Tag: teach English

Word of the day: Harry Pottered out

Written by Hugh Dellar on December 6, 2023. Posted in Chunks, Word of the day. No Comments on Word of the day: Harry Pottered out

I spent last Friday and Saturday in Bologna, Italy, where I was talking at an excellent conference for English-language teachers. In one of the talks that I saw, a teacher was describing a one-week summer school course for kids that she’d helped organise. The week had been based around the Harry Potter books, so kids had made their own costumes, acted out various scenes and so on. “By the end of the five days“, she said, “I was totally Harry Pottered out!” In other words, she’d had enough of Harry...

From a trickle to a flood: water metaphors and their emotional pull

Written by Hugh Dellar on December 5, 2023. Posted in Chunk of the day, Chunks. No Comments on From a trickle to a flood: water metaphors and their emotional pull

One of the most depressing things about British politics right now – and trust me, there are plenty of things to get depressed about – is the fact that there aren’t really any mainstream politicians who’re willing to be honest about the fact that the country needs immigrants . . . and that without significant amounts of immigration, the economy in general and the NHS and the care sector in particular would be in grave danger of collapsing. Instead what we get is the worst possible people exploiting the suffering of those fleeing conflict or hardship abroad and demonising the...

One is most bemused: hedging and the strange function of ‘one’

Written by Hugh Dellar on November 10, 2023. Posted in Lexis, Opinions. 2 Comments on One is most bemused: hedging and the strange function of ‘one’

The original idea for this blog post came one afternoon when my wife saw my response to an email we’d both received from the school our son goes to. His new form tutor had written to us saying how well he was settling in and suggesting that he was a credit to us and that he must’ve had a great upbringing. My response to this slightly over-the-top praise? ‘Many thanks for this. Very pleased to hear he’s finding his feet OK. Not sure we can take that much credit for the way he’s turned out, to be honest, but one does what one can.’It was this last turn of...

Everyday English drawn from Greek mythology

Written by Hugh Dellar on October 13, 2023. Posted in Chunks, Phrase of the day. 4 Comments on Everyday English drawn from Greek mythology

A while back, I wrote a blog post about words and expressions that come from literature, but have passed into everyday use. Today, inspired by a recent conversation with my daughter, who’s currently obsessed with Greek mythology, I wanted to dig a bit deeper into the way the ideas from old myths and stories become embedded in the language and understood even by those unfamiliar with their origins.One morning, I was having breakfast with my kids and the news was on the radio. My daughter heard the newsreader claim that ‘the NHS (the National Health Service) will be the...

Translation in language classes: tackling the taboo

Written by Hugh Dellar on December 23, 2018. Posted in Classroom Activities, Grammar, Lexis, Opinions, Revision, Teaching lexically, The state of our profession. 8 Comments on Translation in language classes: tackling the taboo

Translation is a fantastic tool for all language teachers to use in their classes. That might be a surprising statement from a native speaker teacher working in a multi-lingual teaching context in the UK. and to be honest it’s been a long and winding road that brought me to that view. Let me take you on that journey and show you some ways translation can help, even when you don’t share your students’ L1 – i.e. their own language.The absence of translation in trainingBack in 1993, when I did my four-week CELTA course, there was certainly no mention of translation,...