Pimp your vocabulary

Here's a less serious look at the modern English language, but one that may be useful if you have any contact with British students.

Pimp your vocab link

Link to online quiz

The trouble with interpreting

Every now and again I get asked to interpret - mostly at weddings. Although interésting it can also be tricky. So spare a thought for the poor man who had to simultaneously interpret Col. Gaddafi's UN rant/speech.

Gaddafi interpreter 'collapsed during UN speech'
Muammar Gaddafi's personal translator broke down towards the end of the Libyan leader's meandering 94-minute UN speech and had to be rescued by a UN Arabic speaker.
The Libyan translator matched the "Brother Leader of the Revolution" word-for-word for 90 minutes before collapsing from exhaustion, just after Mr Gaddafi denounced the popular Ottawa Treaty outlawing landmines

Read the rest of the story here....

New Business lessons

Good news for those of you who teach Business English.
As of this month, to accompany each issue of Business Spotlight, there will be monthly ready-made downloadable and photocopiable, complete lesson plans with teaching notes - written by me, based around an original article from the current issue of the magazine.
The lesson plans are available on the Business Spotlight website and the onestopenglish website - see direct links below.
http://www.business-spotlight.de/teachers-zone/activities/group-work/a-new-series-by-onestopenglish

http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?catid=60069&docid=157513
The first complete lesson and the introduction to the series are free for all to download. After that the lessons will be free for Business Spotlight subscribers and Onestopenglish staffroom members.

Do not embrace technology without knowing why and for whom you are doing so.

It seems we constantly hear about how using modern technology is the only way forward and to some extents this is so. But recently I've been wondering who the technology is for. My students do not write blogs, they have only disdain and contempt for people who twitter and they use other social networking sites in a completely different way to how we teachers do.
Now my feelings have been confirmed by a Microsoft researcher called Danah Boyd. You can read her article here
Some thoughts on technophilia
or simply go to her blog http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/

Are things looking up?

Time for some good news.....


Read the rest of the article HERE

Infinite photo of Earth

go to the website via the link - INFINITE PHOTOGRAPH - keep clicking into the photo and see what happens

literal videos

time to have some fun with music, videos and the English language.
Have a look at the literal videos here plus more on youtube.

pronunciation workshop links

Just a quick reminder to those who were at my recent Pronunciation workshop that you can find all the links we talked about (and more) here.

Business English videos

Business Spotlight have launched a new weekly video training session called Business with Bob.
The videos give you tips and examples for improving your communication at work. The first videos look at topics relating to Socializing and the second set of five videos looks at Business Meetings.

nothing to do with teaching ...

... but, Yeah! for (auntie) Verena.
The full articlew can be read on the Argus website here