Academic Listening

Students are often asking about lectures in English and it’s extraordinary what is available for free on the Internet. Regular readers will remember my post about TED.com a few weeks ago and I think it’s time to mention another site called Academic Earth. Academic Earth is a site dedicated to “extending high quality academic opportunities … Read more

I have lost count of the times that international students have told me that they can’t understand what the British students are saying! They speak too quickly and they just can’t follow them. Here’s a bit of listening practice with a student talking about volunteering at the University of Plymouth. Volunteering is a great way … Read more

Here’s a joke which I have heard before, but which I heard again the other day, told by one foreign student to another one: What do you call someone who speaks three languages?     Trilingual. What do you call someone who speaks two languages?  Bilingual. What do you call someone who speaks one language? … Read more

It is bank holiday weekend in the UK. This means that the weather is awful and we huddle inside our houses looking out at the rain saying things like “Typical! Just look at the weather!” The worst of it is (there’s a good phrase for you ‘the worst of it is’) that there are no … Read more