Read an English joke and act it out with your groupmates.

A young writer sent a number of manuscripts to a celebrated newspaper columnist. The manuscripts came back with this curt note: “The only channel I can consciously recommend as the greatest outlet for articles of this type is the English Channel”.

Express your opinion.

Computers are so widespread nowadays that there is hardly a family without a computer at home. As a result, children are a bit obsessed with computer games, but what do you know about the middle-aged? Is it easy to learn dealing with computer when you are 30? Are computer games necessary for people of this age-group? Give examples to support your point of view.

Read the extract from a letter and try to explain the idioms in bold.

… a few months ago we decided to buy some new computers for the office as we’d had the old ones for a while and they were 1) on their last legs. Because of the cost, however, it was something we’d been keeping 2) on the back burner for a while. Then last month we lost a lot of valuable data because many of them were 3) on the blink, so we agreed we couldn’t postpone things any longer.

I really hadn’t realized what a big job it was going to be! The old computers 4) weighed a ton – it took two of us to carry each one downstairs – and we had to rip out all the old wiring. However, we had been thinking of rearranging the office layout for some time, so in fact, we managed to 5) kill two birds with one stone.

We had quite a few 6) teething troubles with the new computers, but this was mainly my fault. The company that sold them to us sent a man round to explain the 7) nuts and bolts of the new system to me so that we could 8) go on line. His instructions on how to operate the new computers seemed 9) as clear as a bell when he explained everything to me, but of course, I got totally confused when trying to pass on the information to the rest of the staff! As a result, I had to ask him to come back to go through it all again – rather embarrassing I must say!

Anyway, everything’s working properly now and l’m amazed at how much better they are than our old ones. I’ve had great fun 10) surfing the Net and sending E-mail to everyone …

Match the items with the idioms from the previous exercise.