Teaching in Lebanon - May Mikati's Blog

When you see mascara do you think “maskhara”? Well, you are not too mistaken if you do: that is the Arabic origin of the word! Most etym...

A fellow blogger colleague recently wrote on uncommon words in English. My post here, on the other hand, is on commonly used English words ...

Merriam Webster finally announced its Word of the Year 2016 as surreal , subsequent to rising lookups following various shocking world eve...

Mashable recently reported that Merriam Webster had not yet announced its Word of the Year although, by the end of November, “fascism...

Academics worldwide will soon be celebrating International Open Access Week, from October 24 to 30. When I first blogged about Open Acces...

It may seem easy for teachers to judge students; in fact, it is part of their job. How fair the teachers are in their assessment is anoth...

There seems to be a renaissance of language pedantry with the advance of technology and social networking. Not only does Google try to co...

Many institutions of higher education all over the world now view students as customers. One only has to take a look at the terminology use...

Since the weather is occupying news headlines these days, it would be interesting to look at some weather idioms in English; the first that...

In a highly popular blog post by its English online editor, Al Jazeera last month dropped the word “migrant”, preferring to use “refuge...

W hen the title “Ms.” was invented, it was meant to replace “Mrs.” and “Miss”. This alternative was promoted by feminists and others who ...

When David Cameron was recently criticised for using the word “swarm” to describe illegal immigrants entering Britain, a fuss followed. ...

Shakespeare once said, through a character in The Merry Wives of Windsor , that experience is a jewel, and it had need be so, for it is of...

As part of our effort to encourage other teachers to blog about their work, my blogger colleagues and I have organized a workshop at AUB ...

Every year there are winners. Here are this year’s winning words from various sources: • Chambers Dictionary – “Overshare”: The Gua...

Punctuation appears to be declining in importance. In the UK, the Cambridge City Council considered removing punctuation from street names ...

As part of their course reflection once, my students were meant to describe how they had used the library, and one of them wrote that the...

In my previous blog post on motivation in language learning, I indicated that I would be following up on the subject. An opinion piece ...

The Guardian newspaper’s Education section on “The Case for Language Learning” shows a number of interesting recent entries. Geoffrey B...

Anthropological linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf emphasized the link between language and culture decades ago. They hypothesized...

A couple of years ago, I blogged about “ Banned Words ” on the occasion of the official French ban of “Mademoiselle”, which was replaced...

I recently gave a conference presentation on “ Risk Control in the Blended Learning Environment ”. My research showed that online teachin...

Most of the students I come across do not seem to consider grammar to be an exciting part of their learning though they do appear to real...