The English student's magazine:
There's a magazine
for English students in Madrid which only costs 5 euros per monthly
issue and comes with an hour-long CD. It's a shame that more English
students don't use it to learn English but, on the other hand,
I know quite a few English teachers who use material from this
magazine (including listenings from the cd) in their English classes.
Materials I use in my English classes - part 1.
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Mb - 9 min. mpg.
Materials I use in my English classes - part 2.
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Mb - 7 min. mpg.
From November 2007 issue.
Hot English Magazine - Top five points
If students want to focus on how English is spoken in real
conversations, Hot English Magazine is usually loaded with
lots of real dialogs.
There's lots of useful colloquial vocabulary in its 50
pages.
It's fun. Student's will learn a lot of English with it
because they will have fun with it.
At 50 euros, their yearly subscription is really cheap,
but at 25 euros, their online subscription is a steal. (That
includes their past issues.)
It beats the competition by a country mile. (Meaning: it's
much better than the other English magazines out there.)
Don't take my word for it. Go out and buy one and have a good look
at it. Better yet, if you're a student, read it. And if you're a
teacher, use it in a class.
On the outskirts of Madrid, if they don't already get them,
kiosks will order one for you if you ask them to.
Powerpack
Apart from Hot English Magazine, Hot English Publishing
has lots of other services (including Hot
English Language Services, which is their English academy
/ agency branch). Powerpack is their bi-monthly English materials
pack for English academies and freelance English teachers. Each
of these materials packs comes with 8 or 9 reading and listening
activites, which are usually divided into 4 levels: pre-intermediate,
intermediate, upper-intermediate and advanced. The ninth one is
usually a dialog of some kind in a real-life situation like in
a travel agency or restaurant.
Samples of articles and activities.
This particular article comes from issue number 43. It's got a list
of vocabulary words related to gardens. The same issue has also
got several other articles on the same topic including one that
asks "why are the british so obsessed with their gardens?"
and another humorous one-page dialog listening activity set in a
British man's garden. Apart from seeing this useful vocabulary in
action, there are some other useful expressions like: "what on earth
...", "teach someone a lesson" and "make yourself at home".
There ARE some serious activities in the magazine.
This particular article focuses first on the vocabulary word "afraid".
It looks specifically at how it is used first in combination with
"to" and an infinitive and then it looks at how it is
used with "of" and a gerund. Finally, the article compares
them and says how they are different.
What could be more fun than listening to songs in English?! This
activity has 3 classic pop / rock songs and has a good look at
the vocabulary. Can you remember anything you ever said when you
were just a young child? I'm sure that you can remember some of
the songs that you used to sing. There's nothing better than songs
for helping you to remember vocabulary and phrases! Hot English
Magazine also has complete songs by new singers.
This activity looks at 6 idiomatic expressions, explains what
they mean and illustrates them with drawings. Student's usually
like these activities and anything related to proverbs.
Hot English Magazine usually has plenty of Hollywood related articles
and dialogs. (By the way, I think movies are the third best way
you can learn English in a motivating way after reading this magazine
and listening to and singing songs.) This particular activity
is from a scene with Alan Rickman taken directly from the film
Robin Hood. There are a couple of other interesting articles accompanying
this one including one title English accents in Hollywood and
another one on how the film industry loves using British people
to be the bad guys in their films.
My favorite articles and activities in the magazine include those
of native English speakers telling each other jokes like in this
particular one. There are also the dialogs of crank calls. Both
of these types of activities push English to the limits and show
how to use the same old language in absurd circumstances, which,
makes it funner and funnier, of course.
Similar to the idiomatic expressions activity above, the phrasal
verbs article also looks at 6 phrasl verbs with "give",
explains what they mean and illustrates them with drawings.
Every issue of Hot English Magazine also has plenty of other vocabulary
work, including word search games and crossword puzzles. This
particular activity compares British and American words for different
objects and people. There are also games like vocabulary matching
activities in which you match the picture to the vocabulary word.
This activity usually comes accompanied by a "US bar chat".
These dialogs show how native speakers normally talk to each other
on the street or in the real world. It's very useful for students
who want to someday be able to talk to real British people and
Americans.
There are many other sections apart from those I have listed above
including one which is very useful to many adults: business English.
In this issue, there were 5 pages of articles including a practical
article on job interviews in the U.S. and another funner one titled
"Interview Horror Stories". There were also to business
dialogs including one with "The Tax Inspector" and another
titled "Personal Debt".
The English student's magazine:
There's a magazine
for English students in Madrid which only costs 5 euros per monthly
issue and comes with an hour-long CD. It's a shame that more English
students don't use it to learn English but, on the other hand,
I know quite a few English teachers who use material from this
magazine (including listenings from the cd) in their English classes.
Materials I use in my English classes - part 1. 
Hot English Magazine usually has plenty of Hollywood related articles
and dialogs. (By the way, I think movies are the third best way
you can learn English in a motivating way after reading this magazine
and listening to and singing songs.) This particular activity
is from a scene with Alan Rickman taken directly from the film
Robin Hood. There are a couple of other interesting articles accompanying
this one including one title English accents in Hollywood and
another one on how the film industry loves using British people
to be the bad guys in their films.
