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…
Phrase of the day: pots and kettles
Going dutch and other negative traits So last week I was in the Netherlands and I was chatting with a group of teachers when someone asked why we have the phrase ‘’We can go Dutch’ in English. Actually, I personally don’t…
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…
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…
Phrase of the day: hair of the dog
For almost as long as I can remember, I've wanted to see the world. It's been one of my burnings ambitions since I was maybe 15 and 16. I guess that the first time the travel bug bit me was…
Phrase of the day: forewarned is forearmed
I've spent the last few days working with some wonderful Russian teachers in the city of Saratov, which is on the mighty Volga River, about 850 kilometres south-east of Moscow. The day before I was due to fly out last…
Phrase of the day: damn with faint praise
I was chatting to a friend of mine the other day about the school he's recently started working at. I asked him how it was going there and then tried hard to keep a straight face and not burst out…