Emails of complaint
In one of the writing courses, we’ve been dealing with email of complaint, a skill B2-level writers should be able […]
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When writing is your north, your south, your east, your west
Recently I was asked why I write. For some reason it annoyed me! This is my slightly ranty response explaining […]
Trumpet blowing: classroom creative
Back in 2001, a wonderful website called TeachIt appeared. It pooled resources created by English teachers for teachers, so we […]
Paper to digital: a year on (2013)
I’ve just got back from shopping for my son’s mountain of school things for the beginning of term. And one of those […]
20 sentence patterns you can’t ignore
I’ve been working and researching sentences almost daily, now, for over a year. Yes I’m a word-nerd, but there you […]
Extraposition and inversion: glam-sounding simple things
Sentence patterns are very predictable in English, and, whether you’re a native-speaker or not, it’s easy to get into a […]
How to move from one sentence to the next, naturally
The key to moving naturally from one sentence to the next — which is, of course, the whole point of […]
There, there: a no-brainer for emphasis in a sentence
This approach to adding emphasis or drawing attention to one part of a sentence is rather grandly called ‘existential there’ […]
Make words work
Placing emphasis on the right idea and right word in a sentence is an art. In the UK this isn’t […]
How tiny words can change your writing
One tiny little word can make such a difference to the meaning, the deeper meaning, of a sentence. Take a […]