If you have a heavy workload, it means you have a lot of work to do and you probably work very long hours. Recently, a report revealed that, on average, teachers in the UK work 40-58 hours a week and…
Chunk of the day: get sidetracked
Last year we wrote a book called Perspectives. It's aimed at secondary school students and is loosely based around TED talks – and part of what you have to do for any book you write, but especially for one like…
Chunk of the day: adverse weather conditions
Over recent days, the news has been full of dire warnings. We've been urged to batten down the hatches and prepare to be hit hard by what's being called the Beast from the East! Quite what the former heavyweight boxing…
Chunk of the day: mass brawl
Twice in two days now, I've seen the words mass brawl appear in news headlines. First there was a story about up to a hundred schoolchildren, many still wearing their school uniforms, being involved in a mass brawl - a…
Chunk of the day: famous last words
As some of you may know, my father died recently after a relatively short battle with cancer. He was 87, so he had a good innings, and in many ways, he had the death he wanted: he died in his…
Chunk of the day: the gig economy
Last Saturday night I went to see some old friends from France playing in a great rock'n'roll band called Chrome Reverse. They're a four-piece band who play wild 50s-style rockabilly, and this was the very first time they'd ever played…
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…
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…
Chunk of the day: Where’s the best place to …?
This weekend sees the big match in north London between Arsenal and Tottenham. Among discussions about who has the best chance of winning and what the managers' best teams are, there's the more serious discussion of Where's's the best place…
Chunk of the day: Just because . . . it doesn’t mean
We've both often had students act more than a little surprised at our apparently un-English ways. Smiling and being friendly is often enough to start the questions about whether we're not secretly from somewhere ‘abroad’. This particular chunk helps offer…