Phrase of the day: anything but

I was flicking through the in-flight magazine on the plane home from Spain last Sunday evening and came across an article about Coco Chanel. Now, I'm certainly no expert on the life and times of the French fashion designer and…

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Phrase of the day: on the town

As you may have read in yesterday's post, I spent the weekend in Elche in Spain. I flew out to Alicante from London Stanstead on Friday morning at 6.30am and, as is often the case, my flight was depressingly full…

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Phrase of the day: even if I do say so myself

I've been lucky enough to have spent this weekend in the beautiful city of Elche on the south-east coast of Spain. The town was the venue for this year's Spain TESOL conference, an always-excellent gathering of English language teachers, and…

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Phrase of the day: make a (right) meal of

Some people have sensible hobbies that help them relax in whatever time off work they manage to get. Maybe they go fishing or do yoga or paint. Me? I watch football . . . and in particular my local team…

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Phrase of the day: in a home

The initial spark for this word of the day came from a discussion we had with a user of our coursebook series, Outcomes, about our (lack of) focus on articles (a, an, the - or nothing) before nouns. My first…

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Phrase of the day: get the hang of

Yesterday morning, I took my four-year-old son trampolining. It was the first time he'd ever been and even though he was very clearly having a whale of a time bouncing around, it was also pretty clear from the rather clueless…

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Phrase of the day: can’t get the staff!

We've had quite a hectic week this week. We're putting the finishing touches to a high school book we've been working on; we've been catching up with our email backlog; and on Monday we were inspected as part of our…

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Phrase of the day: You wait ages for a bus . . .

London has much to to be proud of, but you'd be hard pushed to find anyone willing to praise the punctuality of our public transport. Whatever else it may be, London is certainly not Tokyo. In Tokyo, if a sign…

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Phrase of the day: Not just a pretty face

Not just a pretty face originated following the Second World War with the beginnings of feminism. It was used by women to emphasise to their somewhat slow male colleagues that women were in fact very capable of all kinds of…

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Phrase of the day: in the wake of

About two minutes' walk from my house in north London is a wonderful Turkish supermarket and bakery called Yasar Halim. There's a chance you may have heard of it, actually, as it once featured in a reading text in New…

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