Feb 10, 2015 Core Principles, Resources 2 Words are difficult to define We recently had an email about the text on one part of our website, where this question was asked – “Should it be language is the building blocks or language is the building block?” It’s a good question to lead into this post. It’d be a bit strange to say building block as not much […]
Feb 4, 2015 Chunk of the day, Chunks Chunk of the day: Where’s the best place to …? This weekend sees the big match in north London between Arsenal and Tottenham. Among discussions about who has the best chance of winning and what the managers’ best teams are, there’s the more serious discussion of Where’s’s the best place to see the game? Our place of choice is The Beaconsfield, a lovely Victorian pub […]
Jan 30, 2015 Chunks, Word of the day Word of the day: pop One of the best things about adopting a more lexical view of language is that you start to appreciate more clearly how words interact with other words, and you are then able to start passing on to students the message that “these words often go together”. It also means you lose many of the worries […]
Jan 28, 2015 Classroom Activities, Opinions Still cutting up cards! Activities for storing and retrieving chunks We’re delighted to feature our very first guest post. At IATEFL Harrogate last year, one of the sessions we enjoyed was by a young teacher called Andrea Borsato, who was working at International House, London at the time. Andrea was partly focusing on a subject close to our hearts – the revising and recycling of […]
Jan 26, 2015 Exploiting Exercises, Resources Exploiting self-study phrasal verb exercises in the classroom I’m very pleased today to be able to respond to the first request we’ve had in from a visitor. Patrick Gallagher has written to ask for ideas on how to tackle what’s essentially self-study material that students would probably do for homework – namely, the excellent English Phrasal Verbs In Use Advanced by Michael McCarthy […]
