Roy Cross's Blog

1. An event at 18:00 UK time next Wednesday, 15^th June, from Multilingual Matters and Goldsmiths College that sounds likely to be fun, the launch of the book, Liberating Language Education. Registration here https://www.gold.ac.uk/calendar/?id=13950 and more info in the flyer below.

As one reviewer has it, “The editors and contributors to this book liberate language and language education by placing them in a ‘caravan’ of unpredictable actions that are locally situated. This book masterfully centers the aesthetic ways in which people and learners liberate language by bringing art, digital storytelling, drama improvisation, poetry, song, and music into the center of meaning-making.”

2. An intriguing title for David Block’s UCL Applied Linguistics Research seminar at 17:00 UK time next Tuesday, 14^th June: The dark side of EMI? A telling case for questioning assumptions about EMI in HE More info in the flyer below and registration here https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSebQCK6TPztfMPIkix4kbOgI40HGay9WxLl17CubkbofpHyrQ/viewform

3. The programme for this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival has just been published. There are over 200 online events this year on a ‘pay what you can’ basis, and I suggest we take that at face value: those of us that can afford to pay, do and those of us that can’t, don’t. (There’s no extra cost that I’m aware of for extra online participants.)

Here’s the programme https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/events

and here’s an alphabetical list of authors attending https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/whats-on/appearing-this-festival

4. And, finally, something you may not be expecting: two short films of cars being washed https://youtu.be/UyTrkAqnkFI and https://youtu.be/lezjhF9TZqw

1. An interesting sounding interactive event at 10:00 UK time this Saturday, June 11^th, organised by colleagues from Vietnam in partnership with Manchester Metropolitan University, K–12 Vietnamese learners’ oral peer feedback in classroom L2 task-based interaction https://www.britishcouncil.vn/en/about/press/newsletter-articles/next-partners-innovation-webinar

“During this webinar, you will have an opportunity to practise analysing instances of peer feedback and evaluating its effectiveness. You will also discuss and explore pedagogical techniques to promote peer feedback in your classroom English language speaking tasks.”

Here’s the research paper behind Saturday’s event https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/k-12-vietnamese-learners-oral-peer-feedback-classroom-l2-task-based-interaction PDF below.

Oodles more research here https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/publications-research/research-papers Oodles, that is, if you find reading research papers pleasant: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/oodles

2. There’s an Eaquals webinar with Nadine Early from ATC Language Schools at 10:00 UK time next Tuesday, 14^th June, Speaking Beyond the Classroom: A case study in speaking portfolios. Nadine will be explaining how ATC enabled “their students to take their classroom learning beyond the confines of the four walls and (..) develop independently as lifelong language learners”.

More info and registration here https://www.eaquals.org/eaquals-events/event/speaking-beyond-the-classroom-a-case-study-in-speaking-portfolios/

3. I wonder whether the impact of the pandemic on our lives has reduced the incidence of this week’s phobia, agoraphobia? https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/agoraphobia/overview/ I somehow doubt it has.

4. Whether or not you’re agoraphobic, here’s an early reminder to book for Oxford University Press’s English Language Teaching Online Conference, ELTOC, starting 24^th June https://elt.oup.com/feature/global/eltoc/?cc=global&selLanguage=en ELTOC, it is claimed, is “the biggest online event in the English language teaching calendar” – it may well be but how does one verify that claim, I wonder?

5. And, finally, two songs from the Playing for Change team https://www.playingforchange.com/ Oye Como Va https://youtu.be/NJZW8U9bbmM and Guantanamera https://youtu.be/blUSVALW_Z4

1. The Cambridge Key Topics in Applied Linguistics series editors Zhu Hua and Claire Kramsch will be in conversation with Jerry Won Lee, discussing his new book, Locating Translingualism, this Thursday, 9^th June, at 17:00 UK time. More info and registration here https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_R2HZA4ZUSNS9Lm9XwuRQfw

The series editors’ conversation last year was with David Gramling, about his book, The Invention of Multilingualism: recording here https://youtu.be/TsPwbrxG7z0

2. It’s probably time for another visit to the OASIS database, which “makes research on language learning, use, and education available and accessible to a wide audience”. They’ve just completed their thousandth review! https://oasis-database.org/?locale=en

Recent article summaries include ‘Learning new second language sounds as a by-product of playing a videogame: Potential and limitations’, ‘Translingual pedagogies on English as an additional language writing’, How a skilled author used creativity when writing a textbook for English language teaching’ and ‘Improvements in automatically calculating vocabulary use in EFL writing’.

3. The latest two Pearson podcasts are with Mike Hogan and Chia Suan Chong on the importance of professional development in English language teaching and Sam Wadsworth and Anna Hasper on what testing and assessment really mean and why they are so important. https://www.pearson.com/english/resources/pearson-english-podcast.html

4. And, finally, following the success of yesterday’s comic A. P. Herbert poem, here’s a more sombre one, written in 1944, Salute the Soldier. PBI in the penultimate line means ‘Poor Bloody Infantry’.

1. Six degrees of separation is the idea (with which many of you will be familiar already) that all people (anywhere around the world) are six or fewer social connections away from each other https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation

See if you can establish a six (or fewer) degree connection with the finalists in this year’s Cambridge ‘Dedicated Teacher Awards’ competition https://dedicatedteacher.cambridge.org/finalists/

2. Michael Barber has been prominent in UK public life for many years now, usually working in or around education, and was once the founder and head of Tony Blair’s ‘Efficiency Unit’ – Mr ‘Get it Done’. He now hosts an appropriately named podcast, Accomplishment https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-accomplishment-podcast-with-sir-michael-barber/id1605826027

Try this one with Dzingai Mutumbuka, the first minister of education in newly independent Zimbabwe https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/s1-ep-4-accomplishment-dr-dzingai-mutumbuka/id1605826027?i=1000549485857

or this one with the England football manager, Gareth Southgate https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/s2-ep-1-accomplishment-gareth-southgate/id1605826027?i=1000563208358

Shame about the result against Hungary the other night, though!

3. A thoughtful blog post by Neil Mosley, What role will MOOC platforms play in UK universities online futures? https://www.neilmosley.com/blog/nm6ovv8dvhqlrkovr5861l5pxlw0rc

“As more UK universities begin to review and develop their online education strategies and portfolios, and think about the role of partnerships in that, consideration of existing or prospective MOOC platform partnerships should be a part of the mix. Now we are over 10 years on from the initial surge of MOOC platforms, universities with existing partnerships that are simply ticking over, should now reflect seriously on these partnerships and whether or not they might, or are actually helping them achieve their goals and aims.”

4. And, finally, a shaggy dog story about a soldier called Shute. My mother’s thought processes are now less straightforward than once they were, and we were reminiscing this afternoon about part-time work she did a long time ago with a company based in Shute Road in Catterick. This led on to our wondering who or what Shute was, and it turns out he’s likely the younger of two General Shutes, uncle Charles and nephew Cameron, and highly unpopular with the troops he commanded during the First World War. General Cameron Shute’s bad luck and our good luck was that the very talented comic writer A. P. Herbert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._P._Herbert was at one point a junior officer on his staff. Herbert wrote the poem in the attachment below following a latrine inspection by Shute …

This will be the last post until next Monday, 6^th June, largely because of item 1 below!

1. This coming weekend is Platinum Jubilee Central Weekend (not quite sure what ‘Central’ means in this context) here in the UK, in honour of The Queen’s seventy years on the throne. There’s a range of resources, including flags and bunting for street parties, on the UK government site https://platinumjubilee.gov.uk/

and on the Royal Family’s own Jubilee site https://www.royal.uk/platinumjubilee.

How meaningful a topic is this for students around the world, I wonder? Genuine question!

2. Here’s an approving OECD blog post by Andreas Schleicher on the Sacúdete entrepreneurship programme in Colombia https://oecdedutoday.com/colombian-entrepreneur-programme/

and here’s two Sacúdete sites https://colombiajoven.gov.co/sacudete and https://sacudete.icbf.gov.co/

Google does a pretty good translation job for those of us who don’t have much Spanish at our disposal, except it can’t quite decide whether Sacúdete means shake yourself or shake off – maybe it means both!

3. Alexandra Mihai has a new blog post out, Innovation in Higher Education. Wait, what? https://educationalist.substack.com/p/innovation-in-higher-education-wait?s=r

She has the word ‘innovation’ in her (newish) job title – Assistant Professor of Innovation in Higher Education – and, characteristically, she’s been trying to work out what exactly that should mean.

4. What is it about the USA and gun crime? https://theconversation.com/us-shootings-norway-and-finland-have-similar-levels-of-gun-ownership-but-far-less-gun-crime-183933

5. And, finally, a new free online show by Neda Nezhdana has just opened at the Finborough Theatre, Otvetka (which I think means ‘answer’ or ‘response’?) https://www.youtube.com/user/finboroughtheatre

1. There’s a Council of Europe Common Framework of Reference (CEFR) webinar at 15:00 UK time on Thursday: Assessing plurilingualism: An example from practice with Belinda Steinhuber from the Centre for Professional (berufsbezogene) Languages in Austria. Registration here https://forms.office.com/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=grBJPtViSUilsIbtUZKH0rai7LbFWpVAoRIo3dq5irxUNENFQTFRVERQMU40NjlYRVRLVU5HQkxYVi4u

handout here with example exam tasks (to be discussed during the webinar) https://rm.coe.int/cefr-online-workshop-series-2022-5-handout/1680a6a9d4

and background reading here https://rm.coe.int/cefr-online-workshop-series-2022-5-background-reading/1680a6a9d3

PDFs of both handout and reading below, both of which are probably worth a quick look if you’re interested in plurilingualism even if you can’t attend on Thursday.

2. With a slight delay, and thanks to a prod from my colleague Ellen, here’s the latest edition of The Teacher Trainer from Pilgrims, which has a focus this time on communities of practice https://pilgrimsttj.com/ (I was sure I’d already mentioned it but can find no trace.) PDF below.

3. Another free Cambridge Elements download, free for the next ten days or so:  Thinking and Speaking in a Second Language by Yi Wang and Li Wei https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/thinking-and-speaking-in-a-second-language/A08F458B9DA07FCA64FE614BA44370E6

The authors seek to answer the question, “Does the language we speak affect the way we think?” PDF below.

4. And, finally, The Monocle’s Global Countdown podcast on what’s ‘top of the pops’ in countries around the world. This latest episode is Moldova https://monocle.com/radio/shows/the-global-countdown/59/

and all the other 58 episodes are archived here, including Burkina Faso, Brazil, Colombia, Ghana, India, Italy, Japan, Lebanon and Serbia https://monocle.com/radio/shows/the-global-countdown/

Some reading for the weekend …

1. The Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) is “an open, global network of members working together within a humanitarian and development framework to ensure that all individuals have the right to a quality, safe, relevant, and equitable education”.

They published a guidance note for Teacher Wellbeing in Emergency Settings earlier this week, establishing “a benchmark for teacher wellbeing; a standard of care and recognition that every teacher – regardless of where they live and work – should expect from the government or humanitarian architecture or communities that support them”. https://inee.org/resources/guidance-note-teacher-wellbeing-emergency-settings

More about INEE here https://inee.org/about-inee

registration for the online launch of the guidance note at 14:00 UK time on 1^st June here https://rescue.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_TmoQt-xPT5aMRq9fPzjbIQ?timezone_id=Europe%2FLondon

and PDF of the guidance note below.

2. Slightly longer notice than usual of this RSA event at 13:00 UK time on Thursday 9^th June, as we have a long Jubilee holiday next week which will probably disrupt this blog a bit: Dismantling racism in British education with Jeffrey Boakye talking about his forthcoming book, I Heard What You Said, in which “he recounts how it feels to be on the margins of the British education system” https://www.thersa.org/events/2022/06/dismantling-racism-in-british-education

3. The Fawcett Society has just published a report whose title speaks for itself (unlike many titles)  Broken Ladders: The myth of meritocracy for women of colour in the workplace https://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/broken-ladders

Copy of both the full report and the summary and recommendations only below.

4. The mission of Understood is “to help those who learn and think differently discover their potentials, take control, find community, and stay on positive paths along each stage of life’s journey”. ‘I need you to listen’ is a short film from the perspective of a young person with learning and thinking differences https://youtu.be/C4c3iHU0YzQ

More background here https://www.understood.org/articles/be-the-reason and a PDF of Understood’s ‘Be the Reason’ activity kit for parents below.

1. Here’s the latest free download in the Cambridge Elements series, Explicit and Implicit Learning in Second Language Acquisition by Bill VanPatten and Megan Smith https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/explicit-and-implicit-learning-in-second-language-acquisition/EBABCB9129343210EB91B9198F17C4EB

Their very interesting conclusion is that “second language acquisition is largely if not exclusively implicit in nature and that explicit learning plays a secondary role in how learners grapple with meaning”. PDF below.

2. Here’s a chance to contribute a teaching activity to the University of East Anglia’s research project on Gender-ing English Language Teaching – and win a prize in their raffle! https://app.geckoform.com/public/#/modern/21FO0097qyp9eg00ju77pl7ixw

3. Wednesday’s plenary at IATEFL Belfast last week, Reading the world and the word was by Gabriel Díaz Maggioli.

Here’s the blurb for his talk (or is ‘blurb’ just for book covers and I should say ‘abstract’ here?): “Reading is an enabling skill that allows access to a whole array of contexts, contents and information. The teaching of reading in foreign language settings has been tied to a more or less stable paradigm for the past thirty years. However, with the move to online instruction caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, certain taken-for-granted axioms about the teaching of this skill have come into question. In this plenary we will explore some of the current assumptions behind enabling learners to access the world through texts.”

Gabo’s talk starts 38’30” into the video https://www.facebook.com/IATEFL/videos/554337879583460

4. Some food for thought from Anne Kispal for the NFER blog on Choosing texts for comprehension activities in the classroom https://www.nfer.ac.uk/news-events/nfer-blogs/choosing-texts-for-comprehension-activities-in-the-classroom/

Starts with a sentiment with which I certainly (used to!) agree: “Choosing the right text for assessing comprehension is not an easy, five-minute job. However, for many of us – whether we are teachers or assessment specialists – it is one of the more pleasant tasks.”

5. And, finally, a great cinema and football story about the fifteen-year-old Carlo Ancelotti (against whose team one should not bet lightly this coming Saturday) https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/may/21/carlo-ancelotti-the-secret-ringer-who-patched-up-pasolini-and-bertolucci

1. Today, the plenary which opened the IATEFL conference in Belfast last week: Nayr Ibrahim on (Re)imagining and (re)inventing early English language learning and teaching. It starts 51 minutes into the video https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=281585834097705

I enjoyed it – including the red sofa – very much!

2. A recent short and very readable paper by Harry Fletcher-Wood of Teacher Tapp and Artur Tavere of the British Council on  ‘Instructional coaching – why it matters and how to make it matter’ https://www.britishcouncil.org/research-policy-insight/research-reports/instructional-coaching

From their conclusion: “It’s clear that our children’s success in school and beyond depends on improvements to teaching. And while instructional coaching may not be the miracle cure, and making it work for teachers can be challenging, it has proven to be a powerful strategy, supported by promising research evidence”. PDF below.

3. Teachers Talk Radio are looking for volunteers https://www.ttradio.org/post/new-schedule-new-era Come on, don’t be shy now: I can think of several readers of this message who’d be perfect!

4. And, finally, this week’s phobia is selenophobia. If you suffer from it, don’t watch this https://twitter.com/michelleatchi15/status/1519272881121013762?s=27

This one’s from the phone on the train home from Oxford to ‘the other place’. Let’s see if my clumsy fingers can manage!

I visited Oxford University Press today with this year’s cohort of Hornby Trust scholars, and today’s message partly reflects that visit.

1. The Oxford Text Checker is primarily intended for teachers who want to check the language level of a text, but students can have fun with it, too. https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/text-checker/

2. OUP have an interesting blog https://public.oed.com/blog/ Try this one on The Language of Climate Change https://public.oed.com/blog/the-oed-october-2021-update/

3. Libor Stepanek gave the Thursday plenary at IATEFL in Belfast on ‘EMI: a language teacher’s leap into the unknown?’ Starts just short of 30 minutes in https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=371752408264095&id=100067745029203&m_entstream_source=timeline

4. And, finally, it’s nearly time for the 2022 Hay Festival. Details here of British Council supported free events https://literature.britishcouncil.org/blog/2022/hay-festival-2022/ Bernardine Evaristo, Monica Ali, Fernanda Melchor (who I’ve just discovered) and lots more!