Taboo language is the type of expression which is generally considered "socially unacceptable" (at least in more formal situations) and which most people use only as expletives when under stress - a use Steven Pinker in…

There's relatively little on the Notebook about teaching vocabulary, and in the next few weeks I'm going to try and remedy that. In future articles we'll talk about techniques you can use in the classroom to introduce…

This article looks at why learners of Business English might need a higher receptive knowledge of lexis than they possess productively. It also suggests that this type of lexis can best be taught using authentic materials, and su…

It is very unlikely that any of our learners will ever know all the words they need. English has an enormous number of words - on the Oxford University Press website they estimate it at a quarter of a million words. Even advance…

If you've not yet read Part One of this article, click on the link To summarise where we’ve got to so far : inferring words from context is a skill which is necessary for our learners if they are to deal effectively with the…