Roy Cross's Blog

1. This Cambridge Element is free to download till this Friday, October 7^th: Task-Based Language Teaching by Daniel O. Jackson https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/taskbased-language-teaching/395B3D3B0F7078DF325579CC8314E38B PDF below just in case you have difficulty.

Is Daniel O. Samuel L’s little brother, I wonder?

2. The New York Times says my subscription allows me to share ten articles a month, so here goes with two to start with, to see if it works:

i) a piece on academic standards, At N.Y.U., Students Were Failing Organic Chemistry. Who Was to Blame? https://tinyurl.com/swh8vcpz

On this occasion, New York University decided it was the teacher.

ii) a piece on accommodation in Tokyo, A 95-Square-Foot Tokyo Apartment: ‘I Wouldn’t Live Anywhere Else’ https://tinyurl.com/vksvcx7t

If I’ve done my sums right, 95 square feet is just under 9 square metres, so 3 by 3.

3. Here’s Scott Thornbury’s fourteen-minute opening plenary at last week’s InnovateELT conference https://youtu.be/I0X_gUpI02U

You must have time, mustn’t you?

4. And, finally, here’s Bernardine Evaristo’s reflections on Notions of Blackness in the Radio 4 ‘A Point of View’ series, prompted by a Labour MP’s description of the new UK Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, as (only) ‘superficially’ black https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001cf6g

1. The novelist Hilary Mantel died last week. The London Review of Books have for the time being removed the paywall from the articles she wrote for them over the years https://www.lrb.co.uk/contributors/hilary-mantel

This one, Royal Bodies, in which she refers to Kate Middleton (now the Princess of Wales) as “a jointed doll on which certain rags are hung” got her into a certain amount of trouble https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v35/n04/hilary-mantel/royal-bodies

2. How many have you heard of? Here’s the bookie’s odds for the next Nobel Prize in Literature https://lithub.com/here-are-the-bookies-odds-for-the-2022-nobel-prize-in-literature/ The author notes that the bookies usually get this one wrong, however.

3. I quite often find myself guessing at the meaning of the Oxford English Dictionary ‘Word of the Day’. I got this one well wrong, thinking it was something to do with pretension https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/150965

You can sign up in a wonderfully simple, no-frills way for Word of the Day here – bravo Oxford! https://www.oed.com/emailupdates

4. And, finally, a local radio masterclass in not answering the question from the new UK Prime Minister, Liz Truss https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0d3flmh

1. There’s an Uzbek focus to many of the articles in the most recent issue of HLT (Humanising Language Teaching) https://www.hltmag.co.uk/aug22/

Try Principles of Teaching Karakalpak Students English Speech Etiquette by Zoya Sarsenbaeva and Zernegul Uteshova, which seems to me firmly and interestingly rooted in the local academic tradition https://www.hltmag.co.uk/aug22/principles-of-teaching-karakalpak-students PDF below as well.

2. Not quite round the clock but very nearly, and certainly round the globe, this year’s TeachingEnglish World Teachers’ Day Online Conference is this Saturday, 1^st October, starting in Vietnam at 03.00 UK time and finishing in Mexico at 22.00 UK time. More info on the truly global programme and registration here https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/world-teachers-day-online-conference-2022-schedule

The title of Lama Atoui’s session completely threw me for a while, though: Ditch Boring CPD: Capacity Building Through Gamified Micro-training – I was thinking holes in the ground.

3. Fancy a complete change of perspective and topic? Try How Shinzo Abe Changed Japan Forever from the Asia Scotland Institute at 14:00 UK time this Thursday, 29^th September. More info and registration here https://asiascot.com/events/how-shinzo-abe-changed-japan-forever

4. And, finally, a thought-provoking post on Malcolm Gladwell’s blog, Princeton University Is the World’s First Perpetual Motion Machine: if you had a car that could run forever, would you still stop for gas? https://malcolmgladwell.bulletin.com/princeton-university-is-the-worlds-first-perpetual-motion-machine/

1. This year’s Einar Haugen Lecture at Oslo University will be given by Marianne Gullberg from Lund University and is entitled More than just hand-waving: Gestures and meaning in multilingual language use. More info and Zoom link here https://www.hf.uio.no/multiling/english/news-and-events/events/guest-lectures-seminars/einar-haugen-lecture/2022/Einar%20Haugen%20Lecture%202022%20marianne-gullberg.html

“Multilingual speakers often seem to use words differently from monolinguals. This talk demonstrates that multilingual speakers’ gestures open a new window on to what they mean to say.”

Home-made PDF below.

2. I mentioned Oxford University Press’s ELTOC a while back. There are still places for the later sessions, the first of which starts at 17:40 this evening and includes an interesting looking debate, ‘Should Primary School Children Take Tests?’. More info and registration here https://elt.oup.com/feature/global/eltoc/?cc=gb&selLanguage=en and PDF of programme below.

3. And what about secondary school children? The idea of ‘grammar schools’ – selective entry secondary schools – has long been politically divisive here in the UK, on the one hand, and on the other, one of the very few things that absolutely unifies educationalists, all of whom think the idea a very bad one. Here’s a piece from The Guardian about the revival of the idea, ‘They don’t work’: experts criticise Liz Truss’s grammar schools plan following Liz Truss’s becoming Prime Minister https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/sep/22/liz-truss-politicians-and-experts-criticise-grammar-schools-plan

4. And, finally, here’s some highlights from Yes, Minister to make us both laugh and cry about politics https://youtu.be/XBN9QTgjos8

1. The Council of Europe formally adopted a Recommendation earlier this year on the importance of plurilingual and intercultural education for democratic culture https://search.coe.int/cm/Pages/result_details.aspx?ObjectId=0900001680a563ca

This coming Friday, 23rd September, in a webinar for the ECML, David Little will be analysing the definition of plurilingual and intercultural education on which the Recommendation is based. More info and registration (and the recording of the first webinar in the series) here https://www.ecml.at/Resources/Webinars/tabid/5456/Default.aspx

2. The finalists for this year’s ELTons Innovation Awards have just been announced, and they’re more diverse than ever https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/eltons-innovation-awards-2022-finalists-0

3. Why Britons love to queue is the title of this piece looking at the economics of queuing from last week’s Economist https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2022/09/15/why-britons-love-to-queue

4. Might there be a lesson somewhere in this Flicker feed of world leaders signing the book of condolences for Queen Elizabeth? I’m not sure! https://www.flickr.com/photos/foreignoffice/with/52363934429/

5. And, finally, the new UK health minister’s allergy: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/09/15/therese-coffey-tells-nhs-staff-stop-using-oxford-comma/

1. A good ‘long read’ from The Guardian by Aida Edemariam, initially inspiring but ultimately depressing, ‘Parents are frightened for themselves and for their children’: an inspirational school in impossible times https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/sep/06/parents-are-frightened-inspirational-primary-school-impossible-times

“Children will do anything for a sticker” – but does that mean they’re a good thing?

2. Here’s an OUP blog post by Shigeru Yamada from Waseda University in Tokyo on the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary – Now and then, reviewing the changes in the OALD since A S Hornby and colleagues first conceived it in Japan in the 1930s https://oupeltglobalblog.com/ (That URL may only point to the Yamada article for the time being, I think.)

The previous post on the OUP blog, also well worth a read, was on Effective professional development for English language teachers https://oupeltglobalblog.com/2022/09/05/effective-professional-development/

3. Here’s a Pearson blog post I missed at the time from Mike Mayor, What’s the most effective way to learn English? https://www.english.com/blog/whats-the-most-effective-way-to-learn-english/

and here’s the panel discussion from this year’s ASU (Arizona State University) + GSV (Global Silicon Valley) Summit that informed Mike’s post, On the Edge of Proficiency: The Most Effective Forms of English Language Learning https://youtu.be/f6s1gmnry4M

Here’s more info on the 2023 ASU+GSV Summit https://www.asugsvsummit.com/about-the-summit

4. And, finally, The Hidden, Magnificent History of Chop Suey from Atlas Obscura. Often unfairly characterised as a “brownish, overcooked stew, strangely flavorless (sic), with no redeeming qualities, and redolent of bad school cafeterias and dingy, failing Chinese restaurants”, chop suey has a much more distinguished heritage https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/chop-suey-history

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 another, from Sean Lang, focussing on her modernising role, Queen Elizabeth II: a moderniser who steered the British monarchy into the 21st century https://theconversation.com/queen-elizabeth-ii-a-moderniser-who-steered-the-british-monarchy-into-the-21st-century-159485

The more conventional Guardian obituary is here https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/08/queen-elizabeth-ii-obituary (How much longer can they keep their website free to view, I wonder?)

2. Thanks to Stephen Haggard for bringing Tyton Partners to my attention. Here’s their report on Improving Instructional Resources to Enhance the Teacher Experience https://tytonpartners.com/improving-instructional-resources-to-enhance-the-teacher-experience/

and here’s their blog post about the report https://tytonpartners.com/tyton-k-12-spotlight-sel-panel-new-research-on-enhancing-the-teacher-experience/

What the Tyton report discovered was “ample opportunity for suppliers of instructional resources to improve their products and services. It’s apparent that even high-quality instructional materials could be designed to better meet the needs of teachers, given the lack of correlation between the materials’ use and teacher satisfaction”. PDF below.

3. I’m still trying to work out how to make best use of the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) Text Visualiser – but it’s fun! https://languages.oup.com/research/oed-text-visualizer/

I took it for a test drive with the first paragraph of Tess of the d’Urbervilles, which you can find here https://www.gutenberg.org/files/110/110-h/110-h.htm

4. And, finally, a piece from Vice, Scientists Asked Students to Try to Fool Anti-Cheating Software: They Did https://www.vice.com/en/article/93aqg7/scientists-asked-students-to-try-to-fool-anti-cheating-software-they-did

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 clues, Where am I? https://edl.ecml.at/Games/WhereamI/tabid/3263/Default.aspx

Lots more resources here https://edl.ecml.at/  

2. The next Eaquals webinar is next Tuesday, 13^th September at 10:00 UK time. Christopher Graham will be talking about 21st century skills and the climate crisis – encouraging student engagement. More info and registration here https://www.eaquals.org/eaquals-events/event/21st-century-skills-and-the-climate-crisis-encouraging-student-engagement/

“The global climate crisis requires clarity of thought, creativity, consideration, discussion, analysis and appropriate global collaborative action. Finding the solutions to the crisis and putting them into action needs the application of these 21st century skills. Given the international nature of the crisis, language teaching integrated with the skills is important. This seminar will explore how teaching content that introduces and practises the 21st skills around substantiality and environmental themes can be highly effective linguistically as well as motivating.”

3. Here’s the latest issue of EL Gazette, which includes an interview with Hayo Reinders, Mixed Motives for Language Learning?, and an article by Simon Dunton, Five Points to Keep in Mind When Teaching Online https://www.elgazette.com/elg_archive/ELG2207/mobile/

4. And, finally, here’s a naughty medieval poem, one of my favourites from the Poems on the Underground series, which passed largely unremarked upon last time it was on the Tube https://poemsontheunderground.org/i-have-a-gentil-cock

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 number of short videos for Big Think talking about language and translation https://bigthink.com/people/david-bellos/, including this one, How Long Will the Global Dominance of the English Language Last?, in which he suggests that English has enjoyed a very short period of global dominance compared to the Sumerian language https://bigthink.com/videos/how-long-will-the-global-dominance-of-the-english-language-last/

2. Great title to this piece from The Guardian, Britain’s multilingual children: ‘We speak whatever language gets the job done’ https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/sep/04/britains-multilingual-children-we-speak-whatever-language-gets-the-job-done-

It turns out that Farsi speakers smile when they hear the English word ‘gooseberry’ for much the same unsophisticated reason as I used to smile – I’ve grown up in the meantime! – when I was first learning German and my Swiss friends were talking about motorway exits.

3. I’ve just come across the Southeast Asia Teachers Competency Framework (SEA-TCF) for the first time – it was produced in 2017 – and I love the fact that it’s centred on the joyful learner https://www.seameo-innotech.org/portfolio_page/southeast-asia-teachers-competency-framework/ PDF below.

I came across the framework in this ClasssIn blog post on Teachers as Lifelong Learners https://www.blog.classin.com/post/teachers-as-lifelong-learners

4. And, finally, a taste of the film Hallelujah! https://youtu.be/11IPQYZMXjc

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 of you will have seen me shoehorn into at least one talk, The Importance of Elsewhere – PDF below

2. Alison James from the University of Winchester has made her engaging and idiosyncratic new book, The Value of Play in HE: A Study, freely available here https://engagingimagination.com/the-value-of-play-in-he-a-study-free-book/ PDF below. She explicitly advises against just reading the abstract, which she calls Gazillions: PDF below just in case you choose not to follow her advice!

3. Two pieces from The Conversation:

Princess Diana: why her death 25 years ago has sparked so many conspiracy theories from Sarah Bennett https://theconversation.com/princess-diana-why-her-death-25-years-ago-has-sparked-so-many-conspiracy-theories-189088

Five myths about Shakespeare’s contribution to the English language from Jonathan Culpeper and Mathew Gillings https://theconversation.com/five-myths-about-shakespeares-contribution-to-the-english-language-189402

4. Two obituaries of Mikhail Gorbachev:

the first by Rodric Braithwaite, who was UK ambassador in Moscow at just the right time, from 1988 to 1992, for The Spectator https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-humanity-of-mikhail-gorbachev

the second by Jonathan Steele for The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/30/mikhail-gorbachev-obituary  

5. And, finally, a very splendid white moose: https://twitter.com/gabriele_corno/status/1559108395801759745?s=21&t=Yctl4_6_BLt_AcpFzSlyTQ