20 Aug 2026 — Remote work & video-call fatigue — reading, and colloquial language from the texts

• Homework check — Ex.10 / Ex.11. Both of us left the same two sentences blank because the exercise says two are already correct. She hadn't marked them yet and will come back to them.
• The study site — she opened it in class, went through Vocabulary and Grammar, and turned it into homework: "spend 30 minutes to look it through". She wants a Do next list of her own.
• Brainstorm: remote work — benefits and challenges, deliberately from both sides, employees and employers. Coloured stickies on the Miro frame.
• Prediction from titles — "Video Call Fatigue" (text A) and "All good online apart from…" (text B). Guess the content before reading.
• Scan-read both texts in 3 minutes (scan, not read), then a thorough, meticulous read with underlining, 6–7 minutes, answering eight comprehension questions.
• Comprehension discussion in our own words, not read off the page: non-verbal cues, the dissonance, video-call protocols, why silence doesn't help, why being on camera is stressful, the writer's relief, two advantages of remote study, the disadvantages.
• Vocabulary hunt inside the texts — find the colloquial equivalent: an advantage → a big plus; because of → be down to; talk at length about nothing → witter on; occasional → the odd.
• Idiom detour — down to the wire, and its synonyms at the eleventh hour and in the nick of time.

• No double comparatives — much more harder ✗, much more easier ✗ → much harder, far harder, much easier. Either more or -er, never both.
• be used to / get used to + gerund — we are not got used to ✗ → we aren't used to looking at a screen all day / we haven't got used to it.
• person vs people — social persons ✗ → social people, or social beings for the formal register.
• interested vs interesting — you will be interesting ✗ → you will be interested. -ing describes the thing, -ed describes the person.
• advantages of sth, not advantages to sth.
• spend time doing sth (gerund) — spend time to get to the office ✗ → spend time getting to the office.
• spend half the day on coffee breaks — the preposition is on, not for.
• Haven't he scream at all? ✗ → Didn't he scream at all? / Hasn't he screamed at all?
• in the morning, not at the morning.

Failed: the odd (comment) — asked for the text's word for occasional; offered rare, random, then argued with the second meaning of odd for three minutes, be down to — asked for the informal because of; offered because of and due to, both formal, and the hunt took five minutes

Needed prompting: at the eleventh hour · in the nick of time — synonyms for down to the wire; got "in the last minutes" unaided, to witter on — garbled the verb, produced the preposition unaided, to perceive — had perception, needed the verb handed over, a relief — said relaxation, to stroll — a course word from the first weeks, gone, a crate — the cage/crate distinction was new, non-verbal cues — said clues

• Go through the study site properly, 30 minutes — her instruction, in class. She'll be quizzing from the Vocabulary page, so the New column is live material.
• Read both video-call-fatigue texts thoroughly — we only scanned and hunted for answers.
• Revision tasks for the break — she'll send some, and she asked Maksym to invent tasks too.
• Still outstanding: cover email in "Max's writings" · video resume, 5 min · the register note for the five important synonyms · the weird-professions article. The break is the window.
• Ex.10 / Ex.11 — submitted; she's marking them.

• The activation drill didn't happen. turn your hand to anything and tick all the boxes were the two phrases to force into small talk on 20 Aug. Twelve minutes of small talk and neither got said.
• The odd episode is the pattern in miniature — knowing the word blocked the meaning the text was using. Three minutes spent defending odd = strange against a text using it as occasional.
• Two things said well: the psychology answer on text A (we're social people, not built for a screen all day — she liked the phrasing), and the employer-side answer on remote teams (depends whether the team is in one city or distributed; allow remote, track deliverables, rent co-working for whoever wants an office).
• Next pair for the small-talk drill: be down to and witter on — both fresh, both usable in ordinary speech.
• No lesson the week of 24 Aug. Next class in September, Monday, date to confirm.