1. The problem with English by Mario Saraceni from Portsmouth University for the Aeon website discusses whether English, Earth’s most-spoken language, is a living ‘gift’ or a many-headed ‘monster’. https://aeon.co/essays/how-do-you-decolonise-the-english-language

There’s a well-read audio version, too. Here’s the first paragraph:

In 400 years, English went from being a small language spoken in the British Isles to becoming the most dominant language in the world. In the year 1600, at the end of Queen Elizabeth I’s reign, English was spoken by 4 million people. By the 2020s, at the end of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, that number had risen to nearly 2 billion. Today, English is the main language in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand; and it’s an ‘intra-national’ language in former British colonies such as India, Singapore, South Africa and Nigeria. It is Earth’s lingua franca.

2. The software says my student cheated using AI. They say they’re innocent. Who do I believe? by Robert Topinka from Birkbeck College. “In the desperate scramble to combat AI, there is a real danger of penalising students who have done nothing wrong.” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/13/software-student-cheated-combat-ai

Curious fact: Birkbeck will be starting to teach in the daytime for the very first time this coming September, 201 years after its foundation.

3. Here’s a heartening New York Times gift from Alan Maley: When Your Technical Skills Are Eclipsed, Your Humanity Will Matter More Than Ever http://tinyurl.com/2d7ef3e3 Thank you, Alan! Here’s the first paragraph:

There have been just a handful of moments over the centuries when we have experienced a huge shift in the skills our economy values most. We are entering one such moment now. Technical and data skills that have been highly sought after for decades appear to be among the most exposed to advances in artificial intelligence. But other skills, particularly the people skills that we have long undervalued as soft, will very likely remain the most durable. That is a hopeful sign that A.I. could usher in a world of work that is anchored more, not less, around human ability.

4. NILE, the Norwich Institute for Language Education, have just uploaded their ‘Project-based learning for climate action’ resource kit to the NILE Members Area, so you can download it for free https://learning.nile-elt.com/d2l/home/6733

If you’re not already a NILE member, you’ll need to register, which is easy and free. I should declare an interest here: I very much enjoy my work part-time for NILE!

5. A Tibetan short story from Words Without Borders, Wink by Pema Bhum, translated by Tenzin Dickie https://wordswithoutborders.org/read/article/2015-08/blink/

Click on the ‘Original Language’ button on the right at the beginning of the article for the parallel version with the beautiful original Tibetan script, which seems to be a more concise language than English!

6. And, finally, two films about the making of traditional cheese:

Kirkham’s Lancashire cheese, wrongly accused, it seems, recently of being the origin of an outbreak of food poisoning here in the UK https://youtu.be/uphuEbO4-AA?feature=shared

and Etivaz, made only in the summer, way up in the Swiss Alps https://youtu.be/AgasrB9HUXk?feature=shared