Graded readers are believed to be extremely useful for learners of English. Many research reports show that learners improve substantially if they read a lot of simplified books. In this post, I would like to share a Graded Reader Comic. It is a Sherlock Holmes story called The Final Curtain. The comic is just…
"He must be joking!" I thought. I was shocked but I kept quiet. My friend Jane didn´t. "Why the hell should I throw all my work away?" she asked. We went silent and expected that Jane will be punished. But the teacher was unfazed. "Yes, throw the pictures into the rubbish bin. They are…
Vocabulary is much more important than grammar. If you know the meaning of the words you can understand a text even without knowing the grammar. If you listen to a recording and you know the vocabulary, you will understand the meaning of the message. If you watch a video and understand the words, you…
Mobile phones are bad! Students spend hours on mobile apps and they do not learn! What can we do about it? I tried to do something about it. I prepared a responsive website for my students to learn on their mobiles and ... they didn´t come. But then I created my first android app…
Giving directions in English is one of the most useful functions there is. Everyone understands that this is the function they are likely to use on the street, literally, and therefore the motivation is usually quite easy. To be able to give directions you need to learn a set of phrases which you later…
The school year is starting and the summer holiday is over. Students are returning to their classrooms and we have to teach them. And I think that many of us would like to teach better than last year. So let's start with a great speaking activity about the summer holiday. ADVERT: [showmyads] The original…
Yesterday English Through Music published an awesome song called "How are you?". As the song is easy to remember and sing, I contacted Jules and asked him for a permission to write a post around the song. He kindly agreed and here you can see the result. ADVERT: [showmyads] This post is mainly for…
Recently, in the post called Questions with Like, I asked you to choose the activity you would like me to write about. Most of you voted for a Speaking activity, so I prepared a set of speaking activities to practice the prepositions of place. I have already created a post on prepositions, so this…
In this post I would like to teach you how to use the words DESPITE, IN SPITE OF, ALTHOUGH, EVEN THOUGH, BECAUSE OF and BECAUSE correctly. I will explain the meaning of the words and the grammar. To help you with this there are two games, a mind map, a video explanation and a…
When students hear the phrase indirect questions, they get scared. But actually this is one of the easiest grammar points in English. The only thing you have to watch out for is that if a sentence starts with a certain phrase (Do you know or Could you tell me etc.) you have to use…