1. Global Englishes: Research agendas and tasks in English as a lingua franca by Will Baker, Fan Fang & Telma Gimenez has just been made available open access by Cambridge University Press https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/language-teaching/article/global-englishes-research-agendas-and-tasks-in-english-as-a-lingua-franca/9D8CABD3D9DEFBC5B45AB7D66237052A PDF below.

Global Englishes, and within that the field of English as a lingua franca, is a huge and expanding area of research and pedagogy. This paper provides a sample of our beliefs about productive areas of research. The nine tasks presented suggest the importance of research in the areas of intercultural and digital communication, especially through the adoption of trans theories such as translanguaging, transmodality, and transcultural communication. Furthermore, concepts such as communicative competence will need rethinking to match the multilingual, multimodal, and multicultural resources that appear in such communication. The implications for pedagogy are extensive …

2. And, in the interests of Oxbridge balance, here’s a free paper from Oxford University Press, Digital Pedagogy https://elt.oup.com/feature/global/expert/digital-pedagogy?cc=gb&selLanguage=en PDF below.

What does it mean to teach and learn English effectively in the digital age? This is the central question guiding this position paper. As digital tools have become increasingly embedded in the daily realities of English language teaching, many teachers find themselves navigating a rapidly evolving landscape (…) Amidst the buzz and potential innovation, a deeper, more urgent question remains: how can digital tools be used to genuinely support more meaningful learning?

3. Here’s Jessica Mackay’s latest update of her list of CPD opportunities, for the months of June and July https://eim-ub.blogspot.com/2026/05/upcoming-cpd-opportunities-summer-2026.html?m=1 I’m not quite as late as last time: you’ve only missed two events!

4. Keir Starmer’s motivation for banning young people from social media at precisely this point in his political career has been questioned. Here’s The Daily Telegraph’s take, Social media ban is Starmer’s desperate scramble for a legacy https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/54d0c64ef8e131a2

And here’s the website of an activist organisation very much in favour of such a ban https://www.smartphonefreechildhood.org/

5. Abdullah Ibrahim died yesterday at the age of 91. Here’s (one version of, there are several on YouTube) the very best of him https://youtu.be/n_pGN_pASB0