Why focus matters more than hours for real learning and revision We’ve all seen it, and probably done it ourselves. A student sits at their desk for an entire afternoon, surrounded by a mountain of textbooks and a rainbow of highlighters. By dinner time, they’re exhausted. They feel like they’ve worked incredibly hard, yet when you ask what they actually remember, you get a worried blank stare. This is what I call Performative Studying. It looks like work and feels like work,

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Lately, you hear it everywhere: “What’s the point of learning languages?” With the likes of Google Translate in our pockets (and even major universities announcing they’ll stop teaching modern foreign languages), it’s easy to think languages are no longer necessary. And yes, a translating app can help you work out what something means or say a short sentence. That has its place. But when you really learn a language, you don’t just translate words — you access culture, tradit

I recently used a BBC article in French — which I assume is taken from this BBC CrowdScience podcast — during a French lesson. I often work with authentic materials like this for translation, comprehension practice and discussion, as they bring real-life language and ideas into the classroom. This particular piece explored why some people find maths easy while others struggle — but the message applies far beyond maths. It’s really about how anxiety affects working memory ,