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Estimating How Many Words You Know

I’ve sat through nineteen years of exam prep, and if there is one thing that makes me roll my eyes, it’s the “magic” online quizzes that promise to tell you your lexical level in thirty seconds. Most of these tools are useless; they either feed your ego with easy words or bury you in archaic

Chunks Instead of Single Words

Stop wasting your time with those massive, leather-bound dictionaries or those flashy mobile apps that promise “mastery” in ten minutes a day. I have spent nineteen years watching brilliant, hardworking adults sit in my classroom, only to watch their exam scores stall because they are busy memorizing obscure, academic words they will never actually use

Reading Like a Writer

I’ve sat across from hundreds of exhausted students, many of whom have already failed their English exams once, only to hear the same tired advice: “just read more books.” It’s a frustratingly vague suggestion that ignores the reality of why they are actually failing. If you are just skimming through novels for pleasure, you aren’t

Proof You Are Speaking Better

I’ve sat across from hundreds of exhausted adults in my classroom, all of them asking the same thing: “Anneke, how do I know if I’m actually getting better?” They’ve spent fortunes on flashy apps and high-tech language labs, yet they still feel like they’re treading water. The truth is, most of those expensive tools are

Catching Your Own Mistakes

I was sitting in a drafty exam hall last Tuesday, watching a student stare at a sentence they had just written with a look of pure, agonizing confusion. They knew something was wrong, but they were searching for a complex linguistic rule to save them, when in reality, it was a simple subject-verb agreement error

The Conversation That Went Badly

I remember sitting in the staff room after a particularly disastrous parent-teacher meeting, the smell of burnt coffee hanging heavy in the air while my heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. I had stumbled over my words, let my frustration leak through a poorly chosen idiom, and left the room feeling utterly

Knowing When to Book the Exam

I remember sitting across from a student last Tuesday—a brilliant professional, mind you—who was staring at her practice test results with a look of pure, hollow dread. She had spent a small fortune on “intensive” prep courses and glossy textbooks, yet she still couldn’t tell me how to decide when you are ready to sit

Tracking Progress Towards a Score

I’ve sat across from hundreds of tired, frustrated adults in my classroom, watching them stare at a practice test score that hasn’t budged in three months. They think they need a more expensive textbook or a fancy new app, but they’re missing the point entirely. Most people treat exam preparation like a marathon where they

Six Mistakes I Correct Every Year

By Anneke MbathaJuly 7, 2026Grammar

I was sitting in a cramped, windowless seminar room last Tuesday, watching a brilliant professional—a man with a decade of management experience—stutter through a written report because he couldn’t master basic subject-verb agreement. It’s heartbreaking. Most textbooks will try to sell you a thousand-page manual on linguistic nuance, but let me tell you: that is

Writing to a Deadline

I can still see them: rows of grown adults, some with grey hair and decades of professional experience, staring at an exam paper with a look of pure, unadulterated panic. I remember one gentleman in particular, a brilliant engineer, whose hands were actually shaking as he gripped his pen. He wasn’t struggling with the English