Dec 6, 2023 Chunks, Word of the day Word of the day: Harry Pottered out I spent last Friday and Saturday in Bologna, Italy, where I was talking at an excellent conference for English-language teachers. In one of the talks that I saw, a teacher was describing a one-week summer school course for kids that she’d helped organise. The week had been based around the Harry Potter books, so kids had made their own costumes, acted […]
May 3, 2022 Chunks, Word of the day Word of the day: big cheese At a party last week I was introduced to a foreign businessman who was visiting London. We got talking and started chatting about what we both did. I told him about my work and when I asked what he did, he responded – in excellent English – by saying: “I guess you could say I’m a big cheese in […]
Jun 15, 2021 Chunks, Word of the day Word of the day: whitewash By the 18th of June 1984 – thirty-seven years ago today – miners in England had been on strike for three months. In what has been called “the most bitter industrial dispute in British history”, the National Union of Mineworkers was attempting to bring the coal industry to a standstill in protest against planned closures […]
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 […]
Oct 30, 2020 Chunks, Word of the day Word of the day: cancel culture Over recent years, we’ve seen the push for greater equality come in many shapes and forms – there have been the calls from Black Lives Matter protesters for an end to police brutality and racially-motivated violence against black people, the #MeToo movement has been campaigning against sexual abuse and harassment and has outed the worst […]
