Although there are jokes we can use in the class to drive home a language point and make the lesson more engaging, these are jokes about teachers and students in general and especially about the English language and the way we use it. Some of them are terrible and will […]

In this video, Katherine Tate states confidently that she can help out in an awkward situation because, “I did TEFL in my Gap Year.”      

TEFL Teaching isn’t all fun and games. There’re cockups, too.   In Greece and the subject of the lesson was cults and we were discussing it with the class. I happened to mention a notorious cult in England at the time, the Moonies. Dead silence and a shocked look on […]

Can we teach like this? Of course not because we’re mere mortals. But Harold Ramis in the 1981 film classic, Stripes, can. Stripes – Basic English The film opens with Russell Ziskey (played by Harold Ramis) teaching a brand new class to speak English when he himself has never taught […]

Strange English is a collection of statements about English which deserve more thinking about. If you take an Oriental person and spin him around several times, does he become disoriented? If people from Poland are called “Poles,” why aren’t people from Holland called “Holes?” Do infants enjoy infancy as much […]