“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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could’ve-should’ve-would’ve.pdf
Here is the slideshow that I have referred to in the current issue of English Teaching Professional. It consists of 12 book cover images taken from Amazon.co.uk, each of which contains one of the following notoriously problematic structures:
Could + have + past participle
Should + have + past participle
Would + have + past participle
Ideas for […]

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