Apr 9, 2017 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: do time I was chatting to a Spanish friend of mine the other day and she was telling me the sorry story of her ex-husband. Apparently, after they separated, he drifted into a life of petty crime and started dealing – mostly just grass, and not in large quantities, but enough to attract the attention of the […]
Apr 6, 2017 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: have a good innings In one of my classes recently, we were looking at vocabulary connected to illnesses and there was a sentence about how diseases spread. I mentioned that they can spread around the world – from person to person – but also within the body. So, for instance, certain kinds of cancer often spread quite quickly. A […]
Apr 2, 2017 Chunks, Word of the day Word of the day: palaver During my trip to Norilsk last week, I managed to squeeze in a day trip to Dudinka, a small port town situated on the mighty Yenisei River that’s mainly used to ship out the nickel which is found in such abundance in the area. We had a brief guided tour of the town and then […]
Mar 30, 2017 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: pots and kettles Going dutch and other negative traits So last week I was in the Netherlands and I was chatting with a group of teachers when someone asked why we have the phrase ‘’We can go Dutch’ in English. Actually, I personally don’t use this phrase very much myself, preferring to say instead ‘Shall we just split the […]
Mar 29, 2017 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: above and beyond the call of duty One of the delights of teaching foreign students in my home city of London is that I get to see the place through their eyes. My learners notice things about life here that I take for granted, things that I’m too close to to be able to see properly. For instance, they’ll ask why we […]
