Author Archives: roycross

1. Two pieces of the many written about Queen Elizabeth II since her death last Thursday: one you might not have been expecting, from Jeanette Winterson, ‘She has been the one and only stable female in my life’ https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/11/jeanette-winterson-on-mourning-the-queen and … Continue reading →

1. Two from the ECML (European Centre for Modern Languages) in Graz: a poll, Why learn a language?, which asks for your top three reasons for doing sohttps://edl.ecml.at/Activities/Poll/tabid/3229/Default.aspx and a (fun but quite challenging!) game based on pictures with language … Continue reading →

1. Two short, different introductions by David Bellos of Princeton University to his book, Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: an animation from Penguin Books https://youtu.be/GyTYbHMdvE0 and a talking head one from Big Think https://bigthink.com/videos/linguistic-diversity-is-language-2/ Bellos has made a … Continue reading →

1. Here’s two ways of saying the same thing about How Living Abroad Helps You Develop a Clearer Sense of Self: one a Harvard Business Review article https://hbr.org/2018/05/how-living-abroad-helps-you-develop-a-clearer-sense-of-self and the other a favourite Philip Larkin poem of mine that many … Continue reading →

1. Here’s David Edgerton’s review of retired diplomat Arthur Snell’s book, How Britain Broke the World: War, Greed and Blunders from Kosovo to Afghanistan, 1997-2021 for The New Statesman https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/book-of-the-day/2022/08/british-diplomacy-in-the-dock There are alternative points of view, one ought to point … Continue reading →

1. I reckon you need to be brave to write three articles on Humor (sic) in ELT, which is what John Rucynski has done for TESOL Connections. See what you think; PDFs below. #1 http://newsmanager.commpartners.com/tesolc/issues/2022-05-01/email.html #2 http://newsmanager.commpartners.com/tesolc/issues/2022-06-01/email.html #3 http://newsmanager.commpartners.com/tesolc/issues/2022-08-01/email.html 2. … Continue reading →

1. Our Brain Acts the Same Whatever the Language, apparently, new research with speakers of languages other than English suggests https://www.languagemagazine.com/2022/08/12/brain-acts-the-same-whatever-the-language/ “The researchers decided to use Alice in Wonderland as the text that everyone would listen to, because it is … Continue reading →

1. Another good piece from Language Magazine (thanks, Melanie!) on translanguaging, Breaking down Barriers, from Jacob Huckle https://www.languagemagazine.com/2022/08/15/breaking-down-barriers/ Huckle explains that his article “will outline some potential barriers in the domains of policy, practice, and personal belief and end with … Continue reading →

1. The Global Citizenship and Multilingual Competences (GCMC) toolkit project https://gcmc.global/ which aims to “provide online teacher development resources for secondary teachers of all subjects about how to integrate global citizenship goals and multilingual pedagogies into their practices in a … Continue reading →

1. I missed a trick on Tuesday. It was the centenary of the birth of Philip Larkin. There’s been a lot of media coverage, much of it playing on the disjunct between his sublime poetry and his less-than-sublime character. Simon … Continue reading →