Just a quick update to let you know that the next month will be pretty bare as far as new material goes. I’m in the final stages of submitting my dissertation, so as you can imagine, I must be completely focused on reading and revising drafts. My date for submission is June 11, so normal [...]

What’s a common homework assignment or part of the so-called on-going assessment? Getting your students to write a diary is a pretty safe bet. We’ve all requested it and most students will deliver.
The diary is used as a reflection of general speech and trying to get the student to find their own voice in their L2. [...]

Just a short note on confidence builders in the last week.
I’ve been chatting a little with Koreans on several sites (mostly sharedtalk; no link because I don’t really like the site) recently to try to add variety to how I approach some pretty typical topics of an intermediate nature; nothing overly complicated. Things like lifestyles, family, interests, travel, [...]

As many of you will know, the study at university in an English speaking country you’re likely to need the right TOEFL or IELTS score. And that’s a lot of work. Speaking to some of my international classmates though, I’ve come to realise something. Even though they have an excellent command of English and the right [...]

There’s no doubt that the people from the Middle East are very proud people. They are proud of their country, of their history and of their language. Except when speaking English… many of those I speak to wish to lose all traces of the  markers that identify them as being from the region. But that’s a [...]

Our friend Ultimate Attainment is back again. He’s someone we’re talking about a lot in my seminars lately and unfortunately, certain people do believe the falsehoods about sounding like “native” being the ultimate. It’s also a fundamental aspect of my dissertation (specifically dealing with English in Korea).. but that’s another story.
When it comes to accentual [...]

It appears as if we have been nominated for this years Top 100 Language Blogs over at LexioPhiles. Very happy indeed. Voting will start May 12, so I will post a reminder then
Top 100 Nominations

Common question… variable answers.
It all depends on what the learner considers fluent, which language they are learning, the environment they are learning in, how motivated they are, how often they study, and so and so forth.
Let’s set the ground rules at 2 hours study per day. Not unrealistic if you consider the Borrowing Time post [...]

The last two days have been a bit of an anomaly when you look at my time back in Australia. I do have a fair amount of chance to practice Korean in Perth, but due to being busy with research and having a family life, this isn’t all that realistic. However, the last two days have [...]

 I have grand plans for this linguistic obsession of mine. Some may say foolish plans. It seems to be en vogue these days to want to learn an absurd number of languages and I’m no exception to the absurdities.
Instead of listing the why and the how, I’ll just list 20 languages that are on my possible hit list…  [...]