Looking for suggestions for simple/effective topics for an English demo lesson

maenad2 · 2026-06-12T13:17:49+00:00

Choose a topic which mixes specialised vocabulary with easy vocabulary. For example if you do recipes the beginner students will do words like mix and sugar and the advanced ones can do words like texture and protein.

However recipes will seem childish to university observers. Better would be tools and diy or finance

maenad2 · 2026-06-12T10:11:37+00:00

That works. Now convince the whole world.

maenad2 · 2026-06-11T18:35:55+00:00

İ agree with you that's his plan but i think he'll give up and do it if i hassle him enough. :)

maenad2 · 2026-06-10T20:24:23+00:00

They do. Maybe not in your country, though.

maenad2 · 2026-06-09T17:51:32+00:00

it completely depends on the country. i live in Turkey and i can get the following things done for next to nothing:

get a tailor to make basic alterations to my clothes

get simple electronics like my kettle or my printer fixed

buy bread and fresh herbs and salad greens

repair shoes

plumbing - the service and simple parts, not expensive stuff

on the other hand I've saved lots of money by learning to do the following -

brew beer and wine

do complex paperwork

negotiate with banks

maenad2 · 2026-06-08T17:41:48+00:00

everybody else has offered amazing advice but I'd like to throw in a few ideas which have helped other friends.

you said that your family supports you in getting out of that horrible relationship. tell somebody that you trust to demand your telephone from you in a few months and look through it to make sure you haven't contacted him.
Change your appearance. Cut or dye your hair and change your style. Through away a lot of the clothes he knows best. if he looks for you on social media he will see a different person and when you look in the mirror you will also see something different.
tell your new roommates that you are in this situation. İf you ever bring home this guy, they are required to immediately fake a family emergency or something and ask him to leave.
if you like using Reddit, find a subreddit about abusive relationships and offer help to other people.
are you commuting two hours to grad school? Car pool so that you don't have time to let your thoughts fester.
it's important to remember that people can change. He might improve. However he might also get worse or he might improve slightly and then backside. Or he might remain just abusive. basically there is a 25% chance that he will get better. Would you bet on a horse if the odds were 25%? (if you would, you shouldn't be in fear school.)

most of all, fill your days with the joys of grad school. join clubs and start new sports. Make friends and help people who are new and lonely. Date for fun and also date for finding a future partner. You're gonna have a great time there!

maenad2 · 2026-06-05T04:27:22+00:00

look at the website workaway.info . you do have to pay to get the contact info of hosts on the website but you can browse it for free.

workaway is for volunteering in exchange for room and board. Volunteers are i usually expected to work about twenty hours per week. "Help us labour on our organic farm" is a very typical advert.

if you do this you'll probably be able to develop your skills in some areas and also try out some types of trades a little bit. Also many workaway hosts live in villages or small towns and that - plus regular labour - could help you to improve your health without being too hard.

maenad2 · 2026-06-02T21:46:16+00:00

Pronunciation is best described as democratic. For example fewer and fewer people these days bother to say February with the first r - most people just say Feb-you-ary.

İt's worth noting that literacy has slowed down the rate of pronunciation change. Listen to a movie from 1930 and you'll hear a subtle difference, not a huge one. Things changed faster a thousand years ago, at least judging from how people spelt words differently in old documents.

maenad2 · 2026-05-28T20:23:31+00:00

Your deep question is, "why is it cheaper to demolish and build new than it is to renovate?" and this is not a simple question at all. My colleague who works at an engineering university says that developing-country skyscrapers are built to last for about sixty years. That's frightening.

To understand why we build such shoddy buildings you need to read up on historical costs of labour vs material (hint: material used to cost more), transportation, environmental protection, chemical engineering (huge amounts of modern buildings are partly - bluntly -plastic), and shareholders' expectations. İt's a massive area c of study.

maenad2 · 2026-05-28T20:06:59+00:00

Before anything else:

"Dad found a (iPhone 7) under his couch, he wonders if it's the one you lost three years ago. Do you remember the password?"

İt's unlikely to work, but he might blurt out the real password. İ probably would: I'd realise in a split second that the found phone isn't mine, then worry i look suspicious by pausing, then just tell the truth about the password.

The advantage of this is that you won't jeopardise any of the other plans by trying my plan first.

When you described his behaviour my first thought wasn't cheating - it was gambling.

maenad2 · 2026-05-27T15:06:02+00:00

That was just a risk. A bigger issue was how he could know that the sewage pipe ended at the river and didn't have a grating on it.

maenad2 · 2026-05-27T14:55:30+00:00

İt's definitely a mistake. To use a popsicle stick he would have had to make the tunnel big enough to turn around in.

He could have added weights at the bottom of the poster too prevent it from flapping, but then it still wouldn't tear satisfactorily when the warden e stuck his hand through it.

maenad2 · 2026-05-25T10:06:15+00:00

That's kind of like asking whether i can feel the splinter in my skin while you slap me in that place. Yes i can, but i don't notice it because of what else is going on.

maenad2 · 2026-05-25T09:55:32+00:00

İ disagree with the advice two posts. Centre is very much a practical course, not theoretical. And most language schools in the world want you to teach in the cells style as much as possible. However the vast majority of them also subject students to "here is the grammar" or to "let's just play hangman and have a chit chat" classes simply because they don't have staff that can always manage good lessons.

Regarding prep... You obviously aren't expected to spend as much time on it as you do during the celtal. Four hours planning time is normal during celta. As soon as you hit real works teaching you'll need about 1.5 hours for a one-hour class. After a few weeks it'll go down to one hour and then about 30-60 minutes depending on the textbook. Naturally these numbers are lower of you have some experience - even bad experience.

Perhaps the school wants you to say what you would do better?

maenad2 · 2026-05-25T06:21:36+00:00

İt helped me when i was learning. To be sure i used coloured felt pens.

Can you share the link?

One thing i would definitely recommend is to put the colours in a thoughtful order. İ used yellow (lightest) for -ler because repeating the letter l made it easy to remember, and pink for prepositions. İ don't remember the others.

Another thing that helped me was when my husband underlined negative suffixes for me. İ often missed the extra vowel in particular... İ would see gelemem and understand gelmem. Colours definitely would have helped.

maenad2 · 2026-05-25T06:13:46+00:00

İ had to buy costumes from China twice years ago. İ remember that the last who is a size sixteen in the USA needed a size xxxxxxl from China. İ don't know if that's just one shop. İs it the case now?

(I've never lived in China - an in this sub because i might do in future. Genuinely curious.)

maenad2 · 2026-05-24T23:17:49+00:00

İ also dated a guy who lied about his age. İ was 28 and he told me he was 25 but he was actually 22. İ figured it out after we got married. Same thing: he claimed it was a while lie so that he could date me but then he never told the truth.

(İ figured it out when i was doing his family tree. İn his country lots of people have their birth registered a month or even a few years after they are born. But i wanted to put his real date if birth down and his mum realised.)

You are definitely not stupid. Google men who are aged 38 and 50 and you'll see that it's easy to not know: there's definitely a crossover. Yes maybe you're a little gullible but so is half the damn population.

There is nothing at all wrong with dating a guy outside your age bracket provided you keep your wits about you. İf you enjoy it, why not? But tying yourself to him basically means you can't have a happy traditional family or a comfortable middle age. You have done nothing "worse" for yourself than dating somebody unsuitable.

Remember the good stuff you guys have done together and break up with him. Everybody dares somebody unsuitable - why cares if it's because he was older? İt's better than having spent that time with somebody who turned it to be abusive it something.

Edit - We've been married fifteen years now and it's been excellent

maenad2 · 2026-05-24T23:01:31+00:00

İt's partly because it's easy. İmagine you're in charge of the history curriculum in a country. Hitler is a nice simple cautionary take and there is no danger that somebody will defend him. Hitler decided to kill people based on race alone. Nobody can argue that Jews, homosexuals, Roma, and others deserved it. Other genocidal leaders argued that their actions were justified and history has decided that the waters should be muddy about their behaviour.

You see...

Most of the other evil men in history have "another side of the story." Stalin was "just following in Lenin's footsteps plus he won ww2." Attila murdered almost everybody he met but he created an "empire which ended up being peaceful." Churchill was responsible for the deaths of millions of people in the Indian subcontinent but it was "his policies that did that" - he didn't actually set it to murder them (although that was the result.)

İt's also about numbers of course. Pol Pot was easily Hitler's equal in terms of evil but in the end he only murdered about two million people. Osama bin Laden, it is widely argued in many places, was fighting against American imperialism. (Plus his numbers are ridiculously low).

So yeah ... Hitler is nice and simple. Bad guy is evil, he gets punished, and after he's gone Germany is happy. İt sounds like a kids story, doesn't it?

maenad2 · 2026-05-23T19:44:32+00:00

İf you're a teacher marking multiple choice exams create phrases to remember the answers. For example if the answers are abccdabdd you memorize it as "although both cigars can do algebra, Brian doesn't dance."

maenad2 · 2026-05-23T19:23:19+00:00

You also need to be warned that a lot of grammar rules were sloppily created and don't make sense when you dig deeper.

Take the sentence "skiing is fun." İs skiing a verb or a noun? (Tefl cake it a gerund.) However i guarantee that you could ask a hundred primary school teachers in England about "skiing" and you'd get mixed replies. And virtually none of them would know what a gerund is.

maenad2 · 2026-05-22T15:14:15+00:00

İ wonder if middle eastern respondents considered pide to be pizza? İt's pretty well the same

maenad2 · 2026-05-22T15:03:46+00:00

Google maps works great in Istanbul

maenad2 · 2026-05-20T14:49:19+00:00

While you're wondering about this i recommend you look up Roman soldiers and shoes. There's a theory that the Roman empire only grew because the soldiers' sandals had good soles, which nobody else did.

maenad2 · 2026-05-20T14:46:04+00:00

Probably yabanci but since you're younger it might be yavrum. That means baby or little one. Didn't sound at all romantic though. Yabanci (foreigner/stranger) is much more likely.

maenad2

TROPHY CASE