Apr 27, 2017 Coursebooks, Grammar, Lexis, Opinions Complicating the coursebook debate part 2: can’t we just be friends? This week I thought I would take a break from the grammar series (to be continued!) and pick up on the discussion of coursebooks that Hugh started some time ago with the somewhat optimistically titled Complicating the coursebook debate part 1. This was almost two years ago now and we never even managed to move […]
Mar 16, 2017 Opinions, The state of our profession Teaching in troubled times: Trump, tackling tensions and resting easy! We live in troubled times. We’re living through an age in which immigrants are routinely scapegoated and blamed for all of society’s ills and the religious practices of millions of people are regularly conflated with the murderous impulses of a tiny handful, while the blood on our own hands, our occupations and human rights abuses […]
Mar 2, 2017 Grammar, Opinions Grammar nonsense: stative verbs Exceptions – it’s not you, it’s me. A lot of grammar nonsense comes from labels that we use and that we assume are sufficient explanation in themselves to generate their own correct examples. Then, when students attempt to produce examples in accordance with these labels only to find out that they sound ‘strange’ to a […]
Feb 23, 2017 Grammar, Opinions Grammar curiosities 1: reported speech The first post in our series on grammar nonsense got quite a lot of discussion going and it seemed that on the whole there was quite a lot of sympathy with the view that many of the ‘rules’ about reported speech that are commonly taught are what we technically term guff! There were some dissenting […]
Feb 16, 2017 Grammar, Opinions Grammar nonsense 1: reported speech Is there anything that is more bizarrely and unnecessarily taught in ELT than reported speech? There have been many times when my heart has sunk as I’ve faced ‘the reported speech unit’ – both as a teacher and as a writer. I’ve often wanted to disappear into a dark corner and weep! And there have […]
