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What movie or book influenced you the most in your life?

For most of my life, I only picked up fiction books to read for enjoyment, but through friends, fam...

Quick tips: less vs. fewer

Quick tips: less vs. fewer If you have studied English grammar, you probably know that the word “f...

What makes people happy?

Photo byMadison Oren onUnsplash I recently read an interesting article on CNBC about why Finland i...

Living in Toronto, Canada

I live in Toronto, Canada, which is the capital city of the province of Ontario (but not the capita...

What is a hobby?

Photo byvadim kaipov onUnsplash The word “hobby” is very common and it seems to represent a very s...

Quick tips: had better

In the past, I have posted long “Talking about… in English” columns, but this year I would also lik...

Talking about looking back/ahead in English

With the start of the new year, you may be looking back on 2022 as well as looking ahead to 2023, s...

My 2022 in the rearview mirror

My biggest achievement of 2022 was earning my master’s degree in applied linguistics. For a long ti...

Christmas with the cats

Yesterday I hopped on the VIA train and traveled out to a little town in the countryside called Nor...

Talking about Christmas decorations in English

Christmas is less than two weeks away, so today I’d like to introduce some vocabulary for talking a...

Busy days

I’ve had several jobs in my life. I’ve been a tractor driver, an archaeologist, an illustrator, and...

Hello winter!

It seems like winter has arrived in Toronto! It snowed all day yesterday and all night, and this wa...

Changing seasons

Image: Wellesley Park, TorontoThis week’s column should be about three good aspects of your favouri...

Scary experiences

Photo byArtiom Vallat onUnsplash Different things have scared me at different times throughout my ...

5 English idioms related to bones

Continuing from my 5 English idioms related to blood column post, we’ll look at some idioms related...

5 English idioms related to blood

Continuing from my 5 English idioms related to fear column post, we’ll look at some idioms related ...

Zacula

Photo: Halloween party - Me as a vampire with one of my students as a Jedi from Star Wars My very f...

5 English idioms related to fear

Continuing from my 5 English idioms related to graves column post, we’ll look at some idioms relate...

5 English idioms related to graves

Halloween conjures feelings of fear and images of graves, bones, and monsters, so from now until th...

Halloween movies

Image: The Nightmare Before Christmas movie posterA chill is in the air, the leaves are changing co...

Happy Thanksgiving!

I haven’t written anything in a while, but I’m still alive! After taking some time to recover from ...

Talking about unknown reasons in English

Sometimes we don’t know why certain things happen or why/how we do certain things. In my recent col...

Sick days

Photo byKelly Sikkema onUnsplash Somehow, I managed to catch the flu a few days ago, and it’s the ...

The game of “Men”

Photo byy.nasx onUnsplash When I was quite young, perhaps 8 or 9 years old, my friend Colin and I ...

Self-directed learning in English

Joining a full-time intensive ESL class is, of course, a great way to improve your English quickly....

Things that make me smile

Photo byTimothy Eberly onUnsplash This week’s topic is about something that makes you smile, but I...

Talking about fear in English

In a recent column titled Scary movies, I used words like scary, terrified, freak out, fear, and ha...

Sitting

Photo byJan Baborák onUnsplash I came across a TED-Ed video recently called “Why sitting is bad fo...

Scary movies

Image: The dog from The ThingAlthough I haven’t seen a really scary movie in a long time, there wer...

Using “though” in English

In my last column about a cat named Trouble, I used the word though several times, particularly in ...