Welcome to my blog, A Muse Amuses, the place where I discuss language and how it can be taught in Loving Language and share the best of the workshops and talks I’ve given and share resources, materials and lesson plans I’ve produced in Loving Learning. Oh, and do a little bit of running and singing and football and art on the side, in Loving Life.
Looking forward to sharing with you and hearing from you.
I am a teacher and teacher trainer living in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
I have worked for International House since my second year of teaching in the Czech Republic.
After four years in Prague (where I worked at a secondary school before joining Akcent (now IH Prague), doing the Delta in 2000) and a summer stint at IH London, I moved to Buenos Aires.
I have worked as a teacher at IH Buenos Aires Recoleta, was DoS of IH Buenos Aires Belgrano for four and a half years, and now work as a senior teacher trainer at IH Buenos Aires Teacher Training, mostly delivering CELTA and Delta Modules courses, with the odd month of teaching General and Business English thrown in for good measure.
I am also the Academic Coordinator for Resources and Dos Support for the International House World Organisation (IHWO), which gives me the opportunity to help the DoSes of IH schools with their day to day jobs, as well as commissioning, editing (and sometimes writing) new materials writing projects (such as the IHWO Games Bank) for IH teachers to use.
I also tutor online teacher development courses (such as IHCAM, IHDOS, IHCOLT, IHCERT, as well as online workshops) at the IHWO Online Teacher Training Institute.
I am also an IHWO Quality & Standards inspector and have inspected IH schools in Uruguay, Mexico, Costa Rica and Chile.
Loving Language
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IH Belgrano 2008
Loving Language is where I discuss my views of language and how it could be taught in the classroom.
Printing Press
Printing Press is where you can find a review of my published work, from journal articles to teacher resources, from youtube videos to random lesson plans.
Reworking Workshops
ABS 2005Reworking Workshops is the place I’ll be revisiting all of the workshops and input sessions I’ve done over the years, sharing their content with you and giving them a fresh look.
Running Roads
BA10K 2009Random updates on my runs, especially the races and the ones that help me think.
Singing Songs
She – Wedding 18/04/2009I love singing and have irregularly written many unsung songs over the years. I share them with you here, just because otherwise they’ll never get published anywhere, and maybe there’s someone out there somewhere who may enjoy the odd phrase here or there. Profuse apologies to the rest of you who arrive here for the unbridled navel-gazing you witness. Please head back to the rest of the blog as quick as you can and forget you ever came here 
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A Muse Amuses 
Mr. Neil McMahon
Macmillan
Ih Buenos Aires
Senior Teacher Training
Dear Neil,
My name is Mariela Acosta, I am a uruguayan teacher of english at secondary public schools.
It was a pleasure to attend one of your lecture about error correction, feedback at London Institute here in Montevideo.
What I need is a favour. Remember you showed a picture of a soccer court to us and how to correct mistakes?
would you mind guiding me to get that picture and remind me how to do it? Is it possible to get it from here?
Remember uruguayan and argentinian students love soccer so, I almost sure this would be my “salvation” and theirs to get their attention during test correction.
thank you so much for what you can do.
Mariela.
Hi Mariela,
Many thanks for your comment and request. I’ve posted the game on the blog for you at http://wp.me/p15rqq-at . I hope your students enjoy it. Please let us know how you use it in class and if you have any further questions about how to use it please let me know.
Are you coming to the Macmillan conference at the end of February?
Best,
I am looking into the phrase amuseamuse as it relates to the King lear play. could you help me?
I’m afraid not. I made up the name myself without any knowledge of the King Lear relevance. if you could enlighten me I’d be grateful!
Neil, thank you so much for this blog! I attended the talk you gave on the Anglo Congress in Montevideo, Uruguay, yesterday and it was super inspiring!
Hi Georgina!
Thanks for coming to the talk and coming to the blog too! I hope you find lots of useful stuff here. I’ll try and upload the rest of the handouts in the next few days.
Keep coming back and commenting – let me know how you go if you use the songs in class.
Dear Neil,
I attended your conference yesterday at the Macmillan day. I found the talk about reflecting on our teaching very interesting and the best way to give my students the appropriate help when they are learning a new language. You gave me some refreshing ideas on how to use teaching techniques in a different and more creative way. Thanks so much!
Hi Elizabeth,
Many thanks for coming to the talk and the blog – glad you found the talk useful. I’ll be putting the slides up this weekend now, have had a busy week celebrating my birthday and organising IHTOC60 – the IHWO Teachers Online Conference – which takes place next Friday and Saturday http://ihworld.com/ih/ihtoc60 Hope you can join us there too!
Dear Neil!
I’d like to contact you for an English coaching position, as you’ve been recommended to our company,
Would you write me back if you’re interested?
Thank you very much in advanced!
Fernanda
good article