Forming questions is a big problem for many learners of English and I have always wondered why. Students are always asking me odd-sounding questions like:…
In the first of a series of posts, I explain here the content of the book I am going to write, here on my blog.…
This was the final list of references in my PhD. I will add explanations about the various texts when I get round to it. …
I have a decade’s worth of thoughts on English spelling and I will be blogwriting them here as an e-book of sorts. This post discusses…
Above: some of my Omani students on their National Holiday in 2014 In solidarity with the teachers in Grafton College who have abruptly lost their…
Doctor of Language explains how he banjaxes funding application and, a couple of thousand words later, what we can all learn from it #EggonmyBrendan Part…
26 November 2018, 1120 A tiny bug in my laptop allows me to see what time I was last using it. So when I flipped…
The word synchronise is often shortened to a single syllable which sounds like sink, but whose spelling varies between <sync> and <synch>. This variability introduces us to…
From Saturday June 16 onwards (Bloomsday, as it happens), I will no longer have free access to the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary…
Why are the words two, to and too spelt differently, even though they sound the same? What about meat and meet? Or catarrh and Qatar? Or OutKast and outcast? And why do greet and great not rhyme? The answer lies…