In my last evening class, one of my students came in looking slightly confused. "I've got a question about something my English housemate said", he told me. "OK. Let's hear it, then". "Well, I know she went to see this…
Word of the day: caff
Last Monday, I was invited to the ELTONs - the British Council awards ceremony celebrating innovation in English Language Teaching. I had a bit of a late night and then had to get up early as I had a meeting…
Word of the day: cagey
For the last week, I’ve been running a teacher development course in Krasnoyarsk with some wonderful local teachers. It was weird being in Russia as World Cup fever grips the nation, but away from the cities where the matches are…
Word of the day: OFSTED
Following on from our recent post about heavy workloads, where we revealed how much UK teachers work, today we're looking at OFSTED. OFSTED in an organisation that inspects schools in England and checks that they're doing a good job. OFSTED…
Word of the day: craze
A craze is something that becomes incredibly popular, but usually only for a short period of time. Over the last few days, one particular craze has been sweeping the nation – sparking mass hysteria as it has done so. Police…
Word of the day: catch on
Like any major city around the world, London is a busy, noisy place. People are often rushing from one place to the next and, increasingly, we are all bombarded by sound: there's the roar of traffic, the ringing of phones,…
Word of the day: provincial
This morning, I took my kids down to Gökyüzü, one of the many amazing restaurants near where we live, for a Turkish breakfast. As you may have seen from the featured photo, the portions there are so huge that the…
Word of the day: craic
Over the last few days, I've actually been to Dublin, the capital of Ireland, twice! Last Friday, I also spent a few hours in Galway, on the wild west coast of Ireland, where the winds come whipping in from the…
Word of the day: less
The other day, just as I was slowly waking up and making my first cup of coffee, I heard a discussion on the radio about the whether or not you can say “less than one in five people”. It seemed…
Word of the day: social mobility
Social mobility is the idea that over their lifetimes or across generations, people from lower-class backgrounds can move to a higher social class. An example of this would be my father, who grew up in relative poverty in Liverpool before…