Advent is always a fun time here in the UK, and I like to celebrate it in a small way on this website with some Christmas learning. We have a whole culture of books, films and traditions that can make English more fun – some of which I’ve covered here before. With the holiday just around the corner now, I want to take a chance to wish all my readers a Merry Christmas, to let you know what’s planned in 2018 and to share with you, again, some of the learning material that I’ve put up for the season in the past.

What to expect in 2018

With the release of my writing guide all but out of the way now, next year I’ll be looking at producing more books to help English learning. There’s a long-planned English tenses exercise book still to come, and I’m hoping to complement the writing guide with more exercises and examples.

As well as producing books, the regular blogs will continue here on the ELB site – I’m committed to at least one new lesson on the site a month, and am sharing annotated archived lessons through the mailing list (again at least once a month), as well as continually on Twitter and Facebook. 2017 has been the first year (after 5 years of running this site, if you can believe it!) that I’ve really started to see a return on this website, with book sales steadily starting to rise – and I have you, my readers, to thank for that – as the business continues to expand I look forward to producing more material!

Now, onto the fun stuff. How can you practice some more English this Christmas? Here’s some of the material we’ve got on the site:

1. Learn Christmas Vocabulary

There’s plenty of vocabulary specific to Christmas – here’s plenty of words and phrases in the big Christmas vocabulary list.

2. Use Christmas Songs for Listening Practice

Christmas songs get repeated over and over, to the point of irritation, here – but they can be good for listening practice with some catchy lyrics. Check out my list of 6 Christmas songs for listening skills here.

3. Reading Practice with Christmas Stories

Christmas is a popular period for fiction – I’ve written a few tales set in the holidays myself. You can test your use of mixed English tenses with this reading and grammar exercise – The Christmas Mess. Something really different I’ve written is a nasty post-apocalyptic novella, A Most Apocalyptic Christmas. Find it on my author website here – but it is for adults!

4. Learn About Christmas Culture

Christmas is an ancient holiday with a lot of history and traditions. Expand your reading practice by learning more about the English speaking world – for example, read my article about the impact of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol on the English language.

Above all, enjoy the holiday, have a Merry Christmas and best wishes for your learning in 2018!