Visiting schools in London. Comenius Project "Europe on Stage"  Nice moments with my colleagues. February 2014. 

I think a teacher must always be inspiring and motivating. 

Integrating quotes, proverbs and aphorisms in your English lessons will improve your students´ vocabulary, spelling and, what is more important, they will take something home with them for personal reflection. 

You can hang motivational posters on the walls, write a different quote on the blackboard every day, choose the quote of the week, discuss it, match the two halves of a quote, etc.

Remember, a good teacher teaches, a great teacher inspires.

One step beyond phrasal verbs. Hope you find it useful.

(Level: intermediate to advanced). 

For those of you who are English teachers, playing Bingo , matching words with their opposite,  can be an easy and funny way to improve your students´ vocabulary. You can also do this when teaching synonyms.

Oh, my God! English Language R.I.P? OK, I´ll go to the funeral...but first...let me take a #selfie.

"Selfie" (a photograph that one has taken of oneself with a smartphone or webcam  and uploaded to a social media website) has been named word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries editors, after the frequency of its usage increased by 17,000% over the past 12  months.

(in the UK) a reduction in the amount of housing benefit paid to a claimant if the property they are renting is judged to have more bedrooms than is necessary for the number of the people in the household, according to criteria set down by the government.

to watch multiple episodes of a television programme in rapid succession, typically by means of DVDs or digital streaming. [ORIGIN 1990s: from BINGE + WATCH, after BINGE-EAT, BINGE-DRINK.]

a digital currency in which transactions can be performed without the need for a central bank. Also, a unit of bitcoin. [ORIGIN early 21st century: from BIT, in the computing sense of "a unit of information" and COIN.]

a small furry mammal found in mountain forests in Colombia and Ecuador, the smallest member of the raccoon family. [ORIGIN 2013: diminutive form of OLINGO, a South American mammal resembling the kinkajou.]

a form of meat produced synthetically from biological tissue. [ORIGIN early 21st century: perhaps from SYNTHETIC and MEAT, influenced by the use of "- -, schm - -" as a disparaging or dismissive exclamation.]

the practice of visiting a shop or shops in order to examine a product before buying it online at a lower price. [ORIGIN early 21st century: from SHOWROOM, "a room used to display goods for sale".]

dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance. [ORIGIN 1990s: probably an alteration of WORK.]

Previous words of the year

2012 Omnishambles
2011 squeezed middle
2010 big society
2009 simples
2008 credit crunch
2007 carbon footprint
2006 bovvered
2005 sudoku
2004 chav

• Which is the longest word in English that has all the letters in alphabetical order? 
• Which is the longest one syllable word in English? 
• Which is the only word in the English language that contains three consecutive sets of double letters?
• Which is the English word that has only one vowel, but this vowel appears five times?

• Almost

• sxraunched

• Bookkeeper

• Invisibility