About

I was lucky enough to spend most of 2022 taking a year off my usual teaching job in Canberra, Australia, to live in Finland while my wife was working at the University of Helsinki. 

Beyond travelling and catching up on some of the books, television and games I'd missed since becoming a teacher (it turns out The Wire really is that good), I found I needed a project to occupy my time in a somewhat productive way.

This website is the result, and I hope it can help my students and anyone else who comes across it to feel more confident when participating in English classes and completing assessment tasks.

I would like to thank the very patient people who provided suggestions and feedback for the site as it took shape. 

Fellow teachers Hannah Bennett, Katrina Clarke, Andrew Clissold, Miles Gantney and Rebecca Marston endured countless emails about paragraph structure and categories for literary techniques—often in the middle of busy school periods. I'd like to give a special thanks to Katrina for performing live tests of different parts of the site with her students.

These students offered honest and constructive feedback which helped to inform the final form of the site. One Year 12 student in particular went above and beyond in providing precise feedback and l'd like to thank them sincerely for their help.

My long-suffering wife, who unfortunately for her is a linguist, had to endure endless questions about clauses and phrases while I was writing the Grammar guide—thank you as always for your patience and understanding.

I'd also like to thank the city of Helsinki for being such an excellent host throughout the site's development. The cafes, libraries and municipal centres throughout the city provided an endless stream of coffee, cinnamon scrolls and friendly service to keep me going during those dark winter days—kiitos!

Finally, thank you dear reader for taking the time to visit the site to develop your English skills—may it help you to punctuate your dependent and independent clauses correctly.