I still remember, very clearly, the first German I met who wanted to brush up on his English skills. A student, but not a language student, he was planning to travel to Ireland on holiday. He wanted to improve on his English before he left. He took out a little wooden box filled with small cards with carefully written nouns, adjectives and short phrases. "I have to get through two hundred of these by next week," he announced. What was this? I was shocked. This seemed like some form of obscure...
