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Risking a Complex Sentence
I was marking papers late one Tuesday evening—the kind of night where the only sound is the hum of my desk lamp and the scratch of my red pen—when I saw it again. Another high-achieving student had tried to use “nevertheless” and “notwithstanding” in every single sentence, only to trip over a basic subject-verb agreement
Fillers That Sound Natural
I was sitting in a cramped exam center last Tuesday, listening to a candidate struggle through their speaking component, when I heard it: “Um, like, so, you know…” every four seconds. It was like watching a beautiful choral arrangement being ruined by a single, out-of-tune singer. Most textbooks will tell you that fillers are just
Markers That Buy You Thinking Time
I was sitting in an exam hall last Tuesday, watching a student—a bright, hardworking man in his forties—completely unravel during the speaking component. He had the vocabulary, certainly, but he was stumbling through his sentences like a car stuck in neutral, searching desperately for a way to connect his thoughts. He kept asking himself, how
Complex Sentences That Stay Accurate
I was sitting in a cramped, windowless seminar room last Tuesday, staring at a pile of scripts from a student who had clearly studied every textbook under the sun. He had memorized complex structures, yet his writing felt like a clunky, mechanical assembly of parts that didn’t quite fit. It’s the same frustration I’ve seen
Answering Questions You Did Not Expect
I’ve sat in the back of examination halls for nineteen years, watching brilliant students completely unravel the moment the floor opens up for discussion. They’ve spent weeks perfecting their slides and memorizing their scripts, only to hit a brick wall when an examiner asks a single, unexpected question. Most textbooks will tell you to “prepare
Discussing Results Honestly
I was sitting in a cramped faculty lounge last Tuesday, staring at a stack of papers that felt more like a graveyard of wasted potential than a collection of research. One student, a brilliant professional who had passed every other module with flying colors, had completely stalled out. They knew their data inside out, yet
Learning Phrasal Verbs by Topic
Stop wasting your precious study hours memorizing those endless, alphabetical lists of phrasal verbs from the back of your textbook. I have seen it hundreds of times in my nineteen years of teaching: a student sits in my classroom, exhausted and defeated, because they tried to learn “get up,” “get off,” and “get by” as
Describing a Method Replicably
I remember sitting in a cramped faculty lounge ten years ago, staring at a stack of dissertations that were technically proficient but practically unreadable. One student, a brilliant woman who had already failed her first attempt, had spent six pages using “academic” jargon to mask the fact that she hadn’t actually explained her process. She
Showing Range Without Showing Off
I’ve sat through enough exam debriefs to know that most “vocabulary building” advice is absolute nonsense. You don’t need to memorize a dusty dictionary or spend hundreds of pounds on a thesaurus to see your scores climb. In fact, I’ve seen brilliant students fail because they tried to force “big” words into sentences where they
Degrees of Certainty
I was sitting in a quiet exam hall last Tuesday, the kind of silence that feels heavy, when I watched a student stare at a writing prompt with absolute despair. He wasn’t struggling with vocabulary or grammar in the traditional sense; he was paralyzed because he didn’t know how to express certainty and doubt without