goodopenenglish

Running away from it all is not always the best solution. This is what I have done in my life till my mid 30s, with middling success. In 2011 I had a very difficult and challenging year; with my family, job, personal life and health. As the old adage goes a change is as good [...]

Inspired by Anne Hodgson (the Island Weekly) and Brad Patterson (a journee in language). Two pics to compare and contrast. Please have a go, and post your comments below.

A coin of phrase or Stewism if you like. But there is no other way to refer to this phenomenon. Recently my creativity has been fed with a collaborative project through Leipzig Writers, where by I get to express myself through writing and performance. This was a neglected part of my life since 1999, at [...]

Recently I have been using adverts in lessons to show the difference in language useage to normal everyday speech or Business English. How to approach this: Tasks. 1) What is the tone of the piece – ask the students to identify the tone and if it suits the target audience. Give examples of tonal language [...]

An engaged student is like a fully working Merc, hugging the (learning) curves and running smoothly. After a year or so using wikispaces I thought I would give some tips as to what are my own experienced pitfalls, and successes. This blog is all about students, who in my eyes come first. Later I will [...]

No I am not talking about my fringe madness. Last night I had the pleasure to witness different voices reading their work as part of the Embassy of Love at the great local venue the English Room. The mix was eclectic from content, style and dialect. We had funny and sexy courtesy of Maeshelle, a [...]

A quote by James Earl Jones has resonated with me for years. “One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can’t utter.” Since working with a guy with MS who could not speak I have been struggling with my own inability to speak the words I write. At [...]

Sometimes I may lament the lack of drive or learning techniques of some of my students. Those who do the bare minimum to get by, know how to use the ingrained “Hochschule” education system and really do not appreciate the learning curve. In both the academic and the business world you may come across individuals [...]

As a tangental follow up to my post Do you speak the lingo? another kinda related topic. It seems from the perspective of German and British politics to be the case. Within the space of a few months we have heard the heads of Government proclaiming this failure. Firstly Angela Merkel expressed that there had been [...]

“Writer” I’m a “writer”. In other words (remember those?), I used to write. Undergrad major. Worked on some publications. Got a few awards. Then life got between us, didn’t it forgotten scribe? An unplanned pregnancy. A dozen moves. Half as many jobs. Another few degrees – the kind you mindlessly munch on, like bar pretzels. [...]