English Lessons at Durdle Door

This is me with my student Beatriz from Madrid. She is here for a two week intensive English immersion course.

Beatriz particularly wanted to visit the South West coast, so what better on a sunny day than to have an  English lesson on the beach at Durdle Door !!

Durdle Door is a natural limestone arch on the Jurrassic Coast near Lulworth in Dorset, England. It is privately owned by the Welds and is part of the Lulworth Estate. It is open to the public. The name Durdle is derived from the Old English 'thirl' meaning bore or drill.

It is quite a steep climb down to the beach and there are no steps!!

The Dorset and East Devon coast is England's first natural world heritage site. It is known as the Jurassic coast and covers 95 miles of truly stunning coastline, from East Devon to Dorset with rocks recording 185 million years of the earth's history.

The arch has formed on a concordant coastline where bands of rock run parallel to the shoreline. The rock strata are almost vertical, and the bands of rock are quite narrow.

What did Beatriz study?

Beatriz is an Intermediate student ( B 1). She has two hours of English lessons every evening during the week, after work in Madrid. She works on learning grammar rules, listening, reading and writing, but no speaking.

Her objectives for her two week intensive course with me is to improve her fluency, widen and use her vocabulary, use stress and intonation correctly and greatly improve her speaking skills.

Our Lesson;

A conversation based lesson to help students use this more advanced phrasing.

Adjectives using numbers

It takes ten minutes on foot to my house.

My house is .....................walk         a   +  number + noun

My house is a twenty minute walk

I have a brother who is 25 years old

I have.....................brother                 a + number + noun

I have a 25 year old brother

Rewrite the sentences using the pattern above:

1. It takes fifteen minutes to walk to the office

2. New York is six hours by plane from Los Angeles

3. Angela is on a business trip for five days

4. I have a cat. It's eighteen years old!

5. I bought a watch. It cost four thousand pounds.

Beatriz ' an amazing day learning English in such a beautiful place.....and the weather.........perfect...............( and only a 40 minute drive from Carol's house !!!!!)'.