iTeach: blogul Alexandra Naghi

Jungle animals - writing - clasa I

Alexandra Naghi — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 11:29:39 +0200

Farm/ wild/ sea animals - clasa pregatitoare

Alexandra Naghi — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 11:28:25 +0200

Chain dialogue - for all levels

Alexandra Naghi — Sat, 25 Jan 2025 16:04:35 +0200

Name of activity: Chain dialogue
Teacher's task: Writes down an example of a mini-dialogue ( question-answer)on the whiteboard/blackboard and explains to students that he/she is going to pick one of them, randomly and ask a question (related to the lesson theme) and that the student will have to answer and then pick a colleague and ask another question ( from a given list). The chain of questions and answers continues, until the last question is addressed to the teacher and he/ she answers, thus closing the chain.
Students task: pay attention to the explanations and do on the spot dialogues.
Time: 10 min.
Appropriate for all levels and for vocabulary and grammar practising with speaking.

Video watching with no sound on - lower-intermediate

Alexandra Naghi — Sat, 25 Jan 2025 15:57:02 +0200

Activity: Watching videos with no sound on to guess the type of music
Teacher's task: Gives the students a list of music types, for e.g. rock, pop, country, etc. and explains to them that they are going to watch parts of some videos with no sound on and that they have to choose the type of music for each video, according to the images they see.
Student's task: Watch the videos and guess the types of music.
Time: 10 min.
Type of activity: Individual and frontal work
Appropriate for ice breaking or feedback.

Common literary words in English

Alexandra Naghi — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 20:20:04 +0200

The common literary words are mainly used in writing and in polished speech and they stand in opposition to colloquial units. For example: infant (kid), associate (chap), retire (get out), proceed (go one), commence (go ahead). Although literary words show less emotion that colloquial ones, both styles have their high and low aspects, the latter one approaching in both cases, the neutral layer.

Common colloquial vocabulary

Alexandra Naghi — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 20:18:10 +0200

Common colloquial vocabulary is part of the Standard English vocabulary, situated between the neutral and the special colloquial vocabulary. Words belonging to this group, are not homogenous and some are close to the non-standard colloquial groups such as jargonisms, professionalism.

What are Barbarisms?

Alexandra Naghi — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 20:17:05 +0200

Barbarisms are words that seem borrowed from other languages and that are not entirely assimilated into English, such as: chic (stylish) or ad infinitum (to infinity). But they are not to be confused with foreign words, which are not part of English and which cannot be found in dictionaries.

English words with French origins

Alexandra Naghi — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 20:49:53 +0200

English words with French origins comprise: official and legal terms: president, legislature, congress, constitution, parliament; residence related words: city, village, mansion, residence, domicile; cooking verbs and nouns: boil, fry, roast, toast, dinner, supper; names of jobs: carpenter, plumber, tailor, painter; terms related to: politics, diplomacy, fashion, literature, art, ballet.

English words with Scandinavian origins

Alexandra Naghi — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 20:49:20 +0200

English words with Scandinavian origins are: common nouns: mother, brother, man, wife, grass, summer, winter, band, birth, bloom, race, root; verbs: bring, come, get, hear, meet, call, die, rid, scare, sprint, want; adjectives: happy, ill, ugly, weak; name of colours: grey, green and white; possessives: mine and thine; cardinal points: North and West.

English words originating in Old English

Alexandra Naghi — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 20:48:38 +0200

English words originating in Old English include: basic concepts and things: life/death, love/hate, day/night, heath/cold, etc; cardinal numerals; ordinal numerals – except second- word of Latin origin (secundus); personal pronouns – except they, their, them – Scandinavian origin; auxiliary verbs – except used – French origin; most simple prepositions; all conjunctions.

Academic Vocabulary

Alexandra Naghi — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 15:09:46 +0200

English Vocabulary is divided into Academic Vocabulary and Content Vocabulary. Academic Vocabulary refers to the words that do not belong to a content area and which can be found in academic texts, for example: consist, occur, establish, significant, recognize, respond, etc.

English words originating in other languages

Alexandra Naghi — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 15:08:23 +0200

English words originating in other languages include: Dutch – deck, dock, skipper ( sea-related words); cookie, boss, waffle (American English); apartheid, commando, trek ( South African); German – terms related to geology, literature, philosophy, psychology ( inferiority complex, wishful thinking); adjectives (unclear, meaningful); other words (round trip, ring road); Italian – music terminology (allegro, cantabile, vibrato); words related to architecture ( corridor, cupola, piazza); literary terms (burlesques, stanza, canto); Spanish – cigar, mosquito, tornado, vanilla; Arabic – alcohol, assassin, algebra, sugar, syrup, zero; Hebrew – amen, messiah, rabbi, Sabbath; Hindi – guru, cheetah, shampoo, punch, polo; Welsh – flannel, penguin; Persian – paradise, chess, salamander; Finish - sauna; Russian – soviet, vodka, sputnik; Hungarian – paprika, goulash; Chinese – tea, ketchup; Japanese – karate, tsunami, shogun, samurai; Polynesian – taboo, tattoo; Portuguese – flamingo, molasses, marmalade; Basque – bizarre.

The origins of English language

Alexandra Naghi — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 15:06:28 +0200

English is and Indo-European language, originated from the Proto-Indo-European, spoken 5,000 years ago by nomads from the southeast European plains and considered by scholars a Germanic language, a descendant group of the before mentioned language. But in time, English developed differently from German, slowly simplifying its words.

Consonants pronunciation in English

Alexandra Naghi — Fri, 03 Jan 2025 17:04:45 +0200

C can be hard (c + a / c + o/ c + u - c = /k/ sound – e.g. cone, can, cube) or soft ( c + e/ c + i/ c + y – c = /s/ sound – e.g. cells, circular, cycles); k can be used instead of c followed by e, i, y ( e.g. keep, kiss, Kyle); g can be hard ( g + a/ g + o/ g + u – g = /g/ sound - e.g. gave, good, guy) or soft (g + e / g + i/ g + y – g = /j/ sound– e.g. gel, ginger, gypsy – exceptions: give, get, girl, etc); final f changes to v + es to make plurals ( e.g. wife – wives; wolf – wolves); y – does not change to i if preceded by vowel ( e.g. play – played – playing) but otherwise changes to i if adding –ed not –ing ( e.g. cry-cried-crying);

Activities that include songs in lessons

Alexandra Naghi — Fri, 03 Jan 2025 17:00:03 +0200

1. Creating booklets with illustrations of lyrics;
2. Karaoke, singing along, lip-sync video performances;
3. Dancing and choreography – moving body parts on music;
4. Rewriting a song, changing lyrics, in a creative way or by replacing parts of speech with other parts of speech;
5. Gap filling the words missing from the lyrics of a song;
6. Making comic strips out of songs that tell stories;
7. Ordering the verses;
8. Writing new verses to add to the song, etc.

An Nou Fericit!

Alexandra Naghi — Fri, 03 Jan 2025 16:53:02 +0200

La multi ani si un An Nou cu impliniri, tuturor!

Crăciun fericit!

Alexandra Naghi — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 19:21:36 +0200

Dragi colegi,
Vă doresc să aveți parte de un Crăciun cu sănătate și pace! Vacanță plăcută tuturor!

Colind drag sufletului meu

Alexandra Naghi — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 19:19:48 +0200

https://youtu.be/LOZG4nPBIe0?si=wheNUxlvBRp8oiXT

The importance of modern teaching strategies

Alexandra Naghi — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 16:47:33 +0200

It is very important to provide the nowadays students the appropriate learning methods, because the generations have changed and they belong to the Information or Digital Age, which is characterized by the use of modern gadgets and of the Internet. Children are born with the capacity of using smart phones, computers, tablets and other technological means and they do so from a very early age. Their minds are very different and they need updated strategies and ways of learning things at school, in order to be kept motivated and interested.

Teaching English as a foreign language

Alexandra Naghi — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 16:43:48 +0200

Teaching English as a foreign language is not easy, because it implies a lot of patience and communicational skills, especially when dealing with young learners and teenagers, at different levels. As an English teacher it is very important to create a safe and supportive environment, use many visual supports, make fun lessons, set classroom rules, use different learning techniques and use modern technology.
As a primary, lower intermediate and technological high-school teacher, vocabulary has been a challenge for me, because I have been trying, for ten years, to find and use the best strategies and methods for my students to learn English as easy and as fun as possible, although many times it can be quite difficult to keep them motivated and involve them actively in the learning process.