goodopenenglish

  Often as trainers we are told to keep up-to-date with the company website. It certainly has benefits, but is this just a Director of Studies ploy or trainer fail-safe. Yesterday I was searching for input on the theme “Encouraging innovation and independent thinking”. So naturally after scouring resources, and calling out to colleagues on [...]

Ya losing ya Mojo arent ya? You are so different to speak to? But …. what do you mean,…. erm my accent? No your vocabulary, you use unusual words not like the other guys. This compliment and exchange at a recent friends birthday party made me mull over yet again the point of lingo usage [...]

Let me return to the flummoxedness of my first few weeks teaching in 2013. Apologies to those of you who are not so techy minded, but it may interest you all the same. Normally if we are to believe linguistic theory, as communicators we accommodate our partners in order to aid comprehension. Unless we are [...]

The slide into 2013 in general has been good, thanks for asking . But not even a fully week in, and already 3 classic examples of me being slightly flummoxed by my students have already occurred.  1) Lets start with one observation that is kinda connected to my own pet peeves. Falling standards of journalism, [...]

Recently during my local Aldi weekly shop I have noticed a lot of mislabelling going on. Wrong prices, wrong product or product is not what it says on the wobbler. This I think is due to human resources and some restructuring in the store layout. My milk and juice is just not where it used [...]

Has been awhile since I posted someat on this topic. So here goes with some comparisons between British and German traditions. What you do in blighty and what I do now.  Create 5  One thing you can guarantee like the wrong snow stopping trains running in winter is what will be on the goggle box. On the [...]

  A lot of public hols and festive seasons send peeps loppy it seems. Three things so far witnessed, and must be coz of Christmas; (1) I travel to Halle for work every 2 weeks. Which is a great opportunity to read. At the moment enjoying Santa Barbara by T.C. Boyle. But that is by [...]

One thing that I really enjoy is the chance to do a lesson from scratch. Something that I do not think I had the confidence to do until I had gained 3 years experience in teaching. What do you do when students have not done their homework and you have based a chunk of your plan on [...]

Wow, I hear ya holla “theLingoGuy, two blogs so quickly after one another”. I must doff my cap to the injection that the BESIG conference in Stuttgart gave me for lessons and general motivation to change up the mix. Before I look into the lessons where I used James Schofield ideas (Brainpooling) again.  Let me [...]

      picture courtesy of the OXID guy; one of my first IT students. Started the ball rolling for this IT English specialist. Germans and IT Geeks have no sense of humour, so they say. One of the reasons  I like my job is the surprises. Luv students who are open to new teaching [...]