Ideas for your Summer Learning Plan

To use the materials we used this year, particularly if you didn’t finish them or exploit them properly for learning purposes. Here is my brainstorming on this:

• Listen to Pamela Lyndon Travers’s novella (Mary Poppins), practicing retelling of fav scenes, and/or L&R of my list of UL.
• Read or re-read or finish reading Wangari Maathai’s autobiography (Unbowed). This is important for everybody, really, because of the UL you can gather to speak and write about a great deal of issues relevant for C1 learners: democracy, corruption, human rights, repression, social movements, environmental issues, nature, cultures in Kenya, consequences of colonization in Kenya, urbanization, religion…
• If you have her documentary, Taking Root, it’ll be amazing support, and you’ll become familiar with Kenyan accents
• Watch Annie Leonard’s documentary (Story of Stuff) and practice retelling, and/or gather UL. This is also great for everybody’s English. The range of topics is great, too: consumerism, economy, environmental issues, human rights issues, labor/labour rights, democracy, sustainability, capitalism, resources in our planet…
• Listen to the Human Right Declaration, or read it again, to consolidate learning about formal administrative/legal language.
• Watch a few episodes of Friends, learning your fav lines, and/or practicing retelling the episode.
• Listen to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her TED Talks, to get used to non-British / non-US American accents.
• Listen to poems on the Talking People Podcast, and learn one by ear by heart!
• Listen to stories on the Talking People Podcast, particularly, again, to Coyote Killed a Giant, and practice retelling or L&R.
• Watch the videos posted this year on this blog, or look for your own, to expand your lists of UL in connection to your LoM, too — something you can or should do with whichever material you use, really!
• Have a look at my notes here on your Writing File, to check what you did, and what remains to be done.
• Read the C1 Resource Pack and connect it to your learning habits and routines or be aware of how you have done so.
• Practice telling your own actual or fictional stories, or write them down and read them aloud.
• If you have grammar trouble, get for instance the macmillan English Grammar in Context with key and a CD Rom for Intermediate students (if you get the Advanced guide and you haven’t consolidated your B2+ level it won’t be a good idea.)
  http://www.macmillanenglish.com/courses/macmillan-english-grammar-in-context/