ENGLISH FOR UNIVERSITY. COM

Listening: How to increase food production to meet the growing world population

What I’ve noticed about students (yes, that’s you guys!) is that, generally speaking, you don’t do enough work outside class! That’s why I keep hassling you with exercises and links in these posts! So here’s another classroom activity I’ve done recently which I thought I’d share. I did a listening the other day in class [...]

Don’t wear your pyjamas to Tesco!

Everybody has been talking about going shopping in pyjamas! There’s a branch of Tesco in Cardiff, Wales, which has got fed up with people shopping in their pyjamas and has banned shoppers who are wearing them! I very much enjoyed listening to the woman complaining about being banned from the shop. As she says, ‘I [...]

IELTS

The misery for British sports fans continues. We had our best chance for years and years to have a British winner at a big tennis championship today, but it was not to be. One day! Lots of students I know are taking IELTS. As you are probably aware, there are any number of resources to help [...]

Critical thinking

Critical analysis MP3 Ever seen the comment ‘be more critical’ or, ’more analysis needed’ on your work, but do not know what your tutor actually means by it? Download this audio file, to find out how you can improve your critical analysis and thinking in your written work, and why it is just so important. Download the transcript [...]

Write your own dissertation!

I have just been searching for links to put up on a page for dissertation writing and I am amazed at the number of websites there are offering to write your dissertation for you. In fact, when I google ‘dissertation writing’ the first eight results are all for companies that promise to write you a [...]

News sites in English

Over the past week I have had a number of students asking me about the best places to read the news in English online. That’s when I realised that I didn’t have a page on English for University. Com helping students to find news sites in English so – time to start one! Of course [...]

Critical analysis will get you better marks in your presentation!

I had a student in my office the other day who was asking me about feedback she had been given by her lecturer. The main comment the lecturer had made was ‘not enough critical analysis’. Then my student said ‘Everyone always talks about critical analysis, but nobody has told me what that means!‘ So I [...]

Presentations!

Back to work after the Christmas holidays – it must be time for thinking about presentations! There are so many things to say about doing a presentation that it is hard to know where to start. I remember this time last year making a few comments about choosing an interesting topic, or a topic with [...]

Describing trends in line graphs

I left work early today because I was worried that I might not be able to get home safely because of the snow. My Spanish students tell me that in Spain it has also been very cold with snow even in the south! I am always looking for good resources practising language for talking about line [...]

Academic speaking

I have noticed how quiet international students are, especially when there are native speakers of English in the same class! When I ask students outside class why they don’t speak more they tell me two things: that they are not confident in their English, and that they don’t think anyone wants to hear what they [...]