Last week, the US military dropped the largest conventional (i.e. non-nuclear) bomb it has ever used in combat on an area in eastern Afghanistan that contained a complex of tunnels and bunkers used by militants connected to Daesh, the group…
Author Archive
Phrase of the day: second wind
I spent last week at the annual IATEFL conference, which this year was held in Glasgow. I've been speaking at the conference for almost twenty years now, and it's always an amazing experience. You get to meet loads and loads…
Phrase of the day: do time
I was chatting to a Spanish friend of mine the other day and she was telling me the sorry story of her ex-husband. Apparently, after they separated, he drifted into a life of petty crime and started dealing – mostly…
Phrase of the day: have a good innings
In one of my classes recently, we were looking at vocabulary connected to illnesses and there was a sentence about how diseases spread. I mentioned that they can spread around the world – from person to person – but also…
Word of the day: palaver
During my trip to Norilsk last week, I managed to squeeze in a day trip to Dudinka, a small port town situated on the mighty Yenesei River that's mainly used to ship out the nickel which is found in such…
Phrase of the day: above and beyond the call of duty
One of the delights of teaching foreign students in my home city of London is that I get to see the place through their eyes. My learners notice things about life here that I take for granted, things that I'm…
Phrase of the day: to all intents and purposes
I was lucky enough to spend all of last week in Norilsk, the most northerly city in the world. I was running a course there, and as is always the case when I'm in Russia, I was struck by the…
Word of the day: vanilla
These days, there's no shame in looking online for a partner. Indeed, it's all the rage in certain circles. The online dating scene has come a long way in a short period of time and there's been an incredible diversification…
Phrase of the day: get (back) in the swing of things
I hate goodbyes. Always have done, and always will do. I've certainly never understood where there's a good in goodbye, that's for sure. Still, just as you need sad to understand what happy is, cold to understand hot, and so…
Teaching in troubled times: Trump, tackling tensions and resting easy!
We live in troubled times. We're living through an age in which immigrants are routinely scapegoated and blamed for all of society's ills and the religious practices of millions of people are regularly conflated with the murderous impulses of a…