Autor: academiadeinglesrobin

So last Friday, before heading home, I thought I'd go for a beer at Casa Montoto, the legendary Oviedo bar that's just a stone's throw (nice idiom, eh?) from the academy. To my great surprise and obvious delight, sitting at a table right at the back and clearly deep in conversation, I saw Iggy and … Sigue leyendo Fridays – conversation with a cultural twist

Unquestionably one of the greatest singers of all time. If you love great music, you love Nina Simone. Well, that's my humble opinion and probably yours too. That second sentence is a zero conditional and that means that there is absolutely nothing questionable or conditional about the statement. 'If', here, is the same as 'when'. … Sigue leyendo Unconditionally Nina Simone: a walk through conditional tenses with the high priestess of soul.

Word of the day today is my favourite word. I might say that again in future posts, but this is the time I really mean it, alright? We can clearly break it down into two things. Firstly, the 'on' of continuation. Fans of phrasal verbs will have seen many examples: go on, carry on, keep … Sigue leyendo Word of the day: onwards

Two brilliant novels, one set in the past and the other in the future, dealing with terrible times that humanity chooses to inflict on itself. You're almost certainly familiar with the question 'What's the catch?' You know, when something seems too good to be true. In its title, the satirical war novel 'Catch 22' takes … Sigue leyendo What’s in a number? Catch 22 and Fahrenheit 451.

One, two, three, four... https://youtu.be/lPXWt2ESxVY Shouldn't that be 'realise' with an 's' ? And can we ever justify two question marks like that? The answer to the former is no, not necessarily and to the latter is, obviously no, unless you're The Flaming Lips and you're revealing beautiful truths to all of us about our … Sigue leyendo Do you realize?? The Flaming Lips and why an ‘s’ or a ‘z’ is not always so important in the grand scheme of things.*

Before we get into anything else, we should watch the trailer for this wonderful film from 1995. https://youtu.be/jGvcbSabADM Let's start with the trailer. Why would you call this thing a trailer when the verb 'trail' relates to things that are left behind afterwards and we see trailers before we choose whether or not to watch … Sigue leyendo The befores and afters of Richard Linklater’s ‘Before Sunrise’

Kerouac's 'On the Road' is a book that radically changed the way I felt about reading in English in my late teens. It kicked the doors down and opened up new worlds in much the same way as the music I was discovering at the same time. Personally, this book marked a before and after … Sigue leyendo What’s the preposition, Jack?

What a strange and unnerving beast promotion is. Obviously, it's an essential part of getting this thing off the ground, no matter how awkward I find it (and that's pretty awkward). But why not do it with some self-deprecating humour? The Springsteen fans among you will know the story of how horrified he was by … Sigue leyendo Promotion, inversion and lessons learned from Springsteen

So there's no doubt that 'fluke' is pretty cool word for a pretty cool thing. That Friday night you won the billiards game at the last moment, even though you'd never played before and had no idea what you were doing. That person you met because you got off the bus at the wrong stop … Sigue leyendo Word of the Day – fluke