MED Magazine – The Best of British

MED Magazine - Issue 56 - January 2010

MED Web Watch
by Mairi MacDonald

Next in a series of short articles looking at web resources useful for teachers and learners of English. As a rough guide, each site is marked out of 25 in terms of content, design and ease-of-use.

The Best of British
www.effingpot.com

This site is a guide to British English, aimed at native speakers of American English. Drawn from one Englishman's experience of living in the US, The Best of British addresses the confusions, misunderstandings and differences between the two varieties of English.

The Best of British is an entertaining and enjoyable read, punctuated with some fun illustrations. The material is organised into seven categories: Slang, People, Motoring, Clothing, Around the House, Food and Drink and Odds and Sods. The definitions are presented as long lists of words, and the chatty, informal style of writing often draws you into reading further.

Much of the appeal of this site is that the definitions are based on actual conversations between the author, ‘Dr Effingpot’, and the people he's met on his travels around the US. As a result, practical phrases that crop up in day-to-day life feature quite heavily, so this site would also suit anyone preparing to spend some time in the UK. There's also a lot of cultural information – lollipop man, cuppa, grub, cream tea, bank holiday are all terms useful to anyone wanting to find out more about British culture, not just to North Americans.

Some explanations are too obscure to be useful (Dekko, for example) or too rude for the classroom, so I wouldn't let kids loose on the site. The home page also points out that the list was compiled 10 years ago, (and it’s unclear how long ago the home page was written!). That said, there's a lot of useful and relevant information here. It would be a worthwhile task creating a quiz to direct students to the more useful words, using the search facility.

It's important to bear in mind that the definitions listed are just one person's opinion, but the entertaining style means there's a lot of vocabulary to pick up from even just a casual read.

Score
current and archived content
up-to-dateness/topicality
graphic design and navigation
speed and technical performance
features and functionality
overall score	17 out of 25