ENGLISH FOR UNIVERSITY. COM

Summer holidays are over!

The summer holidays are over! All of sudden it seems that there is a chill in the air and everyone is back in the classroom! That means that it is time to start writing blog posts after a very long summer break. I met a class of German students the other day and talked to [...]

15 ESL and EFL Forums for Students

Today’s post is a guest post written by Karen Schweitzer. Participating in an online forum is a great way to learn more about the English language and culture. Forums also provide the opportunity to practice the reading and writing skills you will need for school. Here are 15 English language forums to explore: Dave’s ESL Cafe [...]

Free video documentaries on the Internet

I hope that everyone is enjoying the World Cup! The timing works out well for viewers in the UK as South Africa time is the the same as here so we get the matches at the perfect time of day. As is usual for the UK, we have an over optimistic view of our own [...]

The Reith lectures with transcripts

In 1948 the BBC started a series of lectures called the Reith lectures, named after the first director-general of the BBC. Now every year the BBC asks a prominent scholar to deliver four lectures on behalf of the BBC. The lectures are usually prepared to be of interest to every day educated people and often [...]

Welcome back to English for University. Com!

If you have signed up for posts by e mail in the last few weeks you are probably thinking ‘well, that was a waste of time!’ because you haven’t received any posts. But the posts are back and now you will be receiving regular posts once or twice a week about Academic English and pointing [...]

Captioned videos

If you are thinking ‘Patrick hasn’t posted anything for a long time’ then you’d be right! That usually means that it has been particularly busy at work and yes, it is marking time again. But, better late than never as the saying goes. Readers who are interested in Britain may have been following the General Election [...]

Exams aren’t so bad!

We were all looking forward to the day after the General Election in the UK when we would finally get the politicians off our TV screens. No such luck! Most unusually, no single party has a majority in parliament – what we refer to as a hung parliament. Some countries get this all the time, [...]

Proofreading your work

It is bank holiday in the UK. That means two things: the weather is horrible and the DIY shops are full! Just as we headed into the long weekend, the temperature fell and it started raining! How does it know to do that?? Classes at my university have finished for the year which means that exams [...]

Videos for practising IELTS speaking

The UK has been enjoying spectacular spring weather for a while now. This must make it even harder for holidaymakers who went abroad and got stuck because of the volcano flight chaos to come to terms with their spoilt holidays. If only they had stayed here! Of course the travel insurance companies are now going [...]

Volcano chaos

If you aren’t in Europe you might not be aware of the chaos going on over here. There have been no flights into or out of the UK for five days because of the volcano erupting in Iceland! Some of my students are stuck in Spain. Another one of my students was lucky enough to [...]