Mar 5, 2020 Chunks, Word of the day Word of the day: pandemic Wherever you are in the world, the news over the last few weeks has almost certainly been dominated by one story – the ongoing efforts to stop – or at least contain – the spread of Covid-19, a disease better known by the rather misleading name coronavirus. In fact, coronoviruses are a large family of […]
Feb 11, 2020 Chunk of the day, Chunks Chunk of the day: room for improvement This afternoon I interviewed someone who’s applied to do one of our language courses this summer. We like to Skype people who are coming to study with us because it helps us get a feel for their level of English, it puts a face to the name and it allows us to get to know […]
Jan 10, 2020 Chunk of the day, Chunks Chunk of the day: on the wagon This Friday I’ll be meeting an old friend of mine called Jon. I’m looking forward to seeing him as it’s been a while since we last met, but I’m also slightly worried as ever since we arranged to go out a couple of weeks ago, he’s been making a big deal about the fact that […]
Dec 8, 2019 Chunks, Word of the day Word of the day: (the) MSM MSM sounds like an unfortunate disease that someone might suffer from – a cancer that’s spreading and eating away at your insides, for instance. Maybe that similarity is deliberate, because what we are talking about here is the mainstream media, and many of those who use the acronym (the) MSM believe that it’s also something […]
Oct 2, 2019 Chunk of the day, Chunks Chunk of the day: on an industrial scale On Sunday evening, as I was getting dinner ready for my kids, I listened to a programme on BBC Radio 4 about money laundering – the process of hiding the origin of money that’s been obtained from illegal activities by putting it into legal businesses – and the way that the City of London ends […]
