Singer Gap Fill with Shakira

Do you know Shakira? She was born in Columbia. Her father was Lebanese so she grew up with Latin and Arabic music. She wrote her first song at the age of 8. She’s made lots of hit albums. Let’s try a gap fill using one of her songs.

This song is called Rules. It was on her first English language album. It’s a little old now. Play the video and try to fill in the gaps. You can slow the music down too.

“Rules” Lyrics


You ______ to swear
You’ve got _____ to love me
Aah aah
That ____ last forever
Aah aah
We ________ have a story
Aah aah
With a _______ ending

Aah, so ______ ever go away
And _____ put aside
The things I’m _______ say
Cause these are _______ for us

Use your ______
Only to _____ at me
Use your ______
Only to ______ my lips
We are branches of the same old _____
You can ______
Only if you laugh with ______
You can ______
______ if you cry for me
Don’t _______ that you’re condemned to me

Oh, can’t you _______?
You always _____
You’ll always be

You used to ______
I should see a _______
Aah aah
______ would keep me busy
Aah aah
Cause a jealous _______
______ makes it easy

Aah aah,
And you ______ I’ll do for us
Whatever seems _______
_____ it may take awhile
Before I change the ______

_____ your eyes
Only to look at ____
_____ your mouth
Only to kiss my ______
_____ are branches of the same old tree
_____ can laugh
Only if ______ laugh with me
_____ can cry
Only if _____ cry for me
Don’t forget that you’re condemned to me

Oh, can’t you see?
You always were
You’ll always were…
Aah, aah, aah…

Use _______ eyes
Only to look at ______
Use ______ mouth
Only to kiss _____ lips
We are branches of the same old tree
You _____ laugh
______ if you laugh with me
You ______ cry
______ if you cry for me
Don’t forget that you’re condemned to me

Oh, can’t you see?
You always were
You’ll always be
Aah, aah…

Now that you’ve tried that what do you think the song is about?

I’ll give you a hint.

The song is song by a woman to her partner. What is she saying to her partner?

My student’s trip to Australia

Two of my students recently went to Australia.

This is the English diary one of them kept:

A trip to Australia

I went to Australia with my friend. I went to see my daughter. Her English skill has levelled up.

Day 1

We went to Sydney circular key. We were moved when we saw the Sydney opera house and the Sydney harbour bridge. It’s amazing!!!

Image result for sydney opera house and sydney harbour bridge

Day 2

We enjoyed shopping. We went to Pitt Street Mall and The Strand Arcade. There were a lot of buildings there.

Image result for pitt street mall sydney
Image result for the strand arcade sydney

Day 3

We flew early in the morning to Brisbane. We met my daughter there. We went to my teacher’s family house by bus. It’s a beautiful house.

That night we went to eat street. It’s an open air food market. You can try lots of food there. We went there by ferry.

Image result for eat street brisbane

Day 4

We went to lone pine koala sanctuary by bus. I hugged a koala and fed a kangaroo. There were so cute.

Image result for lone pine koala sanctuary

At night we met my daughter’s host family. We had dinner and then went to a bar.

Day 5

We went to the Gold Coast. It’s so amazing. It’s an infinitely long beach.

Image result for gold coast

That night we enjoyed the night markets and saw a moon road on the water.

Day 6

My daughter went to school. We went to the airport to leave our baggage in a locker. My baggage was so heavy at 27 kilograms! We returned to the city to have meet my daughter for the last time in this holiday. After that we said goodbye at central station.

My friend helped a lot in this trip. She can speak English. I want to speak English more!

Invitations and Suggestions

The following video is to help understand how to make invitations and suggestions.

It mentions four phrases you can use to suggest or invite someone to something.

Let’s see a movie tonight.

How about seeing a movie tonight?

Why don’t we see a movie tonight?

What about seeing a movie tonight?

All of these have the same meaning. To make a suggestion or an invitation.

Presenting and Pausing

Wednesday Adult Class week 4 September 2018

Image result for pause

Pauses in paragraphs:

Focus questions:

What is a pause?

Why do we pause?

When do we pause?

A pause is a short stop while speaking.

It’s usually a moment to take a breath.

The most common time to pause is at the end of the sentence or when there is a comma (a comma is this: ,).

Pauses in Presentations:

Focus question:

What other reason do we pause during presentation?

We pause during presentations to help people understand what you said.

A long pause during your presentation can help people understand you better.

You should do a long pause after a joke, after a very important idea, after a sentence that is difficult to understand.

It gives them a chance to think about what you said. We call this “giving it time to sink in.”

The topic for our presentation this unit is: What are you doing these days?

Image result for what are you doing these days

For example:

Where are you living?

Where are you working?

What are you doing at work?

Where are you studying?

What are you studying?

What are you doing for fun?

Who do you spend time with?

Languages, Nationality and Countries

Do you know the following countries?

Can you recognise the flag without reading the country name?

What do we call people from these countries?

Nationality means where someone or something is from.

I am from Australia, I am Australian.

Toyota is from Japan. It is Japanese.

Look below each flag to learn what we call people and things from each country

When we talk about languages spoken it is sometimes the same word as nationality.

For example:

They speak Japanese in Japan. (the language is from Japan, so it is Japanese.)

What about other countries? Do you know what languages the above countries speak?

What language do Brazilians and Mexicans speak?

If you said Spanish you would be half correct.

Spanish is spoken in Mexico, but there are some differences. So people often call it Mexican Spanish.

What about Brazil?

They speak Portuguese.

But wait, what country is Portuguese from?


Do you recognise the flag on the left?

That’s half of the Portuguese flag. It’s from the country Portugal.

What is the main language spoken in Australia, the US and the UK?

Did you say English? I hope you did.

Why is English called English?

Why isn’t it called British?

Why isn’t it called American or Australian?

The language English comes from the country England which is a part of the United Kingdom. British refers to anyone from the four kingdoms of the UK: Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland.

The term English also refers to people and things from England.

For example

The English soccer team.

Why do so many countries around the world have English as their national language?


Are you studying any languages? Why are you studying them? How are you learning it?