I regularly have Zoom calls with a friend of mine and an English teacher who is Hungarian. Sometimes she has to answer phone calls and then I have a chance to catch the sound of her native language. Now, I… Read More »A silent period in language learning
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
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
This is to continue on the topic about learning from articles (the algorithm, a discussion task). This is the article in question: From Tamagotchi to Nintendogs: Why People Love Digital Pets The article exemplifies the points I made in my… Read More »Let’s read an article together!
In one of the previous posts I wrote that it’s an excellent idea to follow work with an article with a discussion of it. But what is a discussion? It may be an exchange of opinions. In the case of the… Read More »An example of a follow-up on a text
Now I’m trying to carve out some time for reanimating my French, and I’m using news articles for this. Articles are great because they are relatively short, can be of a vast variety of topics and the language is not… Read More »Learning From Articles: A Simple Algorithm
How well do you know the English for what surrounds you on a daily basis? At home, at work, in the street or in shops? Oftentimes, we learn new vocab through books, videos, online courses or even conversations and then try… Read More »A simple technique to learn the words you really need