Tutorial colleges may help with exam preparation, but for savvy students looking to brush up on their English skills, an online English blog is proving to be more useful. The blog belongs to former English teacher Siu Hoi-yat, whose special approach to English has made him popular with students. In fact so popular is the blog that despite it being in Cantonese, it was named Best Education Blog at last year's Blog Awards, organised by China Times in Taiwan. Mr Siu said the idea for the blog came about when his students asked him how they were going to continue learning English when he moved to study in Britain last year. Mr Siu graduated with a degree in law from University of Hong Kong, but he did not become a lawyer. Instead, he became an English teacher. 'Unlike other subjects, you can't get good marks in English by learning everything by heart,' said Mr Siu, who has developed his some interesting teaching methods. 'To improve your English, it's better to put yourself in an English context, and listen and speak more.' He said sharing was more important than teaching and that using the right words at the right time was what mattered most. To get his point across, his blog carries a lot of useful information, including grammar, vocabulary and phrases that can used in everyday situations. There are also videos on pronunciation. Mr Siu recorded the videos himself and uploaded the clips to YouTube to show Hongkongers how to drop their Hong Kong accent. When it first started, the blog was aimed at students but within a year it had become one of the top-10 blogs on Yahoo. Today, the blog gets more than 10,000 hits a day. Capitalising on the success of his blog, Mr Siu is now writing newspaper columns and planning to publish two books on learning English this summer. 'I've received lots of comments from bloggers in the mainland China, Singapore and Malaysia, saying they don't fully understand articles in Traditional Chinese characters,' Mr Siu said. 'So I'm planning to convert my blog into simplified Chinese characters.' For more information, visit http://hk.myblog.yahoo.com/siu82english