There are countless places where you can find advice on how to make presentations look nice, appealing, convincing, and so forth. Though these are all valid concerns, my experience with students and colleagues is that they also often simply need help in the practicalities of using their presentation software. Briefly said, how do you use […]
Category: Education
English Idioms 1
I am teaching a course on English vocabulary again at the Université Saint-Louis (Marie Haps). The first part of the course focuses on English Idioms. These are practice exercises for my students but anybody can have a shot at them. The course notes are not made public. Resources and Links Antidode: bilingual corrector, dictionaries, etc. […]
How I Learn Vocabulary
On eating eggs and learning new words “How do you like them eggs? Soft boiled? Omelet? Scrambled? Poached? Sunny Side up? Over easy? Benedict?” To the bemusement (or embarrassment?) of my family, for years I would dread being asked how I wanted my eggs cooked at the Waffle House. Tired of gambling with my eggs, […]
English Idioms 3
This is the third practice page for the English Idioms course I am teaching at the Université Saint-Louis (Marie Haps). These exercises are designed to complement and practice the material learned in Units 19 and following (with some material from units 1–18 for practice purposes) of the course and should be fine for anyone with […]
English Idioms 2
I am currently (Fall 2020) teaching a Bachelor 2 course on English Idioms at the Université Saint-Louis (Marie Haps). These exercises are designed to complement and practice the material learned in Units 11–15 (with a few ones from Units 1–10) of the course and should be fine for anyone with a B1 English level. The […]
Listening to English Online
(This is a revised version of an older post) At some point when you learn English (or any other language), it is important to listen to “real English,” not just to small pieces or excerpts from language textbooks and manuals, even if you do not understand everything. There are many easy ways today to listen […]
How to Improve your English
How do you keep on learning a language during the lockdown? How do you improve your English when you can’t go to classes, conversation tables, private lessons? More generally, how do you get your language skills up by yourself? Though some of this information might be useful for a beginner, the point here is to […]
Two Tips to Learn a Language with YouTube
The use of YouTube to teach or learn a language is pretty much a given today. Yet, speaking with colleagues and students, I realized that not all of them were aware that there are some features available that are really useful for language education. Here are two of them: Subtitles (or closed captions) and the […]
Best Reads of 2018
After a survey of my best readings of 2016 and 2017, time has come for the 2018 edition. Once again, I had meant for this to come out in a timely manner in January. Maybe next year. After a less than lackluster literary 2017, 2018 proved to be a richer crop: more diverse and with […]
Learning a Language? Improve Your Pronunciation with the International Phonetic Alphabet
You’ve done it (or you had no choice). You’ve decided to learn another language! But then, quickly, the frustration builds up. Reading and writing is going along ok, but the speaking … the pronunciation. The bane of many language learners: how to actually speak that language without making a complete fool of yourself. Two quite […]