6th class

I didn't go to the class but the teacher told me that there was a speaking exercise.

5th class

At this class, the teacher corrected the exercises on page 6 about Past Perfect.
We started to talk about manners and etiquette. There are rules you must follow in specific situations.

• How to greet people you do know or don't; Shaking hands, with two or three, or even four kisses on the cheek, hugging, bowing;
• When you are eating, that it is called "table manners". In some places, it's a good sign to belch after the meal because it means you are satisfied, but it's not so good to use toothpicks;
• What is "polite" to do or not to do like to arrive fifteen minutes late tops;
• In some countries there are foods that you should avoid because it's a "taboo"; for instance, in India they don't eat meat because cows are considered divine beings. And we don't eat dogs in Brazil, but chinese people doesn't have problems with that. 

At the end, we made an exercise on page 8 that she already corrected.

I found this text related to this subject.

One last thing: our coleague gave us this wonderful website hint www.lyricstraining.com where you can practice completing the songs' words. Very good!

Family tree

Have you ever tried to know more about your family? If you do, maybe you want to know that there is a website where you can find out a lot of information about your relatives. It's called ancestry.com. You just need to put your parents information and add their parents information and go on until you build your family tree.

In this text, you can read more about it!

Even if you don't find anyone, it's a best way to remember relative names. ;¬)

Is your PC too slow?

Here you'll find two great hints to turn your computer faster again like it was when you bought it.

World Wide Cell Phone Etiquette

That's an interesting text about how people use cell phones around the world. Do we use them correctly here in Brazil? I'm not sure!

To read the text you can click here.

4th class

Last class we saw the past perfect. I don't know if I understood well, but I'll try to write about it. If you think I'm not right, please help me.

I think it will be easier if we compare the present and past perfect.

The structure of present perfect is:

(Present simple of auxiliary verb) + (Past participle of main verb)

Ex.: "They have been to Europe." or "She has done it."

And the structure of past perfect is:

(Past simple of auxiliary verb) + (Past participle of main verb)

Ex.: "They had overslept." or "It had happened."

The present perfect is used when:

• you want to talk about what happened, but you don't know the exact moment: Ex.: "I have found a wallet on the street.";
• you want to talk about something that just happened. Ex.: "We've just seen your brother.";
• there are actions started in the past and still happen: Ex.: "I have lived in the same house for ten years.";
• you want to talk about actions that already happened. Ex.: "I've already done the exercises.";
• you want to ask if something already happened. Ex.: "Have you done the exercises already/yet?"

The past perfect is used when:

• you want to talk about something happened before another action in the past. Ex.: "When we arrived, he had already gone.";
• you want to talk about an action that had just happened. Ex.: "When we arrived, he had just already gone.";
• you want to talk about actions were completely finished. Ex.: "By the time my parents arrived home, I had cleaned the whole house.";
• you want express your regrets about something happened. Ex.: "I wish I had told them the whole truth."

If you have doubts or want to add more examples, please leave a comment and we will ask the teacher, right?

3rd Class

We learned about greetings. How to introduce yourself. There are many ways to introduce yourself and to make the conversation less formal, like:

Do you mind if I call you Johny?

The teacher also told us about question tags like:

You are foreign, aren't you?
She speaks english, doesn't she?
They don't go to the movies, do they?

If we make an affirmative sentence, the question tag should be a negative one, and vice-versa.
At the end of the class, we learned about small talks. Small talk is a little conversation that you do when you are on an elevator, or when you are waiting for a medical consultation and you talk to the people close to you:

What a wonderful day, isn't it?.

We must pay atention to the first person like the wonderful example teacher gave us if you're drunk and want to make clear you live where you are:

I live here, aren't I?

She told us there are three ways to say that. A high formal way: "am I not?"; that sounds pretty cheesy ;) and  a slang way: "ain't I?". But the standard way that it's more used is "aren't I?".

FYI: ;) I've searched about what means "Sawatdee-Khrab" and "Sawatdee-Kaa". Both are thai expressions that mean "Hello". The first one is said by men and the last one is said by women. Here is where I found it: http://www.ehow.com/way_6177292_thai-language.html

2nd Class

We started to work the first chapter from the book. We read the texts about a company meeting and discussed some vocabulary. It appeared some words like:

* awareness, smoothly, denim and slacks.

Then we were supposed to do an exercise: to make up some rules on specific situations like: public transportation, on the beach, etc;

For example, if you're on the beach it's important the following rule:

Don't pee on the sand!

First class!

The teacher told us about her method of evaluation. We're going to use the book "Top Notch 3, Saslow, Joan. Longman".