Last Wednesday evening, I took a train from Preston back home to London. As we were nearing Euston station, I left my seat and went to wait near the door. A mother and her teenage daughter were already there, and…
Archive for February, 2015
February 2015
Yet more thoughts on teaching grammar
I'm now four weeks into the Focus on Grammar course I'm teaching at International House, London, which means only two more weeks to go. It's been a strange and mostly fairly lovely experience, made much easier by having some really…
UCLAN, Preston: February 25th
ELT Ireland, Dublin. February 2015
Chunk of the day: the bottom line (revisited)
As with single words, we should look for opportunities to revise or recycle chunks. When we do so, it's good to move beyond simply matching the word or chunk to the same meaning we gave last time. We can explore new…
ELT: In need of family therapy?
In my previous blogging incarnation on the CELT training site, I wrote about why lexical sets may be popular and about some of the downsides to them. That blog was closed when I left University of Westminster and I have…
Chunk of the day: the bottom line
In class yesterday, we looked at some vocabulary for describing different roles and duties people have at work. Students then went on to discuss which they had themselves, how good they felt they were at them - and which other…
3 Language is norm orientated
This use of the word norms here is inspired by Patrick Hanks’ recent book, Norms and Exploitations. It’s just the latest in a large number of articles, books and theories which have tried to account for the fact that despite…
Further thoughts on teaching grammar
Last week, I posted up a few thoughts I'd had on starting to teach (at IH London) a part-time, six-week evening course called Focus on Grammar. Following the second lesson with my lovely class last Thursday night, here are a…
Phrase of the day: It’s not as though
I had two conversations last night which featured this chunk. The first one was with a friend who was moaning about a culture clash in the Paris office he often visits. Leaving his house at 5.30 in the morning to…