Unsuck It looks like a fun website that translates business speak or management-ese into normal English. There’s also a Browse mode so you can see the phrases and words.
It seems like it could be a really good resource for ESL teachers or students. Introducing the culture of jargon and it’s overuse is one direction. You could discuss some of the terms here and try to get students to translate them or talk about similar phrases they don’t like in their own language. Or have students pick one they like and …Continue

Another fun vocab building lesson plan, the School Slang Lesson Plan teaches American school traditions and socialization while also introducing kids to teenage slang and terminology like freshman, sophomore, detention, midterm, prom and jock. A lot of your students have been exposed to American teenage movies, and they will love to discuss exactly what all the slang they’ve heard means.
Also this lesson uses pictures to teach idioms which is a great tool to help kids remember new vocab and phrases. Because idioms don’t translate literally, and sometimes metaphors don’t …Continue

This is a list of some expressions that befuddled my students in recent classes. All of them are tied together by the fact that they are idiomatic and that they are all humorous, or have a degree of sarcasm or irony attached to them.
Note that most of these phrases are slightly informal. You might use them with colleagues or friends, or in an informal meeting but not in a formal setting.
Ass-backwards means to do something in the wrong order, to do the logical first step second as in:“They’re spending money …Continue

I’ve been meaning to post on this for a bit. I read a great post on using “like” as a substitute for “said”, “thought” or “felt”.This usage is most commonly associated with teenagers and many grammarians feel that it is not correct. However as Patricia O’Connor points out in The New York Times Magazine, teenagers aren’t the only ones who use it and anyway associating it with teenagers and therefore bad language isn’t fair.In case you have no idea what I’m talking about, here are a few examples:The salesperson said …Continue

One of the hardest things to teach or learn in English is idioms, particularly idioms or sayings that come from pop-culture. There are so many of them, so there is no way to systematize them into a teaching program. And you may run across them in a lot of different situations.
So I may post some of these from time to time up here. These are a few that came up in class the other day:
Note that most of these phrases are slightly informal. You might use them with colleagues …Continue

I just came back from Kyrgyzstan teaching at a Pre-Departure Orientation for Afghanistan students on the FLEX program. One of the classes I most enjoyed teaching and that the kids most enjoyed was American Slang class. So from time to time I thought I would post some American slang here.
To start with, it might be useful to talk about school slang and informal terms. So let’s talk about terms for people you might find in an American high school:
First, students are either freshmen, sophomores, juniors or seniors. Students in their …Continue