Yes it’s true - I do let my students watch episodes/parts of episodes of Friends with Korean subtitles. Why? Let me summarise the case for the prosecution. Then my defence! Read more »

I have found that when a lesson doesn’t work, it is often because one or more of the fundamentals have gone out the window! In my humble opinion, omission of the fundamentals include things like the following: Do you agree? Read more »

With any short or medium sized text, all you have to do is split it into two (photocopy & chop) and give each half to 2 students (Student A and Student B). Read more »

If your local bookstore stocks the book series called “Can you believe it?” at all 3 levels, you’re in for a treat and easy way to get students talking. These books are based on little 6-picture cartoon-like stories. All you have to do is photocopy the picture stories and laminate them. If you do this with all the stories, you’ll end up with about 60! Read more »

Sick of having your well planned lessons interrupted by late arrivals? Students seem wordless and unmotivated? Bring back the warmer! Read more »

It’s not easy to write this kind of post without coming across as obsequious, but sod it! Previous posts on this blog have featured Mike’s heroes in different fields and will continue to do so. I reckon all of us admire skilled practitioners in different areas. From the world of EFL blogging, let’s have a look at the giants and compare the ace bloggers.

Fledgling EFL bloggers like me who are interested in good EFL blogging will probably keep coming up against 2 names - Sandy McManus and Alex Case. So who’s the best? Read more »

In Daegu, and certainly in Suseung-gu, you actually have to beat off taxi drivers trying to get your business! I have to walk across one road to get to my hagwon and the only thing that makes it difficult is having to constantly refuse aggressive taxi drivers. They are also ridiculously cheap. You can get pretty far on 1800 won…

Ok. Back to the business of EFL. I’ve been considering lately what are the key ingredients for a good EFL teacher. When I was a DoS for a year, I was able to put my ideas to the test. Here are my results. I can’t really rank them: Read more »

I think the first ever Christian music CD I bought was by Steven Curtis Chapman - and played it on my first ever CD player. Great guy, amazing voice! Pretty distraught to read of the death of his little adopted daughter Maria Sue in an accident. Here she is washing up with Steven in one of his video blog entries. Read more »