Jun 3, 2018 Chunks, Word of the day 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 have reported a spate of incidents involving people dressed as ‘killer clowns’! Up and down […]
May 12, 2018 Chunks, Word of the day 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, the constant chatter of the people around us; there are police sirens, bass notes booming […]
May 8, 2018 Opinions, The state of our profession Putting our words to work: rethinking Teacher Talking Time English Language Teaching loves a good acronym. There’s ELT to begin with and then, of course, there’s EFL – English as a Foreign Language – ESL, English as a Second Language and EIL – English as an International Language. There’s OHE – Observe, Hypothesise and Experiment and there’s PPP – Present, Practise, and then Pray! […]
Apr 30, 2018 Chunk of the day, Chunks Chunk of the day: heavy workload If you have a heavy workload, it means you have a lot of work to do and you probably work very long hours. Recently, a report revealed that, on average, teachers in the UK work 40-58 hours a week and a fifth of teachers do more than 60 hours!. Teachers here apparently have the heaviest […]
Apr 26, 2018 Opinions, The state of our profession Putting your principles into practice: lexical teaching in the age of eclecticism Eclectic or just confused? As teachers, we’re often told that we’re now living in a post-method world and that we should all aspire to be principled eclectics, picking and choosing activities and techniques to teach the language. On one level, an awareness of the wide range of general approaches and specific techniques available to us […]