Mar 5, 2015 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: It’s alright for some! This week, a friend of mine in France sent me a message via Facebook asking if I’d got a copy of a new box set that collects together all the LPs by The Pretty Things, one of my very favourite bands of all time. I replied that I’d managed to grab a free one from […]
Feb 27, 2015 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: would’ve thought Last Wednesday evening, I took a train from Preston back home to London. As we were nearing Euston station, I left my seat and went to wait near the door. A mother and her teenage daughter were already there, and the girl was messing about, pretending to open the door – in order to get […]
Feb 23, 2015 Chunk of the day, Chunks Chunk of the day: the bottom line (revisited) As with single words, we should look for opportunities to revise or recycle chunks. When we do so, it’s good to move beyond simply matching the word or chunk to the same meaning we gave last time. We can explore new collocations and contexts, which may drift into related, but ‘new’ meanings . A great example is […]
Feb 20, 2015 Chunk of the day, Chunks Chunk of the day: the bottom line In class yesterday, we looked at some vocabulary for describing different roles and duties people have at work. Students then went on to discuss which they had themselves, how good they felt they were at them – and which other ones they might be good / bad at. In the midst of this conversation, one […]
Feb 12, 2015 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: It’s not as though I had two conversations last night which featured this chunk. The first one was with a friend who was moaning about a culture clash in the Paris office he often visits. Leaving his house at 5.30 in the morning to arrive in Paris at 10, he often finds the office still half empty. Then when […]