Humor4u

"Perform surgery" or "carry out surgery"? Photo by Austin Samaritans  via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.O] What kind of collocations are most mistake-prone: strong (e.g. honk the horn,  s hrug shoulders ), medium-strong (e.g.  wage a war, fail a test ), medium-weak (e.g.  perform an experiment, reach a compromise ) or weak (e.g.  see a film, read the newspaper )? In the previous post in the series (see HERE ), I looked at some studies focusing on collocational errors across different levels of proficiency and what causes them. One of the studies I cited was by Nadja Nesselhauf (I think it was her doctoral thesis). The study is also interesting in that she tried to pinpoint which collocations are more problematic for learners. But first of all, What counts as a collocation?  Learners often have problems with collocations, but what kind of collocations cause more difficulty? On the one hand, there are idioms, such as foam at the mouth , which are technically collocation...

I often make students (and teachers I work with) get out of their seats. I think movement in the classroom is important whether you believe in the now  hotly debated concept of learning styles  or because  cognition is embodied . Apart from onion ring debates and mingling activities, there are many movement activities you can do using classroom walls. A  recent article in English Teaching Professional suggested ideas for taking advantage of all four classroom walls using whiteboards. I would like to share some ideas on how I use walls in my classrooms without any additional whiteboards required. All you need is paper (usually cut-up) and some Blu-tack       Taking strips of paper OFF the walls This is a “kinaesthetic” alternative to a vocabulary matching activity. Stick the words on the walls around the classroom and hand out to students (in groups) lists of different definitions. Students have to walk around and take off the walls the words that ma...