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 […]
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 25, 2015 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: What’s not to like? We’ve often said that what strikes us most about the many incredibly competent non-natives we meet in our field is very rarely their grammatical accuracy! Rather than noticing the correct use of a mixed conditional or the stunning use of articles, instead what we tend to be aware of is the sheer range of expressions […]
Jan 23, 2015 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: nothing if not Listening to a Radio 4 review programme the other day, I was struck by the description of quirky Icelandic singer Björk‘s new LP – Vulnicura – as “nothing if not honest”. The chunk is a subtle and interesting way of saying that something has one particular quality that is more noticeable or important than any […]
