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’, […]
Mar 1, 2017 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: make a (right) meal of Some people have sensible hobbies that help them relax in whatever time off work they manage to get. Maybe they go fishing or do yoga or paint. Me? I watch football . . . and in particular my local team here in north London, Arsenal. As any football fan will tell you, for every high […]
Feb 28, 2017 Chunks, Word of the day Word of the day: baby boomers Over 400,000 British people people died during the Second World War, the vast majority of them men. Now, while this pales into insignificance when compared to the tens of millions who died in the Soviet Union, it still led to a serious lack of manpower in the immediate aftermath of the war. This had several […]
