Roy Cross's Blog

1. There’s a LanguageCert webinar with Harry Waters, Caring through Stories: A story for the climate crisis, at 09:00 UK time on Wednesday 10^th April. More info and registration here https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_FNpdwWCYRqatC_yjg8v2ew#/registration

Information on other LanguageCert teacher webinars in April here https://www.languagecert.org/en/preparation/webinars/webinars-for-teachers

2. Here’s a short video from Jason Arday of Cambridge University Faculty of Education celebrating Neurodiversity Week, discussing neurodiversity, how research can inform practice and make education more inclusive for everyone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74okc6ENMuY

3. Two from/with Geoff Mulgan:

i) an article for Medium, The case for a right to truth https://geoffmulgan.medium.com/the-case-for-a-right-to-truth-5c2a9dc2ee74

We live in a world full of lies, distortions and misinformation. Should we have rights to be told the truth? If a government issues a statistic, a report, or a warning to its citizens should any rights guarantee that it’s based on the best available information? Should there be penalties if a government, or a political party, knowingly lies?

ii) in discussion about his new book with Ravi Gurumurthy at NESTA, online and f2f, at 18:00 on Thursday 25^th April, When Science Meets Power https://www.nesta.org.uk/event/when-science-meets-power/

The complex relationship between science and politics is becoming increasingly apparent in our daily politics and everyday lives, from debates on climate change policy to decisions on artificial intelligence. How can they be reconciled so that crucial decisions are both well-informed and legitimate?

4. Three education pieces on a variety of topics from The Guardian:

i) ‘We don’t need air con’: how Burkina Faso builds schools that stay cool in 40C heat https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/29/we-dont-need-air-con-how-burkina-faso-builds-schools-that-stay-cool-in-40c-heat

ii) Free lunches, brain breaks and happy teachers: why Estonia has the best schools in Europe https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/27/free-lunches-brain-breaks-and-happy-teachers-why-estonia-has-the-best-schools-in-europe

iii) Tory immigration policies risk over-reliance on Chinese students, ex-universities minister warns https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/mar/31/whitehall-policies-risk-china-reliance-warns-former-universities-minister

5. And, finally and poignantly, Mary Ellen Mark’s photographs of Erin Blackwell (aka Tiny) and her family over 32 years https://maryellenmark.com/books/tiny-streetwise-revisited And here’s a short video with Mary Ellen Mark talking about her work (which includes lots of her photos) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w2aaO9WYh4

Blog version: https://roycross.blog/

The next ‘Free Resources’ message will be on Tuesday 3^rd April: I’m away for a week exploring family history in Banja Luka!

1. Stephen Downes asked ChatGPT to write an article with the following title, Eight Reasons People Dislike Learning Management Systems (LMS) https://chat.openai.com/share/0ee0026f-800d-4ebb-89c8-6fe67d415d2c At least a B+ mark, I reckon!

2. Cambridge University Press & Assessment recently convened a panel discussion on “ELT & AI: The Big Questions in Teaching, Learning & Assessment”. Here’s their report on LinkedIn (which I hope everyone can access)  https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/exploring-future-english-language-teaching-mhzde/ and here’s the recording of the event https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVMdca0j6BA

Here’s a related post on the Cambridge blog from Sam Oliver, AI prompt writing for ELT Teachers: 7 ingredients of a successful prompt https://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2024/03/09/ai-prompt-writing-for-elt-teachers-7-ingredients-of-a-successful-prompt/

3. APAC is the Associació de Professorat d’Anglès de Catalunya (Association of English Teachers of Catalonia). The archive of their journal goes back to 1988 – with adverts for that long-forgotten beast, the hard copy Encyclopaedia Britannica, in the early issues – and provides an interesting glimpse into ELT fads and fashions over the years https://www.apac365.org/elt-journal Here’s the latest issue, Number 94 https://tinyurl.com/49zcxnst and here’s the first issue https://tinyurl.com/45k72aex PDFs of both below.

4. The UK Government has just given Brian Bell two months (and two months only!) to review the political hot potato that is the UK Graduate visa route. Here’s their letter making him an offer he can’t refuse https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/mac-commissioned-to-review-the-graduate-route/letter-from-the-home-secretary-to-professor-brian-bell-11-march-2024-accessible

5. And, finally, a whole host of marvellous photographs from this year’s Sony World Photography Awards https://www.worldphoto.org/2024-open-competition-winners-shortlist

Two of my own favourites:

1. If you’re a teacher educator (or aspire to be one), you’ll find this TeachingEnglish event at 12:00 UK time tomorrow, Wednesday 20^th March, interesting, I think: the Teacher educator webinar series review 2023-2024 will reflect on the main insights from the most recent teacher educator webinar series and take a look at possible future themes.

More info and registration here https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/news-and-events/webinars/webinars-teacher-educator/teacher-educator-webinar-series-review-2023-2024

2. BOLD is an interdisciplinary initiative dedicated to spreading the word about how children and young people develop and learn which explores ‘Big Ideas for Growing Minds’ https://bold.expert/ Here’s a recent podcast of theirs, Nurturing entrepreneurial mindsets at school https://bold.expert/nurturing-entrepreneurial-mindsets-at-school/ 

BOLD is funded by the Jacobs Foundation in Switzerland https://jacobsfoundation.org/ Thanks to Larisa Akrofie for bringing this to my attention!

3. A Muslim & A Jew Go There is a new podcast with Sayeeda Warsi (the Muslim) and David Baddiel (the Jew) which does exactly what it says on the tin and discusses ‘some of the most radioactive issues’ in the news at present https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/a-muslim-a-jew-go-there/id1732552661

4. Here’s Alexandra Mihai’s latest blog post, Space to fail. And learn, about “how we can help students to own their mistakes and really learn from them” https://educationalist.substack.com/p/space-to-fail-and-learn

5. And, finally, The Last Gold Beater in Venice from The New York Times https://tinyurl.com/5n79b9ah

1. Two from Aeon to start with today:

a) Cathedrals of convention by Reuben Cohn-Gordon: “Humans have a strong impulse to see things that are arbitrary or conventional as natural and essential – especially language” https://aeon.co/essays/are-the-exact-words-of-a-language-arbitrary-or-necessary

I don’t think I’ll spoil your reading pleasure by giving you the last three sentences: “But perhaps the best way to understand the intuitive appeal of Cratylus’ view is with the story about the Englishman who is trying to demonstrate the intrinsic superiority of his native language. In French, he argues, a spoon is called a cuillère, while in Spanish it is a cuchara, and in Hebrew a כף /kaf/. But in English, it is called nothing other than what it truly is: a spoon!”

b) Indexing the information age by Monica Westin from Manchester Metropolitan University is an account of the meeting one weekend in March 1995 in Dublin, Ohio at which a group of librarians and web technologists “created a radical system for describing and discovering online content that still directly powers web search today” https://aeon.co/essays/the-birth-of-our-system-for-describing-web-content

2. I mentioned Ethan Mollick’s blog, One Useful Thing, a while ago https://www.oneusefulthing.org/ Ethan and his wife Lilach have now produced a companion site, More Useful Things: AI Resources https://www.moreusefulthings.com/ which includes a ‘prompt library’ – exploring it helped me understand the potential of ChatGPT much better – and a rich collection of other resources, including a Wharton University ‘Crash Course’ made up of five short videos,  Practical AI for Instructors and Students https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9gmyvf7JYo

3. In Praise of Reading Le Carré’s Entire Oeuvre in Order is a CrimeReads piece by Ben Winters which outlines the interesting and thorough approach he took to reading John Le Carré’s work from start to finish https://crimereads.com/in-praise-of-reading-le-carres-entire-oeuvre-in-order/

Winters says this approach can be taken to almost any novelist – but possibly not Anthony Trollope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Trollope_bibliography

The Women Codebreakers who Uncovered some of the Cold War’s Most Notorious Spies is another CrimeReads piece, by Katherine Reay, which plays out against a Cold War background, as many of Le Carré’s early books did, and tells the story of the Venona Project, the all-woman team who cracked nearly all the Soviet Union’s secret communications for nearly forty years https://crimereads.com/the-women-codebreakers-who-uncovered-some-of-the-cold-wars-most-notorious-spies/

4. For a change, a gift recipe this time from The New York Times, one for Miso Leeks with White Beans that caught my eye the other day https://tinyurl.com/ycxy4rny

5. And, finally, Five Films for Freedom: “a dive into the world of LGBTQIA+ cinema from the comfort of home!” In partnership with BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival, the British Council is celebrating global LGBTQIA+ stories, in support of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual people across the world, with this, its tenth annual online film festival https://film.britishcouncil.org/about/work/fivefilmsforfreedom

1. Two upcoming LSE events, both f2f if you’re in London and online if you’re not:

a) Wednesday 20 March 2024 at 19:00 UK time, Judith Butler discussing her new book, Who’s afraid of gender?, with Sumi Madhok. More info here https://www.lse.ac.uk/Events/2024/03/202403201830/gender and online registration here https://lselive.eckoenterprise.net/events/20240320/login

b) Wednesday 27 March 2024 at 18:30 UK time What it means to be human in a world changed by AI with Madhumita Murgia, chaired by Kenneth Benoit. More info here  https://www.lse.ac.uk/Events/2024/03/202403271830/AI and online registration here https://lselive.eckoenterprise.net/events/20240327/login

2. The Parliament Matters podcast from the Hansard Society is finding its feet, I think https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLchpIkwdUkzZ7z90WFDKgERZN0J5T_tgG

Here’s Episode 23, The Foreign Affairs Committee: commentator or influencer? A conversation with Alicia Kearns MP https://youtu.be/w7IzPXk9-SU?feature=shared

3. An intentionally alarmist piece by Liza Featherstone for The New Republic, The Scariest Part About Artificial Intelligence https://newrepublic.com/article/179538/environment-artificial-intelligence-water-energy

“Researching this issue gives one all the feelings of a dystopian twentieth-century sci-fi movie about parasitical robots stealing our human essence and ultimately killing us off. At every point, we want to yell at the screen, “Don’t let the robots in there!” We wonder: Can’t they be stopped?”

4. Here’s some ’Faculty News’ from the Department of Education at Cambridge University, Synergy between students’ motivation and ‘thinking about thinking’ linked to academic achievement, which summarises a recent study of more than 1,000 teenagers in Greece by Ioannis Katsantonis & Ros McLellan from Cambridge University https://content.educ.cam.ac.uk/23-katsantonis-motivation

I’m still trying to work out whether this tells us anything that we didn’t already (think we?) know, viz. success (at school and elsewhere) breeds success. Here’s another take on success breeds success from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), Field experiments of success-breeds-success dynamics by Arnout van de Rijta, Soong Moon Kang, Michael Restivo & Akshay Patil https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1316836111 PDF below.

PNAS also have an interesting, wide-ranging feature, Front Matter, which highlights the stories behind the science https://www.pnas.org/front-matter

5. And, finally, an Engelsberg Ideas podcast on the extraordinary German filmmaker Werner Herzog that I found engrossing https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/ei-talks-werner-herzog/id1524774362?i=1000648181843

More Engelsberg Ideas podcasts here, a very eclectic mix https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/engelsberg-ideas-podcasts/id1524774362

In the Herzog podcast, Geoff Andrew describes seeing The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser for the first time at the Arts Cinema in Cambridge in 1975 – so did I!

Blog version: https://roycross.blog/

1. There’s a TeachingEnglish Facebook Live event, Empowering Women in ELT, with Grazzia Maria Mendoza Chirinos & Leticia Araceli Salas Serrano tomorrow, Friday 8^th March, International Women’s Day, at 15:00 UK time https://www.facebook.com/events/761275018755247

And below is another copy of the book they co-authored (that I shared first time round back in November), Empowered Women in ELT: A Collection of Worldwide Stories

2. The next NATESOL event at 16:00 UK time on Wednesday, 13^th March, Harnessing language learning motivation and investment through a writing project, is a presentation by Dario Banegas of the main takeaways from an action research-based project carried out with teenage learners in Argentina.

Can we promote language learning motivation and investment through writing? Yes! More info and registration here https://www.natesol.org/ and copy of flyer below.

3. The Geneva Convention states that no “protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.”

Here’s Devi Sridhar from Edinburgh University on the collective punishment (my term, not hers) currently being inflicted on Palestinians, I asked public health colleagues about starvation in Gaza. They say there is no precedent for what is happening https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/06/colleagues-starvation-gaza-no-precedent-famine

More on collective punishment from Kevin Jon Heller of Copenhagen University here https://opiniojuris.org/2023/10/24/a-short-history-of-the-war-crime-of-collective-punishment/

4. Here’s Richard Smith’s talk for the Durbeen Online Research Expo last month, Innovation and Educational Research: with what (sustained) value for teachers?, in which he questions the received wisdom that innovation is in itself always a good thing https://www.facebook.com/durbeenPK/videos/1519978448858561

5. Here’s the TeachingEnglish schedule for March https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/community/top-stories/march-2024-knowing-subject

and here’s a wonderfully comprehensive list from Jessica Mackay of the University of Barcelona, CPD Opportunities Spring 2024 https://eim-ub.blogspot.com/2024/03/cpd-opportunities-spring-2024.html#more

NB! There’s several events in Jessica’s list that are happening this week!

6. And, finally, jazz ‘kissa’ in Tokyo https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2023/oct/05/one-kissa-is-all-it-takes-tokyos-finest-jazz-haunts-in-pictures The Haruki Murakami novel, ‘South of the Border, West of the Sun’, is the closest I’ve got to a ‘kissa’ – alas!

1. If you missed the Macmillan Global Teachers’ Festival the other day, they’ve been quick to put recordings of all the sessions up on their YouTube channel. Well worth a browse! https://www.youtube.com/@Macmillanenglish/videos

2. (This is a long one.) The 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) https://ich.unesco.org/en/convention defines ICH as a phenomenon that is:

a) transmitted from generation to generation;

b) constitutes an important aspect of a community’s identity.

There are five categories: crafts, oral traditions, performance arts, rituals or social customs, and “knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe”, which between them include carnivals, alphabets, equestrian games; traditions of boatbuilding, polyphonic song, systems of irrigation, navigation, divination, conflict remediation and much more besides.

Dive into intangible cultural heritage! is the headline on UNESCO’s interactive database of ICH from around the world https://ich.unesco.org/en/dive The interactive bit I find a little confusing, so the best way in – for me at least – is via the listings page https://ich.unesco.org/en/lists where you can either search by country or topic or simply scroll down the list of what UNESCO calls ‘elements’, which begins with the most recently added. Here’s the most recent ten, each illustrated with a video

Paraguay: making the ‘Poncho Para’i de 60 Listas’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7FWSJj7xGo

Mozambique: the Mapiko dance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHXaansUs3c

Malaysia: the Mek Mulung performance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feuU9uD94HQ

Türkiye: traditional olive cultivation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feuU9uD94HQ

Syrian Arab Republic: traditional glassblowing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXhgUdElNXY

Djibouti: the ‘xeedho’ wedding gift https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkDu0o_fQ5o

Philippines: Aklan piña weaving https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tnyh9sN7bI

Lebanon: the Al-Man’ouché breakfast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgp4VJ3UF-g

Switzerland: the Alpine pasture season https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wS8gaH1kgw

Turkmenistan: breeding Akhal-Teke horses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlmE_ZCN3Xo

Today, there are examples of ICH from one hundred and forty-five countries in the database. No UK yet, though, nor USA …

3. I stumbled over this the other day, History Works, full of (hi)stories about Cambridge, most with learning materials http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/history-stories/ PowerPoint and PDF versions of ‘Life in a Victorian School’ below by way of example http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/history-stories/victorian-schools/

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4. And, finally, a short film from 1952 about William Faulkner and his Mississippi hometown, Oxford https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1tQ-wt-eas

1. ‘Like the flip of a switch, it’s gone’: has the ecosystem of the UK’s largest lake collapsed? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/19/like-the-flip-of-a-switch-its-gone-has-the-ecosystem-of-the-uk-largest-lake-collapsed-aoe

Hands up if you know where the UK’s largest lake is?

2. Here’s a TransformELT report by a team led by John Knagg on ten years of educational innovation in Uruguay, Over a decade of innovation: Ceibal en Inglés http://tinyurl.com/3wawtd9y

Ceibal en Inglés is a programme designed to teach English to children in state schools in Uruguay, very innovative when it started ten years ago, built around partnerships between a teacher in the classroom and a ‘remote teacher’ appearing on television. PDF below.

3. Three articles from The Conversation:

i) IQ tests: the danger of reading too much into them – and the crucial cognitive skills they don’t measure by Lawrence Whalley from Aberdeen University https://theconversation.com/iq-tests-the-danger-of-reading-too-much-into-them-and-the-crucial-cognitive-skills-they-dont-measure-223570

They were a big (and trusted) part of my primary school education in the early 60s.

ii) Social media users say their Palestine content is being shadow banned – here’s how to know if it’s happening to you by Carolina Arefrom Northumbria University https://theconversation.com/social-media-users-say-their-palestine-content-is-being-shadow-banned-heres-how-to-know-if-its-happening-to-you-222575

The unintended consequences of social media algorithms, or the intended consequences?

iii) Meet Lactobacillus acidophilus – the gut health superhero by Samuel J. White & Philippe B. Wilson from Nottingham Trent Universityhttps://theconversation.com/gut-microbiome-meet-lactobacillus-acidophilus-the-gut-health-superhero-213926

But do all cultures round the world have the equivalent of the yogurts and kefirs that most of us here in Eurasia get our Lactobacillus acidophilus from?

4. Three gift articles from The New York Times:

i) How Red Wine Lost Its Health Halo http://tinyurl.com/3fszbj8z

No amount of any alcohol is safe, says the World Health Organisation. Oh dear …

ii) Could You Pass the Presidential Physical Fitness Test Today? http://tinyurl.com/kh82m48e

I thought it was going to be about Biden and Trump and how they both failed!

iii) Can Learning a New Language Stave Off Dementia? http://tinyurl.com/5yju8nk4

Research suggests that bilingual people enjoy some cognitive benefits later in life, but it probably requires more than a few Spanish lessons in your 60s.

Here’s a bonus piece from Cambridge University that might offer comfort to non-bilingual heavy drinkers, Strongest evidence to date of brain’s ability to compensate for age-related cognitive decline https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/strongest-evidence-to-date-of-brains-ability-to-compensate-for-age-related-cognitive-decline

5. And, finally, Milbenkäse, a cheese produced in partnership by the good burghers of Würchwitz in Germany and the cheese mite (Tyrophagus casei) https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/cheese-mite-memorial I’ve not yet tried it!

1. This one may puzzle those of you who aren’t language teachers, The transformative role of scaffolding in academic writing tutorials is the title of the next event in UCL (University College London)’s Academic Writing Seminar Series at 16:00 UK time this Thursday, 29^th February, with Cathy Morand from UCL’s Academic Communication Centre.

More info and registration here https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/events/2024/feb/transformative-role-scaffolding-academic-writing-tutorials

2. Two on Ukraine next:

i) Russia, America and the roads not taken by Vladislav Zubok from the London School of Economics, an account of opportunities missed https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/russia-america-and-the-roads-not-taken/

ii) Ukraine’s decade of war by the Ukrainian novelist and commentator Andrei Kurkov, which argues that the conflict is actually ten years old, not two https://engelsbergideas.com/notebook/ukraines-decade-of-war/

If you haven’t yet read Kurkov’s Death and the Penguin, it’s not too late! It’s not quite as good as reading the book, but here’s an edition of World Book Club with Kurkov discussing his novel and reading extracts https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p03139g2

3. As recommended at the British Council event on AI & ELT last week, the series of Reith Lectures by Stuart Russell from the University of California, Berkeley on Living With Artificial Intelligence, in which he “asks how artificial intelligence could transform our world and discusses whether fears of AI are well founded or whether we can learn to make it work for us” https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001216k/episodes/player

Transcript of the first lecture in the series here https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2021/BBC_2021_Reith_Lecture_2021_1.pdf

and PDF below.

Plus a bonus feature from The Global Story series which also features Stuart Russell, How artificial intelligence could upend 2024’s many elections https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0h3zrlf

4. Here’s the latest issue of EL Gazette, with a partial focus on reading https://www.elgazette.com/elg_archive/ELG2402/mobile/

PDF (without the page turning sound effects!) below.

5. ‘Unlocked’ by The Paris Review for five days only, three prize-winning short stories:

i) This Is Everything There Will Ever Be by Rivers Solomon (with an audio version, too) https://www.theparisreview.org/fiction/7963/this-is-everything-there-will-ever-be-rivers-solomon

ii) My Good Friend by Juliana Leite, translated by Zoë Perry https://www.theparisreview.org/fiction/7993/my-good-friend-juliana-leite

iii) Helen by James Lasdun https://www.theparisreview.org/fiction/7990/helen-james-lasdun

Don’t delay!

6. And, finally, three beer glasses in one https://www.dezeen.com/2024/02/19/sapporo-nendo-beer-glass/

I could imagine a glass of this shape might confuse some drinkers towards the end of a heavy evening’s drinking!

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