Dec 3, 2017 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: all the trimmings If there’s one thing I’ve learned over twenty years of teaching foreign students here in the UK it’s that English food is misunderstood and much-maligned. The usual comments I’ve heard revolve around the idea that there’s no such thing as English food; it simply doesn’t exist! Students point to the fact that so few restaurants […]
Nov 29, 2017 Chunks, Intermediate word of the day Intermediate word of the day: restore When you restore something, you make it good again or make it exist again after a time when it was bad, damaged or not in use. So you can restore an old building or an old machine. You can restore public confidence, or restore calm or peace or restore order. Doctors might also restore someone’s […]
Nov 26, 2017 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: smash it Every now and then, a phrase comes along that makes you feel really old. I’m not talking about things like the use of the adjective bare, which you hear teenagers and young adults using all the time on the streets of London. In case you’re wondering, by the way, in sentences like I was bare […]
Nov 24, 2017 Chunks, Intermediate word of the day Intermediate word of the day: anniversary An anniversary is a date when you celebrate something good that happened on the same date in a previous year – or when you mark something more serious or sad. The most obvious kind of anniversary is a wedding anniversary, and many wedding anniversaries have particular names, so if you’ve been married for twenty-five years, […]
Nov 19, 2017 Chunks, Word of the day Word of the day: bling When I was in the last two years of secondary school, I did History A-level, and spent quite a lot of time reading about the English Civil War, the execution of King Charles the First, the eleven-year Interregnum – the period of time when the country had no king or queen, and was instead ruled […]
