We welcome back Fitch O'Connell, a longtime teacher of English as a foreign language, working for the British Council in Portugal and other European countries. Here Fitch considers one of the biggest stumbling blocks in the English-language classroom: the dastardly phrasal verb.  Continue reading...

Word lessons are everywhere--even on minivan billboards. The new ad campaign for the Honda Odyssey prominently features the neologism "Vanquility."  Continue reading...

Teachers, your students may know that they are getting a day off for Veterans Day, but they may not know why! Use this worksheet to lead your students through some Visual Thesaurus research to define the words veteran and armistice and to understand how Armistice Day became Veterans Day back in 1954. Click here for the worksheet.  Continue reading...

We recently spoke to British researcher Dan Clayton about the new educational project, "Teaching English Grammar in Schools." The project seeks to enliven the teaching of English by using real examples pulled from a corpus of texts. In part two of our interview, we asked Dan how this corpus-based approach allows both teachers and students to investigate the intricacies of the English language.  Continue reading...

Homographs — words that are spelled the same but have different meanings — are a common source of frustration among ESL and native English speakers alike. What many students do not realize is that sometimes identifying a homograph's part of speech can indicate to readers how that word is pronounced.  Continue reading...

After years of fine-tuning individual state standards for education, the tide has turned. No longer will many administrators and teachers turn to their state standards to determine what to teach and when; they will instead look to the Common Core Standards as the new "gold standard" of standards. As of today, the Common Core State Standards Initiative — brainchild of the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) — has successfully wooed at least thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia.  Continue reading...