Not just a pretty face originated following the Second World War with the beginnings of feminism. It was used by women to emphasise to their somewhat slow male colleagues that women were in fact very capable of all kinds of…
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Word of the day: tipping point
I don’t know about you, but I love the game Jenga. I mean, what's not to like? It has everything you could want from a game: the luck of finding that loose piece you can easily move; the skill of having…
Phrase of the day: What time…?
Now, some of you may have been thinking that 'chunk of the day' had turned into 'chunk of the month' - or even 'chunk of the year'! I'm afraid we've been a bit busy and perhaps a bit depressed by how in…
When are questions and teacher talk too much?
We recently had a query from a reader regarding the kind of language-generating concept questions we advocate. Basically, he had received some criticism after a lesson observation that the class was too teacher-centred, too input heavy and students didn't have enough time…
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5 Different collocations or units of meaning = different networks of words
We saw in the second post in this series that coming up with clear-cut definitions of single words is difficult because individual words impact on each other and change their 'meanings' slightly. For example, Hanks argues that the typical usage of raging…
Questions about words
In my talk at IATEFL (and International House London, where a video was made of it), I explained some of the limitations of asking traditional concept questions, especially when looking at vocabulary. What follows is a list of alternative types…
Van Gogh’s ear and wordlists
We’ve had a suggested adaptation of some material from a teacher, Amber Nowak, in the Netherlands. It’s a little bit different to what we initially envisaged here in that Amber has already exploited the material in the book, Go for…
4 Language is patterned
We have already see that one problem with the grammar + words view of language is that words are difficult to define, but the same could equally said of grammar on its own. In the case of Pinker’s book, Words…