Roy Cross's Blog

This post has been unavoidably (and most enjoyably!) delayed by the arrival in the post of the latest Mick Herron book, ‘The Secret Hours’.

1. From Spiegel International, a piece about the Kakhovka Reservoir in Ukraine that was blown up in June, A Trip to the Dried-Up Kakhovka Reservoir https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/russia-s-scorched-earth-policy-in-ukraine-a-trip-to-the-dried-up-kakhovka-reservoir-a-992aef1d-f4a7-4fbf-84a2-74c5d93b6566

2. Obscenely conspicuous consumption, at over £600 a person for dinner (without much wine)? Probably, but I hope it’s nonetheless interesting to hear from someone who ate recently at Noma, Nadine and René Redzepi’s ‘legendary’ Copenhagen restaurant. Who Deserves to Eat at Noma? from Taste https://tastecooking.com/who-deserves-to-eat-at-noma/

3. ICAI (the UK’s Independent Commission for Aid Impact) have just published a report covering the last four years, a very challenging period for UK (and other countries’) aid programmes, UK aid under pressure: a synthesis of ICAI findings from 2019 to 2023. They aim “to provide an overview of the state of UK aid” and suggest “some key measures that could be taken in the coming years to restore the quality and reputation of UK aid”. https://icai.independent.gov.uk/review/uk-aid-under-pressure-synthesis-2019-2023/ PDF of full report below, summary here:

The 2019-2023 period has been a challenging one for UK aid. There were emergency responses to a series of global crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and the Ukraine war. In September 2020, the Department for International Development (DFID) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) were merged to create a single department, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). There have been frequent changes of ministerial and government priorities, and a series of budget reductions which had a significant impact on the aid programme.

4. An informative short film from The UK National Archives about the Partition of British India https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb_gq-wZDig

Lots more to browse in the National Archives YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@TheNationalArchivesUK

5. And, finally and probably for font nerds only, 8 micro tips for remarkably better typography from Medium https://uxdesign.cc/8-micro-tips-for-remarkably-better-typography-986c8c4f6d85

More from Medium here https://medium.com/

Back into the groove ….

1. I’m about to enrol – if my nerve holds – on this Harvard course, which is free if you ‘audit’ it: Harvard CS50: Introduction to Computer Science https://www.edx.org/plp/introduction-computer-science-harvardx-cs50x Old dogs ….

2. Ample notice for this interesting sounding online RSA event with Amy Edmondson and Tim Harford at 13:00 UK time on Tuesday 26^th September, Why learning to fail can teach us to thrive https://www.thersa.org/events/2023/09/why-learning-to-fail-can-teach-us-to-thrive

3. A piece in Tech Brew on tennis commentary, AI tennis commentary is coming to the US Open https://www.emergingtechbrew.com/stories/2023/08/29/us-open-ibm-ai-tennis-commentary Football next!

4. ‘Flash fiction’ from The New Yorker: Haruki Murakami’s ‘My Cheesecake-Shaped Poverty’ https://www.newyorker.com/books/flash-fiction/my-cheesecake-shaped-poverty-haruki-murakami

5. And, finally and tastily, how about some kosua ne meko? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3wlinXueBM

This will be the last ‘Free Resources’ message till Tuesday 12^th September. With a certain amount of trepidation, I’m driving out to Croatia. It’s a journey we made annually for twenty-five years, but this will be the first time for eighteen years …

1. Maybe not so surprising to learn that software designed to detect the use of ChatGPT by students is often biased against non-native English writers? Here’s an article from Patterns by a team from Stanford University, GPT detectors are biased against non-native English writers https://www.cell.com/patterns/fulltext/S2666-3899(23)00130-7 Has an interesting set of links & references at the end. PDF below.

2. An article on another worrying use for ChatGPT, this time in Iowa, School district uses ChatGPT to help remove library books https://www.popsci.com/technology/iowa-chatgpt-book-ban/

3. Three from The Conversation on working together (or not):

Teamwork is not always the best way of working https://theconversation.com/teamwork-is-not-always-the-best-way-of-working-new-study-211693

Collaborative problem solvers are made not born https://theconversation.com/collaborative-problem-solvers-are-made-not-born-heres-what-you-need-to-know-110663

How many work projects are too many? Here’s why you should tell your boss to stop at five https://theconversation.com/how-many-work-projects-are-too-many-heres-why-you-should-tell-your-boss-to-stop-at-five-190512

4. Here’s a new(ish) podcast from David Runciman on the history of ideas, Past Present Future https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/past-present-future/id1682047968 Try this one on George Orwell? https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/history-of-ideas-george-orwell/id1682047968?i=1000623267325

5. And, finally and I hope amusingly, Lorna Rose Treen cracked the funniest joke at the Edinburgh Fringe this year. She won for her joke: “I started dating a zookeeper, but it turned out he was a cheetah.” In second place was Liz Guterbock with: “The most British thing I’ve ever heard? A lady who said, ‘Well I’m sorry, but I don’t apologise.’ Amos Gill came third with: “Last year I had a great joke about inflation. But it’s hardly worth it now.”

1. August each year is Women in Translation Month. Here’s this year’s celebratory piece from Words Without Borders, 12 Translators Recommend Women in Translation https://wordswithoutborders.org/read/article/2023-08/translators-recommend-women-in-translation-wwb/

And here’s a great essay, Mother’s Tongue, by one of the translators included in the list, Jennifer Shyue https://www.thecommononline.org/mothers-tongue/ PDF below.

2. Cambridge University Press offers a wealth of open-access material in their journals. Here’s a recent piece from English Today, The future of British English in the European Union by Marko Modiano from the University of Gävle in Sweden https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/E6193DDA4B1EB6DDACA63C43177A3A26/S0266078422000244a.pdf/future_of_british_english_in_the_european_union.pdf

“But because the historical weight behind English is now overwhelming, we have no other course of action than to engage this beast in the attempt to tame it, and mould it into a form which best suits our purposes. For these reasons, mainland Europeans, along with the leaders of the EU, must now claim ownership of the English medium and in so doing harness its energy for the good of the body politic.” PDF below.

Here are links to three other journals that might be of interest:

English Today https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/english-today/all-issues

RECALL, The Journal of the European Association for Computer Assisted Language Learning https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/recall/all-issues

Language Teaching https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/language-teaching/all-issues

Select an individual issue, then click on ‘Only show open access’ in the menu on the left.

You’ll find all the CUP journals on this page https://www.cambridge.org/core/publications/journals

3. CUP also offer a free download of all the publications in their Elements series for two weeks after publication. Here’s the recently published Enhancing Educators’ Theoretical and Practical Understandings of Critical Literacy from the Critical Issues in Teacher Education series https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/enhancing-educators-theoretical-and-practical-understandings-of-critical-literacy/27B59AF007C6C613699B3D522B8B075Bn PDF below.

All Elements here https://www.cambridge.org/core/publications/elements

4. Here’s an open-access Language and Education article from Taylor and Francis Online by Jim McKinley, Kari Sahan, Sihan Zhou & Heath Rose, Researching EMI policy and practice multilingually: reflections from China and Turkey https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09500782.2023.2246954?src= PDF below.

5. And, finally and architecturally, Streets in the sky, the story of the ‘visionary renaissance’ of Sheffield’s 1960s Park Hill estate, from Vitsoe, the ‘long-living furniture company’ https://www.vitsoe.com/gb/voice/parkhill

1. Hope this one from The New Yorker works without a subscription (let me know if it doesn’t and I’ll see what I can do): How Much Can Duolingo Teach Us? is an interview with Duolingo’s founder, Luis von Ahn https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/04/24/how-much-can-duolingo-teach-us

“I want the poor person in Guatemala to be able to learn with very high quality,” von Ahn says. “The only way I know how to do that is with A.I. … A human teacher can get better by teaching thirty people … (Duolingo gets) better by teaching tens of millions of people.”

2. Find yourself grappling with – or even writing – over-complicated theories of change? This publication (in English) from the Danish website, Fagligt Fokus, is an excellent introduction and guide, How to navigate towards positive change in complex social settings. An inspirational guide for Development CSOs https://globaltfokus.dk/images/Pulje/Arkiv/Fagligt_Fokus/Fagligt_Fokus_-_Inspirational_Guide_-_Theory_of_Change.pdf

Dip into it where you like, it’s not the kind of document you have to start on page 1 and read through to the end. PDF below.

3. Good piece on the Asia-Pacific Multilingual Education Working Group blog by my erstwhile colleague Radhika Gholkar, Teaching Multilingual Classrooms In India: A Need For Learning From Indigenous Teaching Practices https://asiapacificmle.net/blogs/view?id=167

“India is a diverse and linguistically rich country, home to over 19,500 spoken languages, of which 121 are spoken by 10,000 or more people. Multilingualism is thus at the heart of the Indian existence and experience.”

4. I guess these two should know what they’re talking about: a conversation between Bill Gates of Microsoft (and much else besides) and Sal Kahn of Kahn Academy about AI and education https://youtu.be/X2oF8oZopdA Bill Gates podcast homepage here  https://www.gatesnotes.com/Podcast?20230810100000_Unconfuse-Me-Sal-Khan_BG-EM_&WT.tsrc=BGEM&podcast=s2e0

5. And, finally and macro-economically, see if you can find your national economy in this chart https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-the-105-trillion-world-economy-in-one-chart/ Surprised me that the UK economy is still three times the size of Saudi Arabia’s.

1. Lidia Kralj from Croatia is the leader of the European Digital Education Hub’s “AI in Education” squad. This post on her Digital Traces blog, Learning journey for, about, and with AI, has links to the four of her squad’s reports that have been published so far http://lidija-kralj.from.hr/?p=572 PDFs of all four below.

2. What Is Global Citizenship? asks – and answers! -this page on the Oxfam website https://www.oxfam.org.uk/education/who-we-are/what-is-global-citizenship/ Scroll down the page for links to lots of useful learning/teaching resources and other material.

3. Examination standards: how measures and meanings differ around the world edited by Jo-Anne Baird, Tina Isaacs, Dennis Opposs and Lena Gray is free to download on ResearchGate here https://tinyurl.com/464amanu The authors and editors set out to challenge “the notion that there is a single (superior) way of thinking about national examinations”. PDF on the blog only as it’s a big file.

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4. And, finally, a free extract from a novel by the Korean writer Han Kang, The Vegetarian, that I much enjoyed when I read it – seven years ago, I’ve just realised to my surprise! https://wordswithoutborders.org/read/article/2014-04/the-vegetarian/

1. Two pieces on the funding of education in Britain: first, a piece on the funding of higher education from WONKHE (the clue’s in the acronym) We can’t support everything with cross-subsidy https://wonkhe.com/blogs/we-cant-support-everything-with-cross-subsidy/ I think this issue of huge over-dependence on foreign students may be peculiar to UK universities; it certainly doesn’t apply to Germany, for example

I still remember the sense of disbelief I felt eighteen (!) years ago when visiting a British university on being told that many courses drew of the order of 80-90% of their students from one nationality – and the after-shocks when visiting other universities over the next few months to learn that this was not at all unusual.

2. Secondly, a piece from The Guardian on school funding, with which my own experience as part of a statutory but impotent fig-leaf, a.k.a. a ‘Local Governing Body’, for a school within a multi-academy trust chimes, Council-maintained schools in England outperforming academies in Ofsted ratings https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/aug/03/council-maintained-schools-in-england-outperforming-academies-in-ofsted-ratings

3. I’d not heard of Laterite https://www.laterite.com/ until the other day when they were mentioned in the Cambridge University REAL Centre’s newsletter. Here’s their blog post on Three Ways School Closures Impacted Rwandan Secondary-Teachers https://www.laterite.com/blog/three-ways-school-closures-impacted-rwandan-secondary-teachers/ Reasonable to assume that some of the lessons learnt in Rwanda apply elsewhere? Hope so!

PDF of the full report on which the blog post was based below https://www.laterite.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Leaders-in-Teaching-learning-synthesis-July-2023-English.pdf (also available, laudably and unusually, in Kinyarwanda)

as is a copy of another Laterite report, Unlocking the potential of technology for learning: the EdTech landscape in Rwanda https://www.laterite.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Laterite_EdTech-landscape-in-Rwanda_Final-report.pdf

4. Thanks to Steve Copeland for this one, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography’s generous free offer https://www.oxforddnb.com/page/1413

5. And, finally and also from Oxford, William Whyte is Professor of Social and Architectural History at the university. Here’s a short TikTok video of his with some surprising facts about Oxford architecture https://www.tiktok.com/@uni.of.oxford/video/7257471940699442459 and here’s his YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjgO-QqeHQ3ums9eofqF3QvBwxvw8JdmM

The plan had been to post this yesterday, as I didn’t want to inflict two posts on you within 36 hours. The seven-and-a half-hour drive home from Richmond yesterday due to a blocked motorway put the kibosh on that!

1. First of two bits of weekend reading from Pilgrims, the new issue of Teacher Trainer Journal https://pilgrimsttj.com/ PDF below.

Try Charlie Taylor’s article on p4, which seeks to establish a correlation between English proficiency and democracy.

2. And the second, the new issue of HLT (Humanising Language Teaching) https://www.hltmag.co.uk/aug23/ PDF of the contents page below; there doesn’t seem to be a way of downloading the whole magazine.

The tributes to Philip Prowse, who died recently and unexpectedly, are very powerful testimony to his contribution to ELT and literature more generally https://www.hltmag.co.uk/aug23/remembering-philip-prowse PDF below.

3. Two recent blog posts from Pearson with some practical ideas:

Offline English learning ideas https://www.pearson.com/languages/community/blogs/2023/07/offline-english-learning-ideas.html

Motivating children to read English books with fun activities https://www.pearson.com/languages/community/blogs/2023/08/motivating-children-to-read-books.html

4. Here’s Mona Siddiqui from Edinburgh University’s thoughts on hospitality https://www.templeton.org/news/the-secret-power-of-hospitality

Read and/or listen!

5. And, finally and musically more varied than you might expect, the BBC Proms website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007v097 All the Proms are available to listen to for a month after the concert.

I went to Mariza’s concert and much enjoyed it https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001nnzb and would have been very happy to go to this Bollywood one, too! https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001nwdq

1. Emily Bryson is one of those really clever people that records and summarises meetings in pictures. Here’s some examples of her work https://www.emilybrysonelt.com/sketchnoting/ Scroll down the page a bit and click on any of the images. There’s some good freebies on her website here https://www.emilybrysonelt.com/freebies/ PDF of just one, A quick intro to Graphic Facilitation for English Language Teaching Professionals, below; if you download more, Emily would like you to join her mailing list in order to do so!

2. There’s an IATEFL webinar at 15:00 UK time this Saturday, 5^th August on a ‘collaborative professional development activity’, Reflective Practice Groups: a visionary journey of professional development with Burak Aydin https://www.iatefl.org/events/368 Free to non-members.

3. Primarily but maybe not exclusively for readers in South-East Asia, the ASEAN Youth Development Index for 2022, just published https://asean.org/book/asean-youth-development-index-2022/ Have a browse! PDFs of full report and recommendations only below and here (for the full thing) https://asean.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/22313_ASEAN_Report_v08_RC_spreads-HQ.pdf

4. How good is your ‘vocabulary of pleasure’? Words Without Borders promise a lively conversation on the topic between Parul Sehgal & Adam Dalva tomorrow, Wednesday 2^nd August, at 19:00 UK time. More info and registration here; it’s free https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-vocabulary-of-pleasure-virtual-conversation-w-parul-sehgal-adam-dalva-tickets-680422370627

5. And, finally, from one of the ECML ‘Things about Language’ series I mentioned the other day: ‘In Greenlandic, a single word can have a fairly complex meaning: e.g. “nalaasaarusuummerujussuaraluarpunga”, can be translated as “suddenly, I really wanted to just lie down and rest, but…”’

Love that ECML ‘fairly complex’!

Late yet again this week, but this time for an excellent reason: this year’s cohort of Hornby Trust MA scholars paid a visit to Cambridge yesterday!

1. Thanks to Graham Stanley for this, UNESCO’s Global education monitoring report, 2023: technology in education: a tool on whose terms?

“The report underscores the importance of learning to live both with and without digital technology; to take what is needed from an abundance of information but ignore what is not necessary; to let technology support, but never supplant, the human connection on which teaching and learning are based. The focus should be on learning outcomes, not digital inputs. To help improve learning, digital technology should be not a substitute for but a complement to face-to-face interaction with teachers.”

https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000385723 PDF of whole report on blog only, as it’s big; PDF of one page summary below. Also well worth a browse through the UNESCO archive https://unesdoc.unesco.org/home

2. Two holiday ideas from the latest TeachingEnglish newsletter: i) My holiday English book for A1 and A2 students https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/teaching-resources/teaching-primary/lesson-plans/level-1/my-holiday-english-book

ii) The holiday maze for B2 students https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/teaching-resources/teaching-adults/activities/upper-intermediate-b2/holiday-maze

and here’s the whole newsletter https://britishcouncil-teachingenglish.cmail19.com/t/y-e-pdhuuhl-iyhlkhkjjy-r/ to which you can subscribe here https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/subscribe-our-newsletter

3. Issue 65 of the European Language Gazette has just been published. It contains news of an imminent update to Lara’s Language Journey Across Europe, to include additional regional and minority languages, including Walloon, Meänkieli and Greenlandic https://edl.ecml.at/Activities/languagejourney/Sounds/tabid/3224/Default.aspx

and the third poster in the 20 things you might not know about the world of languages series https://www.ecml.at/News/Newsletter/Gazette65/tabid/5677/language/en-GB/Default.aspx

(Scroll down the page a bit.) PDFs of the English-language versions of all three posters below.

Here’s the whole newsletter https://www.ecml.at/News/Newsletter/Gazette65/tabid/5677/language/en-GB/Default.aspx and you can subscribe here https://www.ecml.at/News/Newsletter/tabid/1385/language/en-GB/Default.aspx

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4. Here’s The Guardian’s three broad principles setting out how they will and won’t use Generative AI tools for the benefit of readers, their mission, their staff and the wider organisation, and with respect for those who create and own content https://www.theguardian.com/help/insideguardian/2023/jun/16/the-guardians-approach-to-generative-ai

5. And, finally, The Proclaimers are playing at Cambridge Folk Festival tonight. Here’s their most famous song, ‘Sunshine on Leith’ https://youtu.be/ZmELS03_4So I may well be in a minority of one globally, but for my taste, it’s just a little over-plaintive ….