🎙 From the classroom: My Bengali students in Brittany pronounced 'worked' as 'work-ED', adding a full syllable. My Korean student said 'wok'. My French student said 'workt'. All three had learned the same spelling. None…
🎙 From the classroom: No one taught me the schwa in Bangladesh. I spoke each syllable clearly and equally — like reading out loud. In Sydney, people couldn't understand me. Not because I didn't know…
🎙 From the classroom: When I was learning French, I kept stressing the wrong syllable: CAfé instead of caFÉ. French has near-flat stress; English does not. In English, the wrong stress in a word can…
🎙 From the classroom: Réunion Island is one of the most visually extraordinary places I've ever lived. The volcano — Piton de la Fournaise — is active. The lagoon is turquoise. The mountains are brutal.…
🎙 From the classroom: The day I stood in front of my first class of twelve adults in France, I was — in English — 'nervous'. But nervous doesn't capture it. I was terrified, excited,…
🎙 From the classroom: The best advice I ever received in a kitchen: 'You should taste before you season.' Twenty years later I still hear it. Modal verbs of advice are the grammar of good…
🎙 From the classroom: If I were still managing restaurants in Sydney, I would never have become a teacher. That sentence is my whole career change in one grammar structure. The Second Conditional is the…
🎙 From the classroom: When I was job hunting in Réunion, every conversation was conditional: 'If I speak better French, I will get more interviews.' That sentence kept me studying. The First Conditional is the…
🎙 From the classroom: After years in Sydney, I moved to France, then Réunion. I now speak four languages. The Present Perfect captures all of that in one tense: 'I have lived on three continents.'…
My neighbour in Strathfield was a Greek-Australian woman in her seventies. She knocked on my door three days after I arrived with a plate of spanakopita. She said, 'You look thin. Eat.' I didn't know…
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Sourov Deb EI · SIRET 106 764 061 00011 · Saint-Pierre, La Réunion