Teaching & Learning English
The Mushroom 
This was the first Magic People book we published. Happy Worm and Bepe are building a tower with colourful numbered blocks. When the tower gets too tall, they ask their friends to help finish the construction. The story and repetitive vocabulary are designed to help children learn the colours and numbers 1-5 in Chinese and … Read more
This page is set up to help students explore the use of the BAWE corpus as a tool for informing vocabulary choices in academic writing. The examples below come from either common errors in student writing or questions my students have asked about specific lexicogrammar features of English. If you search for words or phrases … Read more
This article provides important advice for IELTS Writing Task 2. Task Response Many candidates introduce their topic by writing something pointless like this: This essay will discuss both sides and present my own opinion. Such a statement is at best superfluous because it is probably what the essay question asked you to do anyway and … Read more
This article provides some important advice for IELTS Writing Task 1. Task Achievement IELTS Writing Task 1 is assessed using the criterion Task Achievement. This basically means the extent to which the writer fulfilled the task (i.e. did you manage to adequately describe the main features of the visual provided?). There is one major requirement … Read more
I am frequently asked how to get a better band score in IELTS Writing. Well, I have two main pieces of advice: 1. Read and understand the Band Descriptors. The Band Descriptors are what IELTS Examiners use to rate the completed test papers (in other words, that is how your writing will be assessed). The … Read more