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A new self study resource

  The British Council has a resource at http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/writing-purpose/introduction to help academic writers Based on extensive analysis of large collections of Academic Writing from British Universities,  it helps students at all levels meet the expectations of academic writing.

Reading Between the Headlines and Getting the Plot

Whenever I ask my students what they understand by the term ‘read’, they often equate it to vocabulary comprehension – in other words, if I understand most of the words in the text, I can read well. However, this is a flawed assumption since reading also entails, among other things, the ability to discern the …

What is “Proper” English? Part Two

In the previous post, I asked the question “What is proper English”?  The English spoken around the world differs in many ways- Americans write “color” and pronounce the final “r”- the English write “Colour” and the “r” is silent. There are also plenty of examples of similar differences between Malaysian English and British English- grammatical …