Thursday, June 27, 2013

More tips on presentations

Here you can find more tips on effective presentations with complements of A.  Thank you A!

Friday, June 14, 2013

Misused terminology at the EI

Here is the link for "A Brief List of Misused Terms in EU Publications".  Thank you A and F!

Friday, April 19, 2013

Conditionals

Here you can find some information and exercises on conditionals.

Here you can find information and exercises on the same topic along with the key for the exercises. (Source: English Grammar in Use. Intermediate by Raymond Murphy)

Here you can find more mixed exercises on conditionals as well as other linking words that can be used in conditionals. There are also some exercises on expressing wishes.

Subjunctive

A webpage on the use of subjunctive is hereby made available.
 
Here you can find more information with exercises on the subjunctive and unreal uses past forms.  Here is the key for the exercises. 

Position of adverbs

Here are the main rules and exceptions on the position of adverbs in sentences:

First rule: if there is only one verb in the sentence, the adverb comes before the verb as in the following example: He usually comes to work on time.
Exception to the first rule: if the only verb in the sentence is 'to be', the adverb comes after the verb as in the following example:  He is usually on time.

Second rule: If there is more than one verb in the sentence, the adverb comes after the first verb as in the following example: He has already arrived at work.
First exception to the second rule: if the first verb in the sentence is an auxiliary verb with 'to', i.e., have to, need to, ought to and used to, the adverb comes before the first verb as in the following example: He usually has to start working by 9:30 AM.
Second exception to the second rule: if the first verb in the sentence is a contracted negation, the adverbs 'probably', 'possibly' and 'certainly' come before the first verb as in the following example: He probably won't come to work on time.

These being the main rules and exceptions, there is more to this topic.  You can find more information on this webpage, which also provides you with some exercises.

Here is another document with exercises on the same topic.  You can find the key for the exercises here.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

More tips on PowerPoint presentations

Here you can find list of do's and dont's for PowerPoint presentations.

The dont's for PowerPoint

Here you can find Don McMillan's standup on the dont's of a PowerPoint presentation.

Text

We will be using the following text for the course:
Presenting in English by Mark Powell.
You should be able to find it at the European Bookshop.

Here you can find you the first section of the book. 

The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint

Here you can find Guy Kawasaki's recommendations on the length (10 slides), duration (20 minutes) and font size (30 points) in a PowerPoint presentation.

Here you can find a stream of his pitch. ('Bozo' means 'fool'.)

Lists of three and the rule of 3s: two speeches

Here you can find the first part of Steve Jobs's iPhone product launch speech.

Here you can find Barack Obama's inauguration speech.

In both of them, please pay attention to the usage of the lists of three and the rule of 3s.

Here is a stream where the rule of 3s is explained among other useful tips on making presentations.