I have mixed feeling about the month. On the one hand I did a lot of things, on the other I was ill again, like I hadn’t been for a long time (I guess I caught flu after a virus),… Read More »December’22 – Language Advent, Articles and a Masterclass
Let’s start with discourse. Discourse is a unit/ segment of spoken or written language that goes above or below a sentence and refers to a certain social context. So, it may be a piece of writing, or a story, or just… Read More »Discourse markers
(A quick search in my books hasn’t yielded a lot of theory on this topic, so I’ll write from experience and based on what I found online. If you have something to add, please leave a comment.) The first part… Read More »Sentence frames and social formulae
Idiomatic language… isn’t it the most fascinating part of the English lexis? Something that gives colour, taste and texture to one’s speech or writing? (not sure I can use “texture”, though, but let it be) =) So let’s dive into it… Read More »How to notice lexical chunks: idioms, catchphrases, sayings and phrasal verbs
When you’re reading a text or listening to something/ someone, do you pay attention to words or phrases? And what about your vocab notebooks, do they contain words or phrases? Not once have I asked my students to highlight some interesting/ useful… Read More »How to notice lexical chunks: collocations
Here I want to share with you a type of activity that makes you repeat things but in quite an entertaining way =) The activity may be called … bubbles/ shapes/ circles, e.g. Preposition bubbles or Perfect circles. The idea is… Read More »Shapes of You – Guessing Games to Practise Grammar or Lexical Chunks
As I’m taking part in #languageadvent2022 (24 gifts for your language till 24th of December) on VK, I come across tons of interesting resources. So far the most precious, I think, has been a series of channels for different languages called Easy…… Read More »How to learn to understand native speech?
Do you use proverbs and sayings a lot in your mother tongue? Which ones are your favourite? And have you noticed what kind of people are really keen on interspersing their speech with proverbs? I know that my mum and grandmas… Read More »Learning proverbs
Several years ago, maybe five or more, I was strictly against using Translators. I had a couple of good reasons for that: 1) they made people lazy, 2) they gave bad translations. At university I was taught to use a… Read More »Should you use Translators in your language learning?
November is one of the hardest months of the year for me (together with March). It’s dark. The weather is usually gloomy. The days are getting shorter. And there are viruses going around… This November wasn’t very different except for… Read More »November’22 – Lots of Writing, Some Marketing and Maths