1. The Cambridge Dictionary ‘word of the year’ is one I’ve never heard or read or used https://www.cam.ac.uk/news/cambridge-dictionary-reveals-word-of-the-year-2025 Should I be worried, I wonder?

2. The Flipping Book Club “is free and is intended for those who wish to practice their English with L2 English speakers, joining in discussions about texts from writers from diverse countries and cultures”. More info and registration here https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScI7mVwLihLor6U7VSEL_GjiW_7QyYhRFQB3eImZ3zd7UlnWQ/viewform

Sounds like a very good idea. It’s being facilitated by a NILE colleague, Chris Rose, whose latest novel We Live Here Now has been very well received, including by the books team at The Telegraph https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/a5fa71658a5d1dd1 (Scroll down through the fiction section: Chris writes as C D Rose.)

3. The open-access ELT Classroom Research Journal aims to “publish teachers’ classroom research, but also, and perhaps more importantly, our aim to mentor teacher-researchers” https://eltcrj.com/ The latest (November 2025) issue includes articles supported and developed in three different ways:

mentorship on campus (Abu-Naji & Nassar)

mentorship through a dedicated mentoring support group (all three book reviews came through our MenTRnet partnership)

mentoring both before submission and during the publication process, by editors and/or by Mentor-Referees (the three papers from Cameroon).

You’ll find it here https://eltcrj.com/v2-i2-full/ PDF below.

4. And here’s the complementary Warwick University web archive on Mentor Development for Exploratory Action Research (EAR) https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/al/research/mdear It includes a video interview with the fairy godmother of EAR, Richard Smith – I was going to call him the godfather but I suspect he might not like that https://youtu.be/CAOaodHCscI – and lots more besides.

5. I stumbled across Liam Shields from Manchester University’s advice on How to Answer Essay and Exam Questions the other dayhttps://liamshields.com/teaching-and-study-materials/ (Love his site’s author-stuffing-face photos!)

A Good Introduction

•            State the answer you will give up-front. This is not a murder mystery novel!

•            Give an unequivocal answer. Do not simply list objections or conclude “maybe, maybe not”

•            Make it clear what steps you will take to establish your conclusion.

•            Explain why these steps will establish your conclusion

By stating your answer and plan early on you make it easy for the examiner to follow your argument.

It is fine to start the essay with “In this essay I will argue that…”

Think of your introduction as a promise to the examiner about what to expect. Then all you have to do is keep that promise. This will help you to avoid digression and irrelevancies later on.

Plus, a more famous example, Winston Churchill’s ‘Brevity’ memo of August 9^th 1940 https://policymemos.hks.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/omnuum8096/files/policymemos/files/churchill_memo_on_brevity.pdf

PDFs of both pieces below.

5. And, finally and crunchily, from Katja Hoyer, An Acquired Taste: Germany’s Favourite Crisps … and how their story begins in Ireland https://www.katjahoyer.uk/p/an-acquired-taste-germanys-favourite I had no idea that flavoured crisps were invented in Ireland.