CAN DO STATEMENTS

Speaking English doesn't seem to be a problem for you. That's very good. Continue doing what you do and remember that you can always play around with pronouncing difficult words aloud, reading the texts pretending to be someone else or speak with different accents. To avoid getting rusty, find a schoolmate, friend or family member and speak English with them. Practise describing and comparing people, discussing teenager styles, and at the same time brush up your spoken English.

You are quite happy with your English speaking ability but you don't think it's excellent. How can you bring it to that higher level? You can go over the units again and practise reading and pronouncing words aloud. You can exaggerate and read the texts extremely slowly or imitate your favourite celebrity’s accent... You get the idea, don't you? Also try to find a schoolmate, friend or family member and chat in English about teenagers and their styles.

You are definitely not happy with your English speaking ability. It's time to find the reason why this is so. Is it that you did the units carelessly and hastily? If yes, do them again and practise reading and pronouncing words aloud. Do you have little chance to actually speak English with someone? No problem. Simply ask a schoolmate, friend or family member to speak English with you. It can be as little as an hour every. You will be surprised how quickly your spoken English gets better.

You obviously are a good writer. So why not start your own blog in English? Provided your parents approve it. Read some teenager blogs to get an idea for your own one. If you are not ready yet to take this step, then write comments to other people's blog posts. Think of all the interesting places that you have been to and write testimonials about them. Be the official family email writer and write enquiries in English about hotel prices, departure dates… To boost up your essay writing skill, do some great activities on the British Council 'Learn English for teens' website.

You evaluated your writing skill as appropriate, which is good. To further improve it, you can find an interesting blog about teenager life and styles and write comments to the blog posts or write a testimonial about a place you stayed. Provided your parents see and approve it. Write emails to ask about things like prices, dates, discounts… Write an essay and show it to your teacher or someone who can give you feedback and point out your typical mistakes. The more you write, the better your written work will get.

You will need to develop your writing skill. The sooner you start working on it, the better for your progress. Do the writing tasks for this set of units and show your writing to your teacher or someone who can give you feedback and point out your typical mistakes. Also, find opportunities to write in English. For example, writing blog comments or communicating with learners around the world on the BBC Learning English Facebook page.

It's good that you can use both print and e-dictionaries. Check a few entries in all dictionaries you have, and see which definitions are most suitable for you. Create mind maps whenever possible because visualising important information helps learn faster. You seem to be very good at searching for information online and using it for your purposes. This is an important skill and you will be able to further develop it in the next set of units.

If you are not confident about using dictionaries, compare definitions of words in more dictionaries and see which is easiest for you to understand. If you are happy with your mind map reading ability, you have acquired an important learning skill. You seem to be good at searching for information online and using it for your purposes. Always critically check your search results. Watch out for potentially dangerous webages with viruses, spam, false information... It takes practice to become a search expert.

If you are not used to using dictionaries, ask your teacher to recommend one that would suit your needs. Learning English with a dictionary will help you become a more independent learner. Create mind maps whenever reading complex texts because visualising important information helps learn faster. To improve your internet search skill, change your search words slightly and see how you get different hits each time. Also, always critically check your search results and beware of potentially dangerous webpages (viruses, spam, false information, false purpose…).