MacMillan English Campus

Have you played any MEC games recently? A few months ago I wrote about some of my favourites and I thought I would offer a few more suggestions now. To do this I’ve been playing a few that I haven’t looked at in a while. Why not spend a few minutes

This Sunday marks the 10th anniversary of 9/11.  With the impact of the event felt the world over students are often ready to talk at length about their impressions.  It can make for a good discussion lesson that challenges your students to find the words to voice their feelings about the

Thailand’s Education Minister, Worawat Ua-apinyakul, recently announced that the campaign for one laptop for every primary school child in Thailand, promised during the general election, will be honoured by the government, with hardware beginning to be distributed in 2012 (http://tinyurl.com/3dkcx9k). The One Laptop Per Child project (OLPC) was started

Have you ever been bowled over by someone’s kindness or stumped by a difficult question? Have you ever done any blue-skies thinking or been accused of chasing rainbows? The English language is full of idioms that reflect our twin obsessions: sport and the weather. Each English-speaking country has its own variations.

Storm season which is between August and October, when the Pacific Ocean warms up seems to be nearing its peak. Although, it is halfway through it has been an active season with up to 18 named storms. The latest one: Irene was the 9th named storm of the season, the first

Watch out and hold on! A flipped classroom model has arrived, but do not be afraid as you have probably started experimenting with the model. The infographic below explains what the flipped classroom model is and why you should continue using it or why it is worth starting to apply the

This week’s news item, adapted for MEC from a news article originally published in the Guardian Weekly, is about projects that are trying to protect species of solitary bee. The solitary bee is less well-known than the honeybee but is as useful for pollinating plants.

You can find this story in the

September is almost here and with it the first day of class for many students.  First lessons can be a great opportunity to inject some fun into the classroom and get your students talking to each other.  If you’re stuck for ideas on how to achieve this then why not try

A great activity suitable for both intermediate to advanced learners, exploring the meanings of names and nouns is a really interesting way of getting your English students to engage with the language in a very concrete way. It also makes certain words memorable, because some of the roots and real meanings

We all talk about a voice recognition tool and how useful it is or could be for our students. The very first voice recognition tool was created in the 50s and it had a device to recognize individual spoken units. The times have changed and so has the device, nowadays it

This week’s news item, adapted for MEC from a news article originally published in the Guardian Weekly, is about organic food sales in the UK. Due to falling supermarket sales, farmers are less interested in switching to organic food production.

You can find this story in the News Items section on your

Well, in the northern hemisphere, anyway! It is holiday (or vacation) time and there are loads of exercises and games you can use on MEC to help your students brush up on their language skills should they be holidaying in an English-speaking country.

First off – have some fun and try these

It seems that whether we are on the bus, train or at the airport, most young people are inseparable from their electronic devices. It looks like their every day life is defined by switching on at least one electronic device every few minutes. The question is whether every minute of this

Summer is the season of tightly packed festivals taking place across the UK. We have been through the traditionally muddy Glastonbury Festival and the vibrant Reading and Leeds Festival. Of course, there have been many more of them taking us on exciting cultural adventures throughout the last few months.

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This week’s news item, adapted for MEC from a news article originally published in the Guardian Weekly, is about package holidays in the poorest parts of the world that are organized by aid agencies.

You can find this story in the News Items section on your Work Area screen.

Kerstin

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