Roy Cross's Blog

1. UnHerd (good double pun) put 10 statements in front of 10,000 UK voters, covering Brexit, gender ideology, political disillusionment, conspiracy, Net Zero, immigration, the monarchy, the cost-of-living crisis, housing and lockdowns. In each case, respondents chose whether they agreed or disagreed, and how strongly. UnHerd was also able to compare their 2022 results with their 2019 survey, and – unsurprisingly, maybe – they’ve chosen to start with their Brexit question, where the 2019-2022 contrast is especially stark https://unherd.com/2023/01/introducing-unherd-britain-2023/

With the exception of a curious little cluster of four contiguous constituencies around The Wash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wash, everyone now thinks Brexit was a mistake.

That said, there are big differences: the journey I’ve made up the A1 today from Cambridge, where the split is 69/17 in favour of ‘Mistake!’ https://britain.unherd.com/constituencies/cambridge/ to Richmond, where the margin is much narrower, at 47/37 https://britain.unherd.com/constituencies/richmond-yorks/ illustrates that.

2. The first NATESOL event of 2023 is Writing for EAL Learners with Jonathan Bifield this Saturday, 4^th February, at 10:00 UK time. More info and registration here and in the PDF below https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc1Slw4966h8n1nged0MSgWBSXNs63Wd57A8fUxfR3aPPEs-A/viewform

From Jonathan’s blurb: “One thing is clear from the research evidence, that the best place for the explicit teaching of writing to take place is in the classroom or subject the writing is being done in.” His focus is on EAL learners, but I think what he has to say will have wider applicability.

3. Thanks to Nik Peachey for sharing this one: Matt Miller’s evangelical Ditch that Textbook website https://ditchthattextbook.com/

Here’s a real smorgasbord of ideas from Matt and his colleagues to do with how we use ChatGPT in the classroom https://ditchthattextbook.com/ai/#t-1671292150919

and here’s a short video on bringing the world into your classroom, 4 ways to connect your class to the world https://youtu.be/TMvsexTFbHc

PDF below of Matt’s 101 Practical Ways to Ditch that Textbook – but you may well decide you’re neither ready nor able to ditch yours quite yet!

4. Some deserved, good (and fairly slick) PR here for one of my favourite restaurants, Dishoom, who’ve just reached a target of delivering 15 Million Meals for free in partnership with the Magic Breakfast charity in the UK and the Akshaya Patra Foundation in India https://youtu.be/8xT_VAj_fHE

Here’s the Magic Breakfast site https://www.magicbreakfast.com/

and here’s the Akshaya Patra Foundation one https://www.akshayapatra.org/

And here’s how to cook rotis! https://youtu.be/cDr1iJwD170

5. And, finally and puzzlingly but I hope not ghoulishly, two ‘real crime’ stories:

one from Norway https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/the-spectacular-case-of-lorenskog-norway-s-ongoing-search-for-a-murderer-a-b615c528-392e-4708-8796-5047d2620484

and one from Wales https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jan/28/the-killer-could-still-be-among-us-two-elderly-siblings-and-a-brutal-that-mystifies-locals-nearly-50-years-on

1. A piece from my previous employer, the British Council: Vicky Gough’s article for their online magazine, Voices: The British and their secret language regrets https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/british-and-their-secret-language-regrets

We are not a nation of happy monoglots, it seems.

2. A piece from my current employer, NILE (the Norwich Institute for Language Education): their newsletter this month leads on the NILE CEFR Filtering Tool with YL proficiency descriptors https://www.nile-elt.com/products/NewsletterJan23

If you haven’t got a clue what on earth a CEFR Filtering Tool with YL proficiency descriptors is about, you might want to give it a miss; if, on the other hand, a CEFR Filtering Tool with YL proficiency descriptors sounds like it might be useful in your work, watch Thom Kiddle’s introductory video here https://youtu.be/4Xhi70AEKYg

3. How do you identify and nurture people with potential? How do you turn a bunch of talented individuals into a cohesive team? Where does decision-making science end and judgement begin? are some of the questions that Ed Smith, until recently the Chief Selector for the England cricket team, will be answering in his talk, How to make better decisions, at the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) on Thursday, 2^nd February at 13:00 UK time.

Online and face-to-face: make sure you book the right kind of ticket https://www.thersa.org/events/2023/02/how-to-make-better-decisions

4. And, finally, a word cloud of the answers to the question, What policy do you most associate with Rishi Sunak? (the current UK prime minister) from Redfield and Wilton (R&W) which suggests he’s not yet achieved ‘cut-through’ with the public:

More R&W polling here https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/magnified-email/issue-55/ and an explanation of ‘cut-through’ here https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/cut-through_2

1. I could imagine that many of us have mixed feelings – at least! – about the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. This year’s has just ended, and here’s McKinsey’s ‘five key takeaways’ from it https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/themes/5-takeaways-from-the-world-economic-forums-2023-meeting There’s a link to a piece on each of the key takeaways, with an audio version of each read (rather well) by ChatGPT’s younger sister.

Here’s the print piece on the space economy takeaway https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/aerospace-and-defense/our-insights/how-will-the-space-economy-change-the-world and here’s the audio version https://soundcloud.com/mckinsey/listen-to-the-article-how-will-the-space-economy-change-the-world

2. The latest free download in Heath Rose and Jim McKinley’s Cambridge Elements in Language Teaching series is Teaching Young Multilingual Learners by Luciana C. de Oliveira and Loren Jones https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/teaching-young-multilingual-learners/FCF4AF1045B8A204184865731C42918B

Available to download till 3^rd February; PDF below just in case you don’t get round to it in time.

Information on the rest of the series here: https://tinyurl.com/mry5v4ef

3. Your friends at school, languages and the pandemic legacy is the title of the latest weekly TeacherTapp blog post, which, as usual, addresses three questions.

This week’s three are:

a) who needs friends at school? (not head teachers, apparently);

b) which languages are being taught in the UK nowadays? (and possibly also learnt?);

c) what did we learn from the pandemic? (and which innovations did we retain post-pandemic?)

https://teachertapp.co.uk/articles/your-friends-at-school-languages-and-the-pandemic-legacy/

4. Just Twenty-Five Pages a Day is a nice idea, possibly explained at greater length than necessary here https://fs.blog/twenty-five-pages-a-day/

5. And, finally and I hope acceptably self-indulgently, Flanders and Swann were a favourite musical duo of my father’s, and we ended his celebration-cremation service yesterday with their Hippopotamus Song https://youtu.be/4zpDF3Py7r8

He would be very pleased, I’m sure, if you sang along with the chorus!

1. Three more on ChatGPT – tell me when you’re getting bored, please!

Nick Cave’s view is that This Song Sucks https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jan/17/this-song-sucks-nick-cave-responds-to-chatgpt-song-written-in-style-of-nick-cave

From The New York Times, Alarmed by A.I. Chatbots, Universities Start Revamping How They Teach https://tinyurl.com/4zh9wt92

From The Guardian, Lecturers urged to review assessments in UK amid concerns over new AI tool https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/13/end-of-the-essay-uk-lecturers-assessments-chatgpt-concerns-ai

2. Maybe Pecha Kucha is part of the answer? https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/course-design-ideas/pecha-kucha-is-the-answer/ I’d no idea that pecha kucha was Japanese for chit-chat – which brings back an instant memory of a South African teacher of geography at school barking out at least twice a lesson, “Cut out the general chit-chat at the back there!”

3. Here’s a storytelling lesson plan from TeachingEnglish, Carnival crime, based on the theft and recovery of some diamonds at the carnival in Rio https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/teaching-resources/teaching-primary/stories-and-poems/storytelling-carnival-crime ‘Suitable for primary learners from A1 and above’. Lesson plan, worksheet, script & cards and story text all below!

[file x 4]

4. And, finally, the seventh and last instalment of The New York Times Happiness Challenge: Keep Happiness Going All Year Long https://tinyurl.com/mr8f9v9n We can but try!

1. More easily promised than delivered, a values-based education? John Gibbs of Teachers Talk Radio asked Bridget Knight, the author of ‘On the Subject of Values … and the Value of Subjects: New thinking to guide schools through the curriculum’ and the CEO of the Values Based Education organisation: What is values-based education? https://www.ttradio.org/post/what-is-values-based-education

Here’s Values-Based Education’s own website https://www.valuesbasededucation.com/home Their aim is to give “learners access to an ethical vocabulary based on human values, such as respect, justice, integrity, harmony, trust and honesty”.

2. The Edinburgh International Book Festival website has recordings of all last summer’s talks and readings (and many from previous years) – well worth a browse! https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/look-and-listen/player?type=media-video&year=2022&query=

Here’s a varied half-dozen from last summer to start with:

Tsitsi Dangarembga, Dipo Faloyin & Howard W French: Africa’s Rich Diversity https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/media-gallery/item/tsitsi-dangarembga-dipo-faloyin-howard-w-french-africa-s-rich-diversity

Liz Lochhead: 50 Years of a Pioneering Poet https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/media-gallery/item/liz-lochhead-50-years-of-a-pioneering-poet

Noam Chomsky: Dissent Across the Decades https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/media-gallery/item/noam-chomsky-dissent-across-the-decades

Gulbahar Haitiwaji: To Make Us Slowly Disappear https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/media-gallery/item/gulbahar-haitiwaji-to-make-us-slowly-disappear

Devi Sridhar: How to Prevent (Another) Pandemic https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/media-gallery/item/devi-sridhar-how-to-prevent-another-pandemic

 Mohsin Hamid: What Does it Mean to Be White? https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/media-gallery/item/mohsin-hamid-what-does-it-mean-to-be-white

3. Days 5 and 6 of The New York Times Happiness Challenge:

The Importance of Work Friends https://tinyurl.com/44upkkee

Don’t Cancel Those Plans https://tinyurl.com/z45mr9rz

I just have one ‘gift article’ left for Day 7!

4. And, finally, a piece by Sally Rooney, the hugely successful author of ‘Normal People’ and ‘Conversations with Friends’, on a book by an equally famous Irish writer from an earlier era, James Joyce. Here’s the transcript of her T S Eliot Memorial Lecture last autumn on Misreading Ulysses https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2022/12/07/misreading-ulysses/

I can’t find a video – let me know if you can, please!

1. Climate Justice: what’s it got to do with ELT? The answer according to Green ELT is, ‘Quite a lot!’ Find out more here https://green-action-elt.uk/events/ and register here for the event at 14:00 UK time next Friday, 20^th January https://nile-elt.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUtdeGhqzsuHNOL9nepJhyBR5RkmOfNWVHV

2. I’ll continue to post occasional pieces on ChatGPT – I don’t think it’ll be going away anytime soon! Here’s the Brooking Institution’s take https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2023/01/09/chatgpt-educational-friend-or-foe/ Has some good links to more excitable pieces in The Atlantic, such as The End of High-School English and The College Essay Is Dead.

3. Positively the first and last mention I’ll make of Spare, promise! Two of the more interesting pieces from the many published recently: one from The Conversation on the royal brand by a professor of marketing https://theconversation.com/spare-how-the-soap-opera-around-prince-harrys-memoir-will-affect-the-royal-brand-197452 and, secondly, the New York Times book review https://tinyurl.com/2b6nccy5

4. And, finally, some thoughts on national identity from the Serbian-American poet Charles Simic, who died earlier this week https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2007/12/20/the-renegade/ Samizdat PDF below just in case.

1. I’ve mentioned NESTA, the UK’s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, before. Not sure they use their full, long name anymore https://www.nesta.org.uk/

Here’s their annual round-up “of the innovations and ideas that could have implications for the next year and beyond” for 2023, ‘Future Signals – what we’re watching for in 2023’, this time including robots in the kitchen and energy so cheap it’s free https://www.nesta.org.uk/feature/future-signals-2023/

and here’s a short introductory video if you’re not familiar with NESTA’s work https://vimeo.com/738414462

2. Here’s a TikTok about a recent discovery to do with the origins of writing by a furniture restorer and amateur archaeologist from London, Ben Bacon https://www.tiktok.com/@viceau/video/7186516820839468289?is_from_webapp=v1&item_id=7186516820839468289

I nearly showed my age by saying ‘Here’s a TikTok video …’ – don’t think there’s anything else, is there? – and I am showing my age by wondering why the presenter keeps hopping from side to side of the screen.

Here’s a less jerky article from The Guardian on the same story https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jan/05/amateur-archaeologist-uncovers-ice-age-writing-system

TikTok courtesy of Mark Henebury, who’s clearly a slightly funkier dude than I’d appreciated.

3. Numbers 3 and 4 in the NYT happiness series:

Day 3: Small Talk Has Big Benefits https://tinyurl.com/3sh8uskj

Day 4: Why You Should Write a ‘Living Eulogy’ https://tinyurl.com/2py6k4jy

4. And, finally, a short story from Assam, ‘A Wagtail’s Song’, written by Bikash Dihingia and translated from Assamese by Harsita Hiya https://wordswithoutborders.org/read/article/2022-12/a-wagtails-song-bikash-dihingia-harsita-hiya/

Includes a short reading in the original Assamese by the author: see if you can spot the Assamese for ‘social media’!

1. Two from the TeachingEnglish site to start with:

a) A three-module, four-week, nine-hour course on Teaching English through literature, developed in partnership with Macmillan India https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/teaching-english-through-literature

b) Maria Jose Galleno from Uruguay talking about effective strategies for enabling teacher reflection at 12:00 UK time on Thursday 12^th January, Making it obvious – reflection that works https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/maria-jose-galleno-making-it-obvious-reflection-works

‘Reflective teacher practice’ is often paid lip service to; Maria Jose takes things a step further.

2. Starting next Friday, 13^th January, there’s a whole free three-day (say that quickly) conference from the IATEFL YLT (Young Learners & Teenagers) SIG: more info here https://yltsig.iatefl.org/events/iatefl-yltsig-web-conference-2023-better-together/

If you’re a member of the YLTSIG, you can also sign up for a six-hour mini-course.

3. Day 2 of The New York Times Seven Day Happiness Challenge: The Secret Power of the 8-Minute Phone Call https://tinyurl.com/9kujksuf

Nice idea!

4. And, finally, a bee in the Cross bonnet, originating in my inability to even give away to a charity shop my CD collection:

a (quite technical) video, The Truth About Vinyl – Vinyl vs. Digital https://youtu.be/lzRvSWPZQYk

and a (more accessible) article https://www.diffen.com/difference/CD_vs_Vinyl_Record

Happy New Year, everyone!

1. Here’s another academic’s take on ChatGPT: Tony Bates’s Playing with ChatGPT: now I’m scared (a little) https://www.tonybates.ca/2023/01/02/playing-with-chatgpt-now-im-scared/

There’s a growing (sensible) consensus that ChatGPT is not going to go away, so we’d better find a way of working with it rather than attempting – in vain – to ban it.

2. Two ‘gift’ articles from The New York Times:

a quiz, How Strong Are Your Relationships? https://tinyurl.com/ybdd8nb3

which is the first day of the NYT’s Seven Day Happiness Challenge, which is explained more fully here https://tinyurl.com/4mwmuwsw

I’ll aim to share all seven days if I can, and we shall see how New York specific their notion of happiness is!

3. Here’s McKinsey’s well-put-together review of 2022, What just happened? https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/2022-year-in-review

The cynic in me was expecting it to be more USA-centred.

4. And, finally, if you’re going to tell a lie, tell a whopper – or several – like Republican politician George Santos did recently https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-27-2022

Letters from an American is the name of Heather Cox Richardson’s blog. Richardson is “a history professor interested in the contrast between image and reality in American politics. (She) believe(s) in American democracy, despite its frequent failures”. I thought that her 30th December post was a good overview of the war in Ukraine https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-30-2022

1. The T S Eliot Prize website is now very nearly complete, just the Yomi Ṣode videos missing, I think, and they should be up soon https://tseliot.com/prize/the-t-s-eliot-prize-2022/shortlist/

Try these two poems, both short, read by their author:

James Conor Patterson reading his poem ‘london mixtape’ https://youtu.be/jcUzHbokwyU

and Denise Saul reading ‘The Room Between Us’ https://youtu.be/Vy41V-X90SQ

All the videos here, including this year’s innovation, the Young Critics Scheme video reviews https://www.youtube.com/@t.s.eliotprize6926/videos

2. I’ve not had time to explore fully this Mercator European Research Centre site yet https://www.mercator-research.eu/en/ but this page on Endangered languages and archives has caught my eye https://www.mercator-research.eu/fy/undersyk-projekten/endangered-languages-and-archives/

Thanks to Sarah Breslin for bringing this site to my attention.

3. Here’s the Conversation Weekly podcast site https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/the-conversation-weekly-98901

I’ve listened recently to this short series, Uncharted Brain: Decoding Dementia https://theconversation.com/unlocking-new-clues-to-how-dementia-and-alzheimers-work-in-the-brain-uncharted-brain-podcast-series-194773 A bit close to home, but has helped me understand my mother’s condition.

4. And, finally, if you’re enjoying a holiday break this coming week, how about writing a short story? https://www.plot-generator.org.uk/story/

Thanks to Thom Kiddle for this one.

The next ‘Free Resources’ message/post will be on Thursday 5^th January – enjoy your holiday if you’re getting one!