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The question is not that ridiculous. I have seen many photos, blogs, wikis and videos featuring student names and photos, and I can’t help thinking that this should not be allowed. Many students are minors and their parents should give their permission when it comes to their children being made to post any private details on the Internet. The most horrendous thing is when a teacher shoots a...
Legalese is not a real language. Yet it is a human language in a way. It is the way legal professionals word their ideas in contracts and agreements, and that means it can be difficult to comprehend unless you are a lawyer. Whenever you find yourself reading a legal document that is full of long multisyllable words and convoluted sentences and feeling that you should make a conscious effort to...
A phrasal verb is a verb usually followed by a preposition. The difference between an ordinary verb followed by a preposition (eg look at a word) and a phrasal verb (eg look up a word) is that the meaning of the former can be easily understood once you know the meaning of the base verb (in our case it is the meaning of the verb look), whereas the meaning of a phrasal verb oftentimes has nothing...
An idiom is defined as a word sequence, i.e. a phrase whose meaning cannot easily be worked out from its individual words or, in other words, is not a 100% literal. The degree of transparency of an idiom can range from almost literal, i.e. easily understood, to the totally obscure, i.e. non-literal and impossible to understand until you look it up in a dictionary or someone explains its meaning...
Collocations (5) with WORK (5) Grammar (90) Elementary Word Order Quizzes (5) Elementary to Intermediate Word Order Quizzes: Question Forms (50) Quizzes on Active & Passive Tenses (28) Irregular Plural Nouns. Crossword Puzzles (2) Spelling Quizzes. Verb Endings -(e)s, -ed & -ing (5) Exam Preparation (FCE, CAE, CPE) (10) Word Formation (WF) Quizzes (10) Vocabulary & Lexicogrammar (65)...
‘ never thought I would be able to write 35 pages about writing:=) The more I think about the reasons why people make mistakes when they write in a foreign language, the more convinced I get that it is lexis rather than grammar that does the trick. More than that, it is not about learning lexical items in isolation, you have to learn multi-word chunks, which could either be sequences of...
What’s the magic formula I wonder? You are given a mixed-ability class of ca 20 students, whose average level is pre-intermediate, and an upper-intermediate level multi-page coursebook to cover in ca. 50 90-minute lectures. How on earth is it possible to cover everything and to ensure that all the students have achieved the desired level of proficiency by the end of the course? How to...
I wonder whether it is really that necessary to be able to read and describe graphs in a foreign language. I have been teaching this skill for several years now, always going into minute detail, and can say that very few people actually need it in their jobs. They usually spend a few weeks learning all the possible collocations with synonyms of increase and decrease and the degrees of comparison...
I am gripped by the book I am reading now – it is unbelievable how much more advanced DL & VLE use is in some countries. They have been doing what I am just considering trying since the ’90s! The more I learn about TESOL & CMI, the more I tend to believe in the managerial nature of both. More than that, there is a clear need for some MBO (management by objectives), ie you...
I am teaching elementaries this year – this is very unlike me for I find this level somewhat tedious to teach. To make matters worse, instead of two nationalities, I’ve got four – it is a real challenge, for I do understand what sort of problems Russians and Estonians might encounter in terms vocabulary, grammar or pronunciation, but I am at a loss when it comes to...
