Albert Sidney Hornby (1898-1978) was an English grammarian, lexicographer, and pioneer in various fields of English Language Teaching. He is often known as "the man who made dictionaries" after the phenomenal success of his meisterwerk, the Oxford Advanced Learner's...
Gerard Nolst Trenité (1870-1946), who wrote under the pseudonym of Charivarius, was a Dutch writer, traveler and teacher. In 1922 he wrote The Chaos (also often known by its opening line, Dearest Creature in Creation) which is a poem featuring around 800 of the most...
Homophones are words that sound the same but with very different meanings. The words are usually spelt differently or, if they are spelt the same, come from different roots. For example, the words may be spelt the same, such as rose (as in the flower) and rose (as in...
English for Tourism is a branch of ESP or English for Special Purposes. Whilst sometimes it is about teaching people who will visit an English speaking country, more often it is teaching English to people who will work in the tourist industry, for example: hotel...
Telephone (US name) or Chinese Whispers (as the game is known in the UK) is a simple game which can be used to fill a few minutes as a filler activity at the end of the lesson. Playing the Game Write down a phrase on a piece of paper. Depending on the level of the...
There are many approaches to the study of language: cultural, social, artistic, historical etc. There is also an approach which looks at language and how the brain manages to decode and use it. To explore this idea, take a look at this famous sentence: Colorless green...
There are a number of programs and websites now which allow you to transcribe normal text into the IPA - International Phonetic Alphabet. These usually have options for for both British English and American English. Transcribing Text Essentially you type a text into...
Inflection refers to the way we change the form of a word to show different parts of grammar such as voice, person, number, gender, mood, tense or case. A simple example is when we change I to me depending on where it is used in a sentence. The person remains the...
If you have the right class, using a play in the classroom is a great way to build enthusiasm for English as well as practice English amongst the students. Along with this there's a great feeling of satisfaction for the students in creating and putting on their own...
The Dutch economy is very internationally focused, being based largely on foreign trade. A large number of international and international companies are based in the Netherlands (or Holland as it is sometimes called) and English as well as Dutch is widely used in...
