Blog de Cristina

Check out my cool animated introduction:

English teacher- Cristina

I love learning about new, user-friendly software. Don´t you?

Please contact me if you have any translation needs. I offer very competitive rates, a speedy service and a top-notch customer service.
If you live in Madrid and would like to refresh your English, maybe I can help too. I try to deliver fun, action-filled classes, focused mainly on conversation. You won´t even notice you´re in class.
Remember: my email address is cristina@cristinatraduce.com.
I look forward to hearing from you.

Life is short. I believe it is essential to smile several times a day. I take my job very seriously, but it doesn´t hurt to season it with a bit of laughter every now and again. Here´s a couple of jewels I´ve come across today. Enjoy!

Qué difícil es hablar español


Problems with English pronunciation

In today´s class we discussed a movie that came out in 2008, which retold the true life story of a chap called Christopher Gardner.
Here´s the article you had to read:
From sleeping on the streets to Wall Street
And here is the man himself giving an inspirational speech:
http://www.kepplerspeakers.com/2011/07/christopher-gardner-on-obstacles-and-the-american-dream/

You may listen to it again and fill in the blanks here:

And finally, we started reviewing modal verbs:

USE	MODALS
ABILITY	Can	Could (past)
POSSIBILITY	Can (general or theoretical )	Could	May	Might (less probablethan may)
PERMISSION	Can	May (formal)
REQUEST	Can / Could	Will (formal)	May (formal)	Would (formal)
OBLIGATION	Must (imposed by the speaker)	Have to
LACK OF OBLIGATION	Don’t have to	Needn’t
DEDUCTION / CONCLUSION	Must	Should (less certain)	Can’t
PROHIBITION	Mustn’t	Can’t	May not
ADVICE	Should	Ought to	Might	Could
OFFER	Shall	Would
SUGGESTION	Shall	Would	Should (formal)

We read this article about the US Shutdown and we listened to the Q&A audio piece.
Terms such as border patrol, security officers, Nana, government agencies and departments, chores chart or furloughed should now be very familiar.

We then practiced making predictions with the auxiliary verb WILL by reading an extract from The lucky generation by William Davies.

Here´s the talk we read and listened to in today´s class:

Barry Schwart on The Paradox of Choice

We reviewed and practiced the past simple and the past progressive. You may do the exercises again by clicking here:


We went over past and present time phrases:

We saw the different meanings of certain terms in American English and British English (click on the happy face to review all 20):

Today´s class was centered around the present and the past. We talked about life circles, things we used to do when we were little and important dates, people and places in our lives.


We reviewed a whole bunch of Idioms, among others: beat around the bush, get your hands on something, put something behind you, be a sucker for something, be thick-skinned, storm out or storm off etc.

We also reviewed prepositions of time: at, in, on.

Here are some useful links if you wish to practice some more:

http://www.englishexercises.org/makeagame/viewgame.asp?id=5278
http://www.ego4u.com/en/cram-up/grammar/prepositions/exercises?02