1. A piece from my previous employer, the British Council: Vicky Gough’s article for their online magazine, Voices: The British and their secret language regrets https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/british-and-their-secret-language-regrets

We are not a nation of happy monoglots, it seems.

2. A piece from my current employer, NILE (the Norwich Institute for Language Education): their newsletter this month leads on the NILE CEFR Filtering Tool with YL proficiency descriptors https://www.nile-elt.com/products/NewsletterJan23

If you haven’t got a clue what on earth a CEFR Filtering Tool with YL proficiency descriptors is about, you might want to give it a miss; if, on the other hand, a CEFR Filtering Tool with YL proficiency descriptors sounds like it might be useful in your work, watch Thom Kiddle’s introductory video here https://youtu.be/4Xhi70AEKYg

3. How do you identify and nurture people with potential? How do you turn a bunch of talented individuals into a cohesive team? Where does decision-making science end and judgement begin? are some of the questions that Ed Smith, until recently the Chief Selector for the England cricket team, will be answering in his talk, How to make better decisions, at the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) on Thursday, 2^nd February at 13:00 UK time.

Online and face-to-face: make sure you book the right kind of ticket https://www.thersa.org/events/2023/02/how-to-make-better-decisions

4. And, finally, a word cloud of the answers to the question, What policy do you most associate with Rishi Sunak? (the current UK prime minister) from Redfield and Wilton (R&W) which suggests he’s not yet achieved ‘cut-through’ with the public:

More R&W polling here https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/magnified-email/issue-55/ and an explanation of ‘cut-through’ here https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/cut-through_2