Good morning, my dearest students. Today I've decided to simply share with you a link to a website where you'll be able to practise your conditional sentences. It's not much but, remember, the real challenge lies in the oral expression.

By the way, I have graded all your essays (even yours, Sheila!). So feel free to ask me to hand them all out. One little surprise: check out this photo I took last week in Bilbao. Do you think the person that thought of that name was a speaker of British or American English?

My dearest students, I salute you (that actually means "hello"). Let me just cut to the chase here... I thought I should share with you these kind reminders:

Intermedio 1: you're supposed to be working on your CV (remember?).

Avanzado 2: those in the morning class will receive their essays tomorrow. Those in the "evening shift" are expected to email/hand in the "Dear Future Me" composition.

One little surprise for all of you: a brief recorded message that goes over the most basic pronunciation problems that I still hear in the classroom... I hope you find it useful.

Greetings, my fellow earthlings! This is a short message for my Avanzado 2 crowd. Some hours ago we described "Nighthawks", the world famous painting by Edward Hopper and commented on the atmosphere the picture depicts. Words like "tiredness", "loneliness" and "coldness" came up in the subsequent conversation. For those of you that want to go the extra mile here is a short video which discusses the painting in a more elaborate light. Have fun.

Hi my dear students! Allow me to post a few lines. The exam has turned out to be a game changer in many respects...

Avanzado 2: those of you in the morning class have already submitted your "Future Me" essay. Now it's your turn, evening class, to follow suit. Remember, the deadline is next Tuesday. From now on you're going to be handing in an essay every two weeks until the end of the course.

Intermedio 1: every day until the end of May we're going to go over some basic grammar areas such as the present perfect (make sure you learn all those past participles) or the use of modal verbs.

Those of you that want to improve their pronunciation might want to take a gander at this video I edited a few years ago. Enjoy.


Patética Fonética 1.4 Part 1 from EOI de Laredo on Vimeo.

Dear people of Israel! This is Moses, your favorite pathfinder in the EOI desert.

Okay. Here’s the good news. There will be no more exams for another four months. The earthquake is over, which means that this week we’re going to be through the rumble so we can somehow ascertain what exactly happened, specially in the Intermedio 1 group, where casualties are more abundant.

Intermedio 1

I was running the problem over and over in my head, just trying to come up with a solution to the mess when the thought struck me: why not re-use the old magazines I put together for my Intermediate students some fiveyears ago?

I want to relieve that they contain some advice you may still find useful. Check them out anyway and let me know if you’re interested in something of that sort. We could issue our own special edition.

Avanzado 2

To my advanced crowd. We’re going to be looking back at the first units of the textbook (again!) but we’re also going to move on. One thing is quite clear, though. For reasons beyond my comprehension, you all seem to have learnt some adjectives pretty well: “quirky”, “creepy”, etc. pop up in just about every composition you wrote. Why? I hope to get some answers in the classroom.

Anyhoo… Carmen Oña kindly shared with me information regarding this baffling videoclip which, in a most compelling fashion, deals with the subject that we’re going to tackle on this week: growing old. Enjoy.

Oh! One more thing. For those of you who love opinion essay formulae of the type “first and foremost”, “firstly” and “first of all”…  Look at this interesting neologism from last year’s exams.

N.B. For those of you that are wondering if "anyhoo" is a typo, the answer is no. "Anyhoo" is a funny way of (deliberately) mispronouncing "anyhow". Don't you ever use that in an oral exam.

People, KNOCK-KNOCK, People KNOCK-KNOCK. You there? Exams are over! It's a great time to do some serious soul-searching. Anyway, I think we should know that, as of tomorrow Feb 3, we are going to resume our regular classes.

Intermedio 1: We have a lot of work to do. The oral exams were not exactly great, which means there are some problems I'm not addressing properly. I'm afraid we're going to have to go back to square 1 and approach things from a different (i.e. more "traditional") angle.

Avanzado 2: We are going to revisit some of the topics we saw back in October. So be ready to face a surprise vocab test.

In the meantime, you may want to explore the school's brand new website: www.eoilaredo.org

And for those of you that feel the need to be baffled I've decided to share this fascinating video that shows how neuroscience is not necessarily out of our reach. I hope you enjoy it.