Earlier in the year we reported on how Cambridge city council in the UK had decided not to use apostrophes in street signs and how examiners for Cambridge Assessment (the ones who do all the TEFL exams) had supported this idea. It was, of course, ridiculous of them to...
An English teacher in Florida has been suspended after giving their 8th grade class (13-15 year olds) explicit lyrics to analyze. The students were having problems understanding concepts such as puns, similes, and metaphors so rather than continue using more...
TEFL/TESOL in the Balkans The Balkans is a generic term for an area in south east Europe with a rapidly growing demand for English teachers. The reason is historical. Many of the states here were occupied for many centuries and it's only in the past 20 years or so...
This page is all about the people who work at ICAL. To get in touch with anyone here, please see our contact page. ICAL Staff Jenny Scott - Jenny has worked for ICAL for the past few years and deals mainly with our online presence. She handles our social media and...
Like other cities in the UK, Cambridge City Council are not going to bother with apostrophes in street names anymore. In the future, then, you might well see "Brookes Drive" and "Paxmans Close" instead of the grammatically correct, "Brooke's Drive" and "Paxman's...
"India may dream in Hindi, sleep in Hindi, but it aspires to read in English." So says Aditi Maheshwari, Director Vani Publications. And this leads to the Indian Publishing industry (currently worth about $1.6 billion) looking to publish more titles in English. At...
Who knows where English classes can lead? For Sweden's Margaretha Sigfridsson it has led to the Olympics. Her English teacher at school was passionate about curling and so he organized a one off English class which took place on the ice rink. The students were so...
Please... whatever else you do... spell GRAMMAR with an A at the end and not an E. GRAMM A R - yes GRAMM E R - no According to Google, a search for 'grammer' brings up over 4 million hits. However, things seem to be getting better. Looking at Google n-grams we can see...
"US students who speak a language other than English at home and are still learning English have received scant support from the federal Department of Education under Secretary Arne Duncan." So says a report published by the University of Colorado a few days ago. The...
Did you know that even words have a life span? This ranges from 1,000 years to 20,000 years. A word like "throw" is expected to have a lifespan of about 1,000 years, while words like "I" and "who" are likely to reach the 20,000 year mark. Until recently the life span...
