Last Saturday in my first World Cup-related post, I expressed my fear that given our recent record in international competitions, England could well face humiliation at the hands of Panama, who were enjoying their first-ever World Cup. In the end,…
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Word of the day: cracking
In my last evening class, one of my students came in looking slightly confused. "I've got a question about something my English housemate said", he told me. "OK. Let's hear it, then". "Well, I know she went to see this…
Word of the day: caff
Last Monday, I was invited to the ELTONs - the British Council awards ceremony celebrating innovation in English Language Teaching. I had a bit of a late night and then had to get up early as I had a meeting…
Word of the day: cagey
For the last week, I’ve been running a teacher development course in Krasnoyarsk with some wonderful local teachers. It was weird being in Russia as World Cup fever grips the nation, but away from the cities where the matches are…
Phrase of the day: a double-edged sword
For many years, Hugh Grant was perhaps the most famous English actor there was. He rose to fame playing . . . well, himself, really. In films such as Notting Hill, Love Actually and Four Wedddings and a Funeral, he…
Word of the day: OFSTED
Following on from our recent post about heavy workloads, where we revealed how much UK teachers work, today we're looking at OFSTED. OFSTED in an organisation that inspects schools in England and checks that they're doing a good job. OFSTED…
Chunk of the day: a spate of
In our most-viewed post of recent weeks, we reported on the fact that there had been a spate of incidents involving people dressed as ‘killer clowns’ and that people dressed as scary clowns had been terrorising innocent members of the…
Word of the day: craze
A craze is something that becomes incredibly popular, but usually only for a short period of time. Over the last few days, one particular craze has been sweeping the nation – sparking mass hysteria as it has done so. Police…
Word of the day: catch on
Like any major city around the world, London is a busy, noisy place. People are often rushing from one place to the next and, increasingly, we are all bombarded by sound: there's the roar of traffic, the ringing of phones,…
Putting our words to work: rethinking Teacher Talking Time
English Language Teaching loves a good acronym. There’s ELT to begin with and then, of course, there’s EFL - English as a Foreign Language - ESL, English as a Second Language and EIL - English as an International Language. There’s…