1. There’s still time to enter the Climate Action for Language Education (CALE) school video competition https://www.britishcouncil.org/climate-connection/get-involved/action-language-education/school-video-competition

I left out one very important partner when I first mentioned this competition last Tuesday, namely IATEFL Global Issues SIG (GISIG) https://gisig.iatefl.org/ Sorry, GSIG!

2. The next CALE Education Exchange digital event will be at 16:00 UK time on Wednesday, 22^nd September on Climate change and language learning. More info on this event and future events in the series, plus recordings of previous events here https://www.britishcouncil.org/education/schools/education-exchange-digital-events/climate-change-language-learning

3. Some sobering climate facts in this new BBC report, Climate change: World now sees twice as many days over 50⁰C https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58494641

Many years ago, lulled into a false sense of security by the efficiency of our car’s air conditioning, I once stopped in a desert lay-by on the way home from Kuwait to Baghdad and opened the car door – ouch! Must have been at least 50⁰. I also learnt that a sunroof is not a sunroof in that part of the world; it’s a moonroof!

4. Courtesy of Mark Henebury, here’s more on non-lexical language https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210818-the-hand-gestures-that-last-longer-than-spoken-languages?ocid=twfut (I hope that non-lexical is the right word to use here.)

More articles on language from the BBC Future site here https://www.bbc.com/future/tags/language

5. And, finally and not at all light-heartedly, here’s a prescient piece that Dexter Filkins wrote for the New Yorker in 2012 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/07/09/after-america

Should you ever get chance to read his The Forever War: Dispatches from the War on Terror, do take it.

PS ~ PRELIM 2 is coming …..