then use English to quiz your students about your colleagues That'll be down to earth as it resembles the pub gossiping.

No, seriously. You're right when it comes to technical language. And as ines said before: it's a question of definition. If you wanna do bilingual classes then you got to have a different approach and aspiration as in classes where you use English to communicate.

But that communication between teacher and students - which got nothing to do with the subject itself - could be done in English.

HAH! I'm going to London and Cambridge for a week in the autumn break. So - even though it will not be a Manchester Pub but a rather cozy one right behind the Old Bailey (my favourite!), I will try to practise saying: "shtiff-brishled brush, goln' sheksh and pitchur compesishn".
And if a cop should stop us on the way home: "Shorry, Ossifer, I wash busy doing a practice in bilingle teaching!"

Well, depending on the level of alcohol in your blood you might need to practise very hard

For my part I can say, that I really do enjoy reading texts and writing down words from it in my excel file that do not belong to my active word power in order to make it part of it.

We have Time Magazine in our school library which I look at from time to time and sometimes I buy Spotlight at the station for myself, the reading of which I enjoy very much, mostly those articles that give really new information like the recent one about London in one of the last editions.

What struck me in the above mentioned last edition of "Spotlight" was a contribution to the word power section about the word "basket case".
Everyone would say that this word looks rather harmless, wouldn't you think so?
In fact, its original meaning says that soldiers in World War I having lost both arms and legs that had to be transported in baskets, were called "basket cases". Apart from that in nowaday's world a "basket case" describes a person that is mentally and emotionally disfunctioning.
And, besides, I remember that the pop group "Green Day" once made a song with that title. Who knows it?
I have found a link with the text which looks rather like the second defintion of the word.
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/greenday/basketcase.html

# Most of the books I read are in English.
# I actively take part in political discussion groups on yahoo.
# I entertain lively e-mail contact to my British friends.
# I subscribed to a couple of British or American online-periodicals which i read whenever I feel like it.

www.aldaily.com
www.lewrockwell.com
www.slate.com

To boost your vocab here's a nice one: you get ONE WORD A DAY sent to you by e-mail. the mail contains special explanations on the use of that word.
http://owad.de/

I just try to keep the level!

With all this: Hello - what's your name - Debbie is a girl....." one day I will dumb down my English completely....
Although I read (English books), I miss reading current issues... no time!?

But I liked the the OWAD-idea and signed - let's see!

You test and brush up your word knowledge by means of multiple-choice-questions and donate 10 grains of rice for each correct answer. If your answer is not correct, the solution is indicated.

Give it a try and enjoy!

http://www.freerice.com/

I have put this link already into 4teachers' link section. It is in the file called "online lernen".

...but it's not really English that's tested here, more Latin and Greek

my dear. That's what I figured when playing it again. Nothing for the kids. However, English has more words of Latin and Greek origin that German, and those words cover about 52 % of all English words. I cannot tell the source of this information any more.

Just in case you want to read what the Queen has to tell her people:

http://www.4teachers.de/url/2230

Even in this smooth and easy-to-read text I stumbled over a phrase I had not heard or read yet:

to make do - zurechtkommen