Mar 9, 2017 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: damn with faint praise I was chatting to a friend of mine the other day about the school he’s recently started working at. I asked him how it was going there and then tried hard to keep a straight face and not burst out laughing as his answer became less and less enthusiastic with every single sentence he added […]
Mar 7, 2017 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: anything but I was flicking through the in-flight magazine on the plane home from Spain last Sunday evening and came across an article about Coco Chanel. Now, I’m certainly no expert on the life and times of the French fashion designer and businesswoman, and basically only knew what most of you probably do: she was French, she […]
Mar 6, 2017 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: on the town I spent last weekend in Elche in Spain. I flew out to Alicante from London Stanstead on Friday morning at 6.30am and, as is often the case, my flight was depressingly full of people going away for a weekend on the town. There were two stag parties – groups of guys going away to celebrate […]
Mar 6, 2017 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: even if I do say so myself I’ve been lucky enough to have spent this weekend in the beautiful city of Elche on the south-east coast of Spain. The town was the venue for this year’s Spain TESOL conference, an always-excellent gathering of English language teachers, and it’s hard to imagine a more perfect location for such things. Home to a UNESCO-protected […]
Mar 2, 2017 Grammar, Opinions Grammar nonsense: stative verbs Exceptions – it’s not you, it’s me.A lot of grammar nonsense comes from labels that we use and that we assume are sufficient explanation in themselves to generate their own correct examples. Then, when students attempt to produce examples in accordance with these labels only to find out that they sound ‘strange’ to a teacher’, […]
