Tdol's English Language Blog

There are thousands of ESL teaching courses available, with all sorts of claims being made about them and accreditation that can be valid or bogus. One simple test is to look at adverts to see what employers are looking for, so I went through 200 adverts for basic teaching jobs around the world, and a few teaching online.  I ignored managerial positions, university and specialist jobs.  This does not rate the contents of courses, though it is clear which courses employers trust and prefer.  Qualifications are given with the percentage of the teaching jobs advertised that a person could apply for.

Ginger Software proofreads your writing, checking the spelling and grammar as you write.  You download and install it- it works in Windows with Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, and in Firefox and Internet Explorer.

I had a look at the Grammarly automated proofreader and personal grammar coach that claims to be the world's most accurate grammar checker, presumably in the automated category.  The bad news is that those who want to post any text and expect it to be turned into  perfect English will still have to wait for science fiction to become reality, but the good news is that it could be a very useful tool.

The title comes from Pedro Carolino's English as She is Spoke (1883), an accidental classic that is meant to be an English phrasebook and conversational guide, but as the author couldn't speak much, or any, English, he created a garbled translation of a Portuguese-French phrasebook that has a charm in its ridiculousness.

As I no longer live in the UK and only go back a couple of times a year, I may miss some of the changes occurring in British English that aren't easily seen on the web, so I keep in contact with all sorts of sources who try to keep me up to date.

In the Jacobean play The Revenger's Tragedy, the central figure, Vindice or Vendice, starts out as someone who has suffered injustice-  the murder of his love, but soon the play descends into a bloodbath where the victim has so exceeded any offence that he has become worse than the wrong he set out to right, only far worse.  It seems appropriate for the forum context that there are different spellings of the protagonist's name, and doubt about the identity of the author.

Last year I culled about 500 dead links from our database, but this year the total was lower- 231, just under ten percent.  This doesn't include inactive sites like blogs, just sites or pages that  have disappeared, and will include some sites that were unavailable when checked but still exist.

According to the China Daily, some sudents from China are getting IELTS ghostwriters to take the IELTS test for them, as IELTS in Hong Kong is run separately and they can circumvent the lifetime ban back home if they are caught cheating.  It's a growing business with a lot of people willing to  pay someone to take the exam for them.

Multiple accounts and sock-puppets, accounts created by a poster to agree and to try to make their views look more accepted, are annoying.  Please don't create multiple accounts-  there's no need, and where we find multiple accounts, we will block access to the clones and may also ban the main account if it continues after being asked to desist.

According to this article in Elt News, Berlitz in Japan has seen 40% of its teachers become unavailable since the earthquake and tsunami in March, and is looking to change its provision through online lessons.