Monthly Archives: July 2021

1. This one’s not light reading – thanks, Amy! – but will repay a half-hour’s quiet attention, Ofsted’s review of research into factors that can affect the quality of education in languages, “its purpose to identify factors that contribute to … Continue reading →

1. More on the interface between the hands and the brain, from my colleague Robin in Tokyo https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-athletes-way/202107/touch-typing-may-unclamp-the-brain-and-promote-flow-state Never having learnt to touch type remains one of the embarrassments of my life when working in an open-plan office; I can … Continue reading →

1. When I was in primary school, handwriting was a very big deal – we spent hours practising our letters. Years of keyboard work later, I can now hardly write a legible sentence. Just as well I learnt to read … Continue reading →

1. UnHerd is new to me https://unherd.com/ If you’re pushed for time, all its articles are tagged with how long they take to read! It has an ambitious mission: UnHerd aims to do two things: to push back against the … Continue reading →

1. The Teacher Tapp app allows teachers to share thoughts and opinions by answering three short multiple-choice questions sent to their phone at 3:30 pm each day. Answers are collated and the findings shared. The idea’s a good and simple … Continue reading →

1. ReadListenLearn have added comprehension questions to some of their stories, most of which already have an audio version https://readlistenlearn.net/en Here’s a science fiction story, The Ablest Man in the World, by Edward Page Mitchell, a one-eyed writer I’d never … Continue reading →

1. The first of two items on academic writing. Tomorrow, Friday 9th July, at 14:00 UK time Ana Frankenberg-Garcia from Surrey University here in the UK will be talking about Academic English Collocations: from corpus data to assisted writing with … Continue reading →

1. At 10:00 UK time tomorrow, Thursday 8th July, The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education https://www.obhe.org/ presents the first in a series of ‘Borderless Conversations’ with Perry Hobson from Sunway University & Mushtak Al-Atabi from the Kuala Lumpur branch of … Continue reading →

1. If you’re involved with an English Teachers’ Association (ETA), either as member or office-bearer, you might like to check out this announcement from the A S Hornby Educational Trust about funding for ETA projects https://www.hornby-trust.org.uk/projects#Projects You can learn more … Continue reading →

1. I was speaking to Steve Mann earlier today and he didn’t tell me he was newly famous. Scroll down the page for his video interview with John Shackleton on his new report on remote-delivered CPD – videos work very … Continue reading →