Max Black Communications

29/01/2026

Do you know these English idioms with ‘green’? Can you use one in a sentence? Do you have any idioms with ‘green’ in your language?⁣

04/01/2026

Punctuations are important!

26/11/2025

Gadfly

1. a fly that bites livestock, especially a horsefly, warble fly, or botfly.

2. a person who interferes with the status quo of a society or community by posing novel, potentially upsetting questions, usually directed at authorities.

14/10/2025

Phrase of the day:
"On the pretext of..." / "Under the pretext of..."

Meaning: To use a false reason to hide the real purpose of an action. It implies that someone is doing something for a concealed motive, but is using a different, fake explanation to justify it.

The phrase is often used in slightly formal writing or storytelling, and can have a negative connotation because it suggests dishonesty.

Examples:
- He asked for her number on the pretext of needing it for a work project.

- The company fired the employee on the pretext of poor performance, but their real reason was to cut costs.

05/09/2025

Word of the day

09/08/2025

Phrase of the day (origin: American English)

26/07/2025

A synecdoche /sɪˈnɛkdəki/ is a figure of speech where a part of something is used to represent the whole, or vice versa, where the whole is used to represent a part.

It is a form of metonymy, highlighting a relationship between elements and enhancing meaning through vivid imagery.

Here are ten examples of a synecdoche:

02/02/2025

Idiom of the day: To look a gift horse in the mouth

Meaning: To look in a critical way at something that has been given to you

Example: Grandma bought me a laminated guitar for my birthday, I'd have preferred that it's made of solid mahogany, but hey I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.

28/01/2025

Howdy fellow language teachers!

The Macmillan Global Teachers' Festival is back in 2025! This year, the online festival is taking place from 10th to 21st February with, as usual, an excellent lineup of talks on diverse topics. The festival program is available on their website.

Max Black Communications hopes to see some of you there at the festival!

Global Teachers' Festival

28/01/2025

Transform informal verbs to formal ones and build up your vocabulary for use in professional and formal speech.

03/01/2025

Prepositions of place - 'on' and 'in'

23/12/2024

Try saying the following sentence out loud:

The boy and the girl ran to school.

Did you notice if your pattern of rhythm is 'syllable-timed' or 'stress-timed'? Which rhythm pattern do native speakers use?

This video explains it quite clearly!

Learn how to use rhythm, and you will speak English in a more native-like way! English is a "stress-timed" language, which means a) we stress certain sounds ...