Roy Cross's Blog

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 out, probably including our likely new prime minister’s …

Plus, if you sign up for a free three-articles-a-month account with the New Statesman, this cross-cultural comparison from the 1920s by Bassett Digby, Values https://www.newstatesman.com/archive/2022/08/from-the-ns-archive-values

2. Very early warning of Oxford University Press’s English Language Teaching Online Conference (ELTOC) Chapter 3 on Friday 23^rd and Saturday 24^th September, just in case it books out (not sure if that’s still the issue with online events that it used to be) https://elt.oup.com/feature/global/eltoc/?cc=gb&selLanguage=en

A little more detail on the programme, which includes Nicky Hockly on What’s up with WhatsApp? and Hayo Reinders on Digital Wellbeing, here https://elt.oup.com/events/global/eltoc-chapter-3?cc=gb&selLanguage=en&mode=hub

3. There’s some fine early photos from the nineteenth century in this National Archives blog post, Early photography in India: Tracing photographers through copyright records https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/early-photography-in-india-tracing-photographers-through-copyright-records/

Another recent post, Garveyism: a letter from the black working class https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/garveyism-a-letter-from-the-black-working-class/ also caught my eye. Bernard Mason, the author of the letter, is writing on behalf of himself and a group of black seamen to the then (UK) Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, in August 1921.

4. And, finally, a random classical fact: the island of Cres https://goo.gl/maps/PDmkzeVFc7T9tcZ56 – where I’m delighted to be for the first time in three years – was known in antiquity as the Apsyrtides, because of its resemblance to the severed limbs of the unfortunate Apsyrtus, slain by his sister, Medea, to distract their father from his pursuit of her and Jason …

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. Hope this one from the I works without a subscription; you may need to register. Scroll down for the OECD graphic that places England right at the bottom of the achievement pile https://inews.co.uk/news/education/gcse-results-day-2022-students-failed-achieve-english-maths-1814830

3. Here’s an Asia Scotland Institute webinar with Fiona Hill, who advised both Obama and Trump on Russian affairs, talking about The Eurasian Future: War in Europe, China Rising & the decline of Russia https://asiascot.com/event-recordings/the-eurasian-future With an accent like hers, you have to believe her.

4. And, finally, Stephen Krashen, not talking about ‘comprehensible input’ but about baseball https://www.languagemagazine.com/2022/08/09/the-power-of-sports-fiction-and-the-importance-of-being-impeccable/

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 one of the most widely translated works of fiction in the world. They selected 24 short passages and three long passages, each of which was recorded by a native speaker of the language. Each participant also heard nonsensical passages, which should not activate the language network, and was asked to do a variety of other cognitive tasks that should not activate it. The team found that the language networks of participants in this study were found in approximately the same brain regions, and had the same selectivity, as those of native speakers of English.”

2. Here’s one that I was fairly sure I’d already mentioned, but it seems not: the Cambridge Dictionary About Words blog: https://dictionaryblog.cambridge.org/

Here are two posts from earlier this month on talking about textures

https://dictionaryblog.cambridge.org/2022/08/03/tender-velvety-or-abrasive-talking-about-textures-1/

https://dictionaryblog.cambridge.org/2022/08/17/spongy-rock-hard-or-pliable-talking-about-textures-2/

My wife claims we Brits are obsessed with crispiness …

3. Don’t be frightened off by the title of this one by Nayr Ibrahim, Visual and Artefactual Approaches in Engaging Teachers with Multilingualism: Creating DLCs (Dominant Language Constellations) in Pre-Service Teacher Education https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/7/2/152

Nayr’s paper “reports on a study of teachers’ engagement with their own multilingualism in a pre-service teacher education context. As linguistic diversity in society and schools around the globe is increasing, teachers are required to meet the challenges of teaching children who live with multiple languages. However, teachers are seldom required to reflect on and engage with their own multilingualism, which forms the basis of a subjective and experiential approach to educating teachers multilingually.” PDF below.

You can find the paper in a special issue of the (open access) Languages journal devoted to Learning and Teaching of English in the Multilingual Classroom: English Teachers’ Perspectives, Practices, and Purposes https://www.mdpi.com/journal/languages/special_issues/Multilingual_Classroom

4. And, finally, the top ten funniest jokes from this year’s Edinburgh Fringe festival:

1. I tried to steal spaghetti from the shop, but the female guard saw me and I couldn’t get pasta – Masai Graham

2. Did you know, if you get pregnant in the Amazon, it’s next day delivery? – Mark Simmons

3. My attempts to combine nitrous oxide and Oxo cubes made me a laughing stock – Olaf Falafel

4. By my age, my parents had a house and a family, and to be fair to me, so do I, but it is the same house and the same family – Hannah Fairweather

5. I hate funerals. I’m not a mourning person – Will Mars

6. I spent the whole morning building a time machine, so that’s four hours of my life that I’m definitely getting back – Olaf Falafel

7. I sent a food parcel to my first wife. FedEx – Richard Pulsford

8. I used to live hand to mouth. Do you know what changed my life? Cutlery – Tim Vine

9. Don’t knock threesomes. Having a threesome is like hiring an intern to do all the jobs you hate – Sophie Duker

10. I can’t even be bothered to be apathetic these days – Will Duggan

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 a call for critical self-reflection on the part of advocates of translanguaging to ensure that we ourselves don’t get in the way of realizing its full transformative power”.

2. How Can the Global South Confront the Unequal North-South Academic Collaborations? is the title of an interview with Karuti Kanyinga from The Institute for Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Nairobi, Kenya on the Danish Development Research Network (DDRN) blog https://ddrn.dk/10068/

The discussion refers to the policy brief that DDRN published earlier this year, ‘Decolonising Academic Collaboration: South-North Perspectives’ https://ddrn.dk/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/2022-Decolonising_Academic_Collaboration.pdf PDF below.

“A frequent outcome of North-driven projects is that researchers in African countries end up mainly as the collectors or providers of data, and on-the-ground “fixers” for Northern academics. In its most problematic (but not uncommon) form this leads to data grabbing where African researchers collect empirical data, sometimes in highly dangerous circumstances, and may even carry out parts of the analysis – yet are not recognised as co-authors.”

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3. Here’s a webinar and blog post on ‘Teaching and Learning in the Face of Conflict’ from Alicja Gałązka for Oxford University Press (OUP):

webinar https://youtu.be/T_vrtv4iny4

blog post https://oupeltglobalblog.com/2022/06/27/teaching-learning-in-the-face-of-conflict/

“People removed from the conflict may be wondering why their mental health is suffering as a result of the news and images they’re seeing. Part of this can be explained by the fact that our brains are designed to scan for threats to protect us from potential danger. This can lead to an almost unstoppable, constant scouring of the news to help us prepare for the worst – a phenomenon many might know better as ‘doom scrolling’.”

I’ve given up doom scrolling but I’m not sure that’s good, as I’ve sort of given up on the news completely!

4. And, finally, two dangers to which I have never given a moment’s thought, washing the dishes or taking a shower during a thunderstorm https://theconversation.com/why-its-not-safe-to-shower-during-a-thunderstorm-188862

Includes a video explanation of how a Van de Graaff Generator works just in case you, like me, have forgotten https://youtu.be/laDmuQFmK3Y

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 sustainable way”, has just launched its first set of resources for teachers, with the slightly underwhelming title of Teacher Module https://gcmc.global/tools/gcmc-toolkit/teacher-module/

Five units to explore in your own time, including Promoting ecoliteracy and Hunting fake news through critical reading

2. Raymond Briggs, the author of – among other books – Fungus the Bogeyman, The Snowman (perhaps his best-known work internationally) and When the Wind Blows, died last week at the age of 88.

Here’s a piece from The Conversation by Matthew Edgar https://theconversation.com/three-raymond-briggs-books-that-helped-make-the-graphic-novel-respectable-188614

an excerpt from the film of The Snowman https://youtu.be/upH1QZU4Z0Y

and a short video obituary from The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/video/2022/aug/10/raymond-briggs-maker-of-the-snowman-dies-aged-88-video

3. The next Teaching Pathways course, How to Teach Grammar, starts a fortnight today, on 30^th August. Sign up here if you’d like to “help your learners notice, make sense of, and become more confident using grammar with engaging, meaning-focused teaching” https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/teaching-pathways-how-teach-grammar

4. And, finally, an entertaining Words Without Borders piece by J. R. Ramakrishnan, Roll Call of Abandoned Languages: My Language Promiscuity and Everything It Says https://wordswithoutborders.org/read/article/2022-08/the-roll-call-of-abandoned-languages-j-r-ramakrishnan/

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 Armitage, the current UK Poet Laureate – a post Larkin tuned down on at least one occasion – has made a wonderful – so far! – series for Radio 4, Larkin Revisited, which addresses that disjunct head-on and intelligently (and has Larkin reading his own poems as a doleful bonus) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0019yy2/episodes/player

2. One of Armitage’s interviewees for Larkin Revisited, the poet Imtiaz Dharker, has written a piece for The Guardian about her poem imagining a social media encounter with Larkin, Swiping left on Larkin https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/aug/09/philip-larkin-flinched-from-intimacy-social-media-imtiaz-dharker-swiping-left-on-larkin

3. Would Larkin have had a website had he been born fifty years later? I’m pretty sure he would have had! Here’s Imtiaz Dharker’s http://www.imtiazdharker.com/ and here’s Simon Armitage’s https://www.simonarmitage.com/

4. And, finally, here in the UK, we’re in the middle of – by our own standards – yet another ‘heat wave’. It’s 28°C here in Cambridge as I write and going up to 32° this afternoon – which isn’t really very hot at all by global standards! A recent suggestion by the water companies – whose profits in pounds sterling are almost as large as the amount of water that leaks from their pipes in litres daily – that we should report our neighbours who break the hosepipe ban has attracted a lot of comment. Here’s two pieces which both say ‘no, you jolly well shouldn’t’:

one from The Conversation, by Peter West https://theconversation.com/hosepipe-ban-should-you-snitch-on-your-neighbours-water-use-a-philosophers-take-188240

and a second from The Spectator, by Mary Killen https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/should-you-grass-on-a-neighbour-who-breaks-the-hosepipe-ban

As Peter West has it, “three of philosophy’s best-known moral theories suggest that snitching on our neighbours is probably not the right thing to do”.

1. The Edinburgh International Book Festival, where I’ve spent many happy summers over the years, begins next Saturday, 13th August. Watch for free or pay as much as you can afford. Full list of events here: https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/events

Here’s a baker’s dozen to consider that I’m hoping to attend online (not quite sure online is always an option, though):

Merve Emre and Daniel Mulhall https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/events?author_id=9419

Howard Jacobson https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/events?author_id=177

Nadifa Mohamed https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/events?author_id=486

Antony Beevor and Allan Little https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/events?author_id=1833

Geoff Dyer https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/events?author_id=812

PJ Harvey and Don Paterson https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/events?author_id=9348

Mieko Kawakami https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/events?author_id=8539

Devi Sridhar https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/events?author_id=7038

Patrick Radden Keefe https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/events?author_id=9318

Philippe Sands https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/events?author_id=577

Oliver Bullough and Ian Rankin https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/events?author_id=1284

Tsitsi Dangarembga, Dipo Faloyin & Howard W French https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/events?author_id=8170

Henry Marsh https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/events?author_id=3190

2. Slightly wacky and very idiosyncratic, yes, but also fun: give the Language Hat blog a go https://languagehat.com/author/languagehat/

3. Grammarly used to annoy me as its advert made me wait to watch YouTube videos, but I think I may be changing my mind a little: they have an interesting blog that I’ve just discovered https://www.grammarly.com/blog/who-vs-whom-its-not-as-complicated-as-you-might-think/

4. As do Collins Dictionary with their Language Lovers blog https://blog.collinsdictionary.com/language-lovers/

5. And, finally, a quote from one of my favourite non-fiction writers, Daniel Kahneman: “Thinking is to humans as swimming is to cats; they can do it, but they’d prefer not to.”

Here’s his Wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman

and here’s a TED talk of his that explores our notions of fact and fiction https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory?language=en

1. A good blog post by Bill Bowler for Oxford University Press (with some acceptable product placement!), 5 Golden rules to help students read English in their free time https://oupeltglobalblog.com/2022/07/05/5-golden-rules-to-help-students-read-english-in-their-free-time/

“It’s better to read four short, simple, fun books than struggle with one long book that’s too hard”, says Bill.

2. Reading, it turns out, was the only area where attainment went up during the pandemic, according to the Department (Ministry) of Education for England’s ‘national headlines’ for Key stage 2 attainment https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/key-stage-2-attainment-2022-national-headlines  Everything else went down, in some cases quite a lot … PDF below.

3. The other three countries in the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland https://www.education-ni.gov.uk/ Scotland https://www.gov.scot/education and Wales https://gov.wales/education-skills all have their own departments of education. None of them seem to have done a similar exercise to the English one, though, or not that I can find.

4. And, finally, six short (five- or six-minute) videos in the English Teaching Talks series by Renee Selikowitz to watch on your own, with colleagues or with trainees, to help you select and use effective resources with your students, Managing resources https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/english-teaching-talks-managing-resources

Other topics in the series include Integrating ICT with Nik Peachey https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/english-teaching-talks-integrating-ict

Assessing learning with Carolyn Westbrook and Richard Spiby https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/english-teaching-talks-assessing-learning-0

Learning Outside the Classroom with Claudia Rey https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/english-teaching-talks-learning-outside-classroom

and Inclusion with Susan Douglas https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/english-teaching-talks-inclusion

Recommended dosage? One a day on the journey home from school!

1. ’On disadvantage’ is a thoughtful blog post by Birmingham Teacher, a.k.a. Claire Stoneman https://birminghamteacher.wordpress.com/2022/07/17/on-disadvantage/

“But yes, the term ‘disadvantaged’ is rubbish. I don’t think any labels are helpful. Thankfully, when I was at school, I was not labelled. I could have been ‘Free school meals Claire Stoneman’ or ‘Disabled parents Claire Stoneman’ or ‘Young carer Claire Stoneman’. I am forever grateful to my school for not making assumptions about me, other than the assumption that I could and would achieve.”

2. Several good pieces from the Farnam Street Brain Food weekly newsletter:

i) The Two Types of Knowledge: The Max Planck/Chauffeur Test https://fs.blog/two-types-of-knowledge/ read it just for the ‘Munich lecture’ anecdote with which the piece begins, if you don’t already know it;

ii) an interview with Kunal Shah about Why choosing your friends matters https://youtu.be/I5uap-ZyHDQ

iii) an excerpt from “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol” https://core100.columbia.edu/article/excerpt-philosophy-andy-warhol “What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest.”

iv) “The Art of Being Alone” https://fs.blog/being-alone/ “Loneliness has more to do with our perceptions than how much company we have. It’s just as possible to be painfully lonely surrounded by people as it is to be content with little social contact.”

You can sign up for Brain Food here https://fs.blog/

3. Here’s the latest edition of a new weekly newsletter, The Knowledge, which begins with a wonderful video of the England women’s football team gate-crashing (and much enlivening) the post-match press conference after their victory over Germany on Sunday https://link.newsletters.theknowledge.com/view/62974659e2164fd11e0e2f3ch0dc6.k9g/dd6210bf

You can sign up for The Knowledge here https://www.theknowledge.com/

4. And, finally, this year’s Noirwich Crime Writing Festival runs from September https://noirwich.co.uk/

You can find recordings of all the previous two years’ events here https://noirwich.co.uk/catch-up-on-noirwich-2020/ Scroll down for a favourite of mine, David Peace, talking about his Tokyo trilogy.

1. A ‘golden oldie’ on translanguaging from NALDIC that I stumbled across the other day https://ealjournal.org/2016/07/26/what-is-translanguaging/

This is the NALDIC home page https://naldic.org.uk/

2. One from Mel B (who, thus labelled, may now never speak to me again) on How our brains cope with speaking more than one language, prompted by her memory of my telling her how years ago I’d become exasperated with a Paris waiter who, simpleton that he was, couldn’t understand my simple order for two beers and an apple juice – that I was making in Croatian! https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220719-how-speaking-other-languages-changes-your-brain

3. This one is not from Mel C, as you might have expected, but from Ann V, Bringing the outside in: merging local language practices to enhance classroom learning and achievement https://multilingual-learning.com/about/

On the ‘project blog’ page, you can find the recordings of a number of interesting webinars  that the Bringing the Outside in project have hosted https://multilingual-learning.com/project-blog/

4. My erstwhile – great word that I can now use! – colleagues in China have an interesting job on offer https://careers.britishcouncil.org/job/Beijing-Senior-Academic-Manager%2C-EES-East/832573101/

Closing date 8^th August. Please share with anyone you think might be interested. (Open to UK and China nationals only for reasons to do with local employment law.)

5. And, finally, loath though I am to praise the monster that is Google, this is fun! https://artsandculture.google.com/experiment/puzzle-party/EwGBPZlIzv0KRw?hl=en Best on a laptop or tablet, maybe?