Author: Sam Burns

  • ESL Trends: Authentic Content and CLIL

    ESL Trends: Authentic Content and CLIL

    This is our first ever post on ESL trends, so let’s start by discussing what this is about.  A “trend” is something that is becoming a commonly discussed topic and becoming popular to do.  An “ESL trend” is a recent movement or change in the way English is taught around the world.  As ELLs, it’s…

  • Elephants

    Elephants

    He’s a calf.  He’s the perfect meal for a pride of lions or a pack of wild dogs.  Actually, he’s a week’s worth of meals!  That’s why he’s staying very close to his herd, in-between an adult and an adolescent.  Why is a calf big enough to be a week’s worth of meals for a…

  • Building English Fluency: A Story that Teaches Us About the Brain

    Building English Fluency: A Story that Teaches Us About the Brain

    A simple story of a simple fisherman in Africa has a lot to teach us about building English fluency. Read on to learn from this man’s wisdom. In a little village, in the middle of nowhere in Africa, there was a man. He was quiet. He watched more than he showed and listened more than…

  • Waiting for the Train

    Waiting for the Train

    Warm on the inside, cold on the outside.  Cold on the outside, and cold on the inside.  The people standing on the platform at the Briercrest train station had very different feelings waiting for the train. The common feeling amongst them all was the anxiety of waiting for the train. Blink and you’ll miss it,…

  • The Beginners Guide to Making Anki Cards for Vocabulary

    The Beginners Guide to Making Anki Cards for Vocabulary

    This is it! This is what you need to know to make effective and efficient Anki cards to help you memorize new vocabulary. The information here has been tried and tested by many language learners like you and proven useful. If you are wondering how to get started with Anki or improve how you use…

  • Using Double Comparatives (e.g. “The Bigger, the Better”)

    Using Double Comparatives (e.g. “The Bigger, the Better”)

    Double comparatives are a must in the English language.  You can’t go anywhere without seeing them! Well, unless you go to the back woods of China where no one speaks English… In fact, they’re so common, that the more you look for them, the more you find them! (See what I just did there?) If…

  • Racing Down the Track

    Racing Down the Track

    There’s something special about car racing.  Unlike running, horse racing, boat racing, and most other forms of racing, car racing isn’t just going straight as fast as possible (well, usually).  Car racing has uphills and downhills, sharp lefts and sharp rights, speeding up and slowing down, blocking and passing.  That’s why you’ve never seen a…

  • 4 Common Mistakes English Learners Make

    4 Common Mistakes English Learners Make

    Wondering if you are making some mistakes? Looking for things to avoid? Or maybe you just want to practice English and you don’t care what this article is about? 🤣 Well, no matter why you’re here, we are going to talk about 4 common mistakes English learners make. If you want to talk about something…

  • Skate Park

    Skate Park

    Jake was drinking his fourth bottle of water.  It was hot!  They were having a big heatwave, so temperatures had been high for days, and they were going to stay high.  He was at a skate park. Just an hour earlier, he and his friends were sitting around in the AC with nothing to do. …

  • How to Pick What Words to Learn

    How to Pick What Words to Learn

    English has around a million words. That’s ten words for every hair on your head. While only one hundred and fifty thousand of those words are in use, it’s still more than the hairs on your head. It’s too many! So how do we pick which of those words to learn? There is a handful…