May 28, 2021 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: How the other half lives May has been a truly miserable month with the rain bucketing down day after day, the wind howling like it was the middle of March and temperatures more akin to November than the onset of summer. When will it all end? I had been hoping that one silver lining of cancelling our 2021 summer school […]
May 24, 2021 Chunks, Word of the day Word of the day: Blimey! I have to begin with a bit of a confession: I’m quite a nosy person! Sometimes I can probably be a bit too interested in what other people are doing and I always want to find out more about them! Of course, in some ways, this is quite a useful quality for a teacher to […]
Mar 29, 2021 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: What’s the damage? Last month, I had to take my car in to the garage to get the annual MOT done. An MOT is basically a check you have to have done every year to ensure your car is still roadworthy – it’s safe enough to be on the roads. I always get mine done in the same […]
Mar 1, 2021 Chunk of the day, Chunks Chunk of the day: Needs must After class yesterday, I popped out to grab a bite to eat from one of the little cafés near where I live. As I was walking back, I bumped into an old friend of mine who I hadn’t seen for ages. We got talking and she told me that after ten years here in London […]
Mar 1, 2021 Classroom Activities, Coursebooks, Opinions, Pronunciation, Twenty things in twenty years Twenty things in twenty years part ten: the main point of focusing on pronunciation in class isn’t to improve pronunciation! Pronunciation is quite possibly the most neglected area of language teaching that there is. In many of the classes I’ve observed over the years, I’ve seen little or no attempt to work on pronunciation and where it IS focused on, it’s often instinctive attempts at correcting mispronounced discrete phonemes of the kind we’re all so […]
