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I saw some good examples of noun-noun compounds recently in the London Underground on these advertisements for a fitness club:

According to Wikipedia, “Bingo wings is a slang term used to describe the build-up of fat and/or extra skin that hangs from the underside of the upper arms. It occurs most frequently in elderly ladies and […]

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“We are currently witnessing the worst credit crunch the world has ever seen since the term was invented last year.”
I heard someone saying that on the radio a couple of weeks ago and it made me laugh. It also made we wonder when the term really did come into existence.
I can’t find anything online about […]

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I enjoyed presenting at The Language Show in London this weekend. I would like to say thank you to everyone that came along. As promised, I am uploading my article on Learner-friendly corpora here:
learner-friendly-corpora.pdf

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“Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: Could have, would have, and should have.” (Louis E. Boone)
I hope no one minds that I have made a gentle alteration to the above quotation: It orinally read, ‘Could have, might have, and should […]

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Like many teachers, I love expressions and sayings in the classroom. What I like about an idiom such as “The grass is always greener on the other side” is that it offers us such good value for money. Some possibilities:

Find out if students have an equivalent saying in their language
Ask […]

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Remind and remember book covers

I wrote a posting a few weeks ago to show how Microsoft Paint can be used to cover up parts of images (see posting here).
I have been using the technique recently to hide words and phrases in images obtained from Amazon. For a group of students who wanted to know the […]

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