Feb 14, 2025 Classroom Activities, Core Principles, Teaching lexically, Uncategorized English language coursebooks are a guide … but what are they showing you? In a recent post on LinkedIn, Katherine Bilsborough asked for opinions from English language teachers who were anti-coursebook explaining why they were against using them. As it turned out, most of the comments weren’t really anti-coursebook at all – maybe because they were from people connected to Kath, who is after all … a coursebook […]
Jan 13, 2025 Exploiting Exercises, Grammar, Opinions, Teaching lexically, Uncategorized The desire paths of language users and learners I was out walking the other day and it being somewhat damp and muddy, I decided to stick to the paved pathway rather than take this more direct ‘path’. But as I did so, I started thinking that the this kind of path, which you see all over the place, could be a kind of […]
Jan 6, 2025 Chunk of the day, Chunks, Lexis Maritime English 1 I guess the vocabulary of every language is shaped by the history and geography of the places it developed in – and English is no exception. The United Kingdom has almost 8000 miles of coastline and a long history as a seafaring nation, so it’s no surprise that many words and phrases that were originally […]
Nov 14, 2024 Classroom Activities, Core Principles, Exploiting Exercises, Pronunciation Dictation and decoding A long time ago I did a Diploma in TEFL and I remember a particular piece of feedback I was given after one of my observed lessons. In this lesson, I’d dictated a series of words to the students. Now, I can’t remember exactly what those words were or why I was dictating them, but […]
Aug 29, 2024 Grammar, Grammar bugbears and curiosities, Uncategorized GRAMMAR NONSENSE & CURIOSITIES: can It may seem a bit strange to include can under the umbrella of grammar nonsense. I’m sure few of you have considered the rules for its usage as wrong or find the way it’s presented particularly weird – and n the whole, I’d agree with you! I include it in our ongoing series of ELT shame and […]
