Our thought for the week (maybe the month) is that we really ought to be teaching English as a genuinely foreign language instead of teaching the English of native speakers to foreigners (ma… Read More

Please note that the author of material on this blog is now posting new material on the DigitalCounterRevolution.co.uk blog, where most of the posts have to do with things like EdTech, the s… Read More

We have been preparing students for the November ECPE speaking test and with greater experience we have now put up some newer advice to help students avoid some of the pitfalls of this overl… Read More

Goethe's book "The Sorrows of Young Werther" is a great read for solitary types who like to ascend rocky peaks and look down through the wind-swept cloud at the grey urban sprawl and its ant… Read More

Some of Plato's ideas were - to be frank - a touch crazy, but he did say some things about education that are worth remembering.One concerns the stories that kids ought to grow up with. In B… Read More

We have been busy preparing students for their exams and while doing so we have been struck by some rather dubious exam questions. One of the most dubious is the following, which appeared in… Read More

Surely no one would object to the idea that it would be good to squeeze a few activities into the curriculum to promote peace. But once we see that our students are basically good and peacef… Read More

We love poetry. Does that make us seem as if we have been snarled on some nasty twig near the bank while the great river of modernity rushes by? We don't care.And is there not a place for po… Read More

In the shadows of the more immediately useful exam essay writing tutorial at Fullspate is an interesting piece reminding us what a real essay looks like. Some of us who are obliged to get st… Read More

A question for English teachers: To what extent do you agree with the following opinion expressed by Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592):"To hear men talk of metonomies, metaphors, and allegorie… Read More

Virginia Woolf's essay "A Room of One's Own" is a wonderful reflection on the position of women and the reasons why so few had managed to become writers of fiction. It is a beautiful piece… Read More

Looking for materials can take time. It takes a lot less time if you get the students to do it. And it can be fun for them to look for photos that they want to show to others and talk about… Read More

The fullspate.net site is gathering together a fairly extensive list of practice test materials and other resources to help students prepare for the Michigan ECPE test of English Read More

Here's Dr. Gary buck's announcement of the new Michigan English Test, copied from the lsa.unich.edu website:On behalf of the Testing and Certification Division of the University of Michigan… Read More

We are trying to encourage our students to start blogging and we would really like to point them to some other EFL students with blogs that really kick your ass, as they (almost) say over in… Read More

It is only here in Greece that we native speakers experience what might be called English bashing? Perhaps the Greeks are unusual. They certainly think they are unusual - a sort of chosen p… Read More

Teachers who like to deal with topical issues in class won't want to skip over the current meltdown. The problem is that so much of what has been happening in the world of finance is so arca… Read More

A lot has already been said about the so-called washback effect (or backwash, as some would have it), which could equally well have been called the dog-wagging effect, where the tail (the ex… Read More

We were looking for a way to do online multiple choice questions so that they would get marked automatically and we came across a great little javascript programme made by James Crooke at ht… Read More

At last the guys at Fullspate have put together a full, exam-level GCVR test for the Michigan ECPE. All the questions are marked automatically on line to give immediate feedback. It follows… Read More

And why not learn English from the Pussycat Dolls? Heck, why not?Some lyrics - even bad ones by the Pussycat Dolls - can provide a useful focus for discussion, but more importantly they can… Read More

The news is that Fullspate now has more materials for students who are preparing for the Michigan ECPE.For instance, there is an online Michigan ECPE grammar test, which is at the same level… Read More

Fullspate now has its exam-level ECPE mock vocabulary test up and running. This should help candidates gauge whether or not they are up to scratch Read More

There is now an interactive test for ECPE grammar on the Fullspate.net website. It is as hard as the grammar questions in the actual ECPE exam, it is in the usual multiple choice format and… Read More

Students deserve a break - they deserve a holiday. But wouldn't it be a good idea for the holiday to also be a fun way to really boost their fluency in English? How about a trip to an Englis… Read More