May 21, 2017 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: rule of thumb My mother turned 70 last month and to celebrate we took her to Majorca for a week-long break. We rented a villa in Puerto Pollensa up on the north coast. It was just about large enough for my mum and her partner, John; my brother, his wife and their adopted kid, Jamie; John’s daughter from […]
May 19, 2017 Classroom Activities, Coursebooks, Grammar, Lexis, Opinions, The state of our profession Complicating the coursebook debate part 3: coursebook use Today’s post follows on from another recent post that looked at some of the so-called false assumptions that supposedly lie at the heart of coursebooks. The assumptions, as stated in a recent piece by Geoff Jordan, are that all coursebooks and coursebook-using teachers “lead students through each unit and do the succession of activities in […]
May 16, 2017 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: go pear-shaped Last night I was at our local pub quiz. For anyone who hasn’t experienced this, basically it’s an excuse for people to get together and drink, but at the same time it allows ourselves to feel that we are not drunks or layabouts because we are actually proving our great intelligence and knowledge. Never mind […]
May 14, 2017 Chunks, Word of the day Word of the day: ransom Over the last few days, the news here in the UK has been dominated by the hackers currently holding the country to ransom! It all began last Friday afternoon, when computers in several hospitals around the country suddenly stopped working normally and instead started showing a pop-up message which demanded a $300 (£233) ransom per […]
May 12, 2017 Opinions, Vocabulary Choice When porridge is not porridge: dealing with culturally specific phenomena in English It happens to me almost every time I’m in Russia. In fact, it’s happened so many times now that I’ve stopped finding it strange and it’s something I rarely even bother to comment on these days. It’s only when other foreigners who’ve not visited the country as many times as I have are present at […]
