip.

ORAL PRESENTATIONS: TIPS AND LINKERS

In this document you can see some tips and linkers which will help you when dealing with oral presentations.

GIVING DIRECTIONS

In order to practise giving directons, visit this page. There you will find an explanation with the main phrases, verbs of movement prepostions to use and some exercises. Do the exercises and check yourself.

Vocabulary: Synonyms

Have a look at the picture below and find seven synonyms related to Tourism. You can zoom it to see it better.

MAKING RESERVATIONS

Here you have a very useful video that will help you taking reservations on the phone when being at the front desk.

WAKE ME UP WHEN SEPTEMBER ENDS (by Green Day)

Here you have the video of the song "Wake Me Up When September Ends", by Green Day.



If you want to keep on practising listening skills with this song you can try lyricstraining. Remember you can choose the level of difficulty.

 I hope you learn and have fun!

World Tourism Day 2013 27th September 2013

Secretary-General Message for 2013  

With unsustainable consumption and climate change threatening global water resources, this year’s World Tourism Day highlights the responsibility of the tourism industry to safeguard and intelligently manage water.  In this International Year of Water Cooperation, I urge tourism establishments to cut consumption and improve waste management and I call on individuals to play their part by making environmentally conscious choices when they travel.  By making water saving a priority we can all help to build the future we want. 

 Ban Ki-moon

HOTEL STAFF

Here you have a crossword in which you have to find words related to hotel staff. The definitions are given. You have 5 minutes.

MIND MAPS: VOCABULARY REVISION

Here you can see some of the mind maps created by some students. I hope you find them useful to revise vocabulary.
Thank you, students!

(By Elena)

(By Raquel) 

(By Vanessa) 

(By Anabel)

(By José)

MIND MAPS

Here is an example of a mind map made with Popplet. You can add pictures or videos to the words. What you have to do is create a mind map using the tool you want to, then send me the html code so that I can insert it in the blog. Think of a semantic topic: types of accommodation, staff, tourist attractions... and start creating your mind map. You can use any other tool such as spiderscribe, mindmomo, mindmaster... Use the free version, which allows to create a few mind maps.

FACILITIES AT IES HOTEL ESCUELA

This is the video that five students of Travel Agencies and Events Management have created in order to show and explain the facilities the Hotel Escuela has. They've made a great effort and in the end they got it!

Thanks to Vanessa, Raquel, Elena, Anabel & José. You've made a lot of progress!

ROLE-PLAYS AT THE TRAVEL AGENCY

Here you can watch two videos in which students of Travel Agencies and Events Management act out a dialogue at the travel agency. Well done, students! Congratulations!

                                                

VOCABULARY REVISION: DEFINITIONS

Here you have a crossword with definitions to review vocabulary related to the field of Tourism. You have 4 minutes to do it and check your knowledge. Enjoy it!

VOCABULARY REVISION: SYNONYMS

In order to review some vocabulary, do the following crossword related to synonyms in the field of Tourism.

SUGGESTING DESTINATIONS

Think about tourist destinations for a couple in their honeymoon. Which ones would you recommend? What type of accommodation? What places would you tell them to visit? Why? When you think you are ready to speak, go to the following link, listen to the instructions given and practise in Voicethread. If you haven't registered yet, you can do it now.

IS ENGLISH A CRAZY LANGUAGE?

Two months ago, I received an email from a very good friend of mine called Ishbel. It's about English pronunciation. I hope it makes your think and laugh. It says:

Read all the way to the end.................
This took a lot of work to put together!

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture..
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert..
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear..
19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?


Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France . Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig..

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

Why doesn't 'Buick' rhyme with 'quick' ?


You lovers of the English language might enjoy this.

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is 'UP.'
It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ?
At a meeting, why does a topic come UP?
Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?
We call UP our friends.
And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen.
We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.
At other times the little word has real special meaning.
People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.
To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary.
In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.
If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used.
It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more
When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP.
When the sun comes out we say it is clearingUP. When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP. When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP,
so... it is time to shut UP! Now it's UP to you what you do with this email.   

ACTIVITIES FOR TOURISTS

Here you have an advertisement referring to some activities that tourists can carry out at the Bar W Guest Ranch, taken from Destinations Travel Magazine, April 2013. It is very useful for you to remember or learn new vocabulary.

PROJECT: TOURIST ATTRACTIONS INTERVIEW 2013 - AUDIOS AND VIDEOS

I hope you like watching and listening to some of your classmates carrying out their interviews about tourist attractions in Madrid.

2º Travel Agencies and Events Management
Laura M.:



Dámaris:





Lorena:


2nd Tourist Accommodation Management

Paloma:

 

Laura:

British English vs American English

Here you can see a picture of both British and American English that Laura M. (2nd Travel Agencies and Events Management) has sent me.

A picture is worth a thousand words!

Adele: Set Fire to the Rain

This is the song we listened to last week: Set Fire To The Rain, by Adele. I hope you enjoy listening to it again. Remember singing English songs is an excellent way of learning this language.

Adele set fire to the rain from dgmmm

Booking a holiday

Here you have a dialogue created by two of your classmates. It is very useful in order to practise for the oral exam because you will be able to see how to book a holiday at a travel agency with all the different stages and how to inform the customer in a proper way. Thank you, Carlota & Adrián! :-)

Booking a Holiday Dialogue by dgmmm

Parque de Europa 2013

We were looking forward to going sightseeing and in the end we decided to visit quite a lot of cities in Europe.
We (Travel Agencies and Events Management) invited our classmates of 2nd year of Tourist Accommodation Management (Afternoon) and 1st year of Travel Agencies and Events Management.
We (both groups of second year) had to speak about the countries and monuments whose replicas can be found in Parque de Europa. We were twitting and taking some photos. Though we were a bit nervous, we enjoyed it a lot. Have a look!

The Weather

The weather is always a "trending topic";-)

Here you have a very good page about the weather forecast. I have chosen Madrid (Spain) but you can search any other place. You can also see a video with the weather forecast for today on that page in the area you want to: Europe, the USA...

On the other hand, you also have the weather forecast by AEMET on the blog, on the right.

JOB PROFILE: TRAVEL AGENT

Here you can read about the job profile of a travel agent. Hope you find it interesting. It tells you the duties you should carry out if you decide to become a travel agent in the future and some pieces of information.
After reading it, you can watch the following video.

JOB PROFILE: EVENTS MANAGER

If you are interested in becoming an events manager, have a look at this webpage. It explains the main duties and some other requierements that are needed in the UK. Hope you find it useful and interesting! =)

You can also watch the following video in which the Special Events Manager at Portofino Island Resort discusses her typical day at work, the qualifications needed for the job, the best and worst parts of the job, and advice that can be used by students considering this line of work.


Here you have another video: EBE offers corporate event planning and event management services as well as entertainment such as dance bands, DJs (disc jockeys) and ensembles, lighting, video production and more to ensure your Corporate Event, Meeting, Conference, Product Launch or Gala is a success.

ORAL PRESENTATIONS: YOUR COUNTRY

I would like you to comment on the oral presentantions you have made. Go to the following link and start speaking. ;-)