Roy Cross's Blog

1. Identifying authenticity in procedures of language analysis for the determination of origin (LADO) with the forensic linguist Yaron Matras is the title of the next talk in the University of Reading Applied Linguistics Research Circle series of weekly talks at 16:00 UK time on Tuesday, 22^nd March.

Full abstract below in PDF form; here’s a taster: “LADO (‘language analysis for the determination of origin’) is a procedure used by governments in Europe, the US and Australia to support the processing of applications for political asylum. It is based on the assumption that linguistic features are a reliable indicator of a person’s place of socialisation and so they can help verify a person’s claim to originate from a particular region, and hence their entitlement to refuges status based on international law. LADO practice, particularly the outsourcing of language analysis to private contractors, has been controversial.”

As usual, please contact Rodney Jones r.h.jones@reading.ac.uk for Zoom details.

2. Early notice of this one at 10:00 UK time on Wednesday, 30^th March, from the Centre for Research in Education in Asia at Bath University: Yongyan Zheng from Fudan University will be talking about Social mobility, multilingualism and language education.

More info and registration here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/development-in-education-in-asia-crea-2022-seminar-series-3-tickets-289985593717

3. Oxymoronic: Can you even attempt to decolonize English teaching? Is the title of J P B Gerald’s talk at 14:00 UK time on Monday, 21^st March – speaks for itself, I reckon! https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/oxymoronic-can-you-even-attempt-decolonize-english-teaching

Here’s JPB’s own site https://jpbgerald.com/

4. And, finally and heartbreakingly, from the Ukrainian poet Olga Bragina and translated by Elina Alter, There’s No Getting Out https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/march-2022-catalan-theres-no-getting-out-olga-bragina-elina-alter

1. The Association for Quality Education & Training Online (AQUEDUTO) https://aqueduto.com/  have recently published a report by Simon Borg on COVID-19 and the Shift to Online Teacher Education https://aqueduto.com/media/3ytfysdx/covid-19-and-the-shift-to-online-language-teacher-education.pdf “With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, it quickly became clear that institutions worldwide were forced to transition to online-based teacher training programmes. With expert Simon Borg, we connected with teacher educators in nine different countries to learn how they responded to COVID–19 and the fast switch to OLTE (online language teacher education). The narratives are followed by a review of the key themes that they highlight, and the report ends with some reflections on the implications of the study for ELTE.” PDF below.

2. Also looking at teacher education, How should ITT (Initial Teacher Training) evolve to meet global needs? is the title of this article in the tes magazine (which no longer uses its full name, The Times Educational Supplement, or capital letters, to the confusion of people of my generation, but maybe that’s the point) https://www.tes.com/magazine/analysis/specialist-sector/how-should-teacher-training-itt-evolve-meet-global-needs

3. The eighth annual edition of the British Council’s Five Films for Freedom, the world’s first global, digital LGBTIQ+ short-film programme, has just launched, with films this year from India, China, Croatia, Panama and the UK.

More info here https://film.britishcouncil.org/about/work/fivefilmsforfreedom

the films themselves here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdiB3YQ6fPnkd_z1AA8diFxRRRvk0bSQK

and a useful glossary of common LGBTIQ+ terms from The University of Technology in Sydney here https://www.uts.edu.au/partners-and-community/initiatives/social-justice-uts/equity-and-diversity-uts/gender-sexuality-5

Watch one a day for the next five days?

 4. And, finally, this week’s phobia is amaxophobia, something that I do not suffer from having just become the happy owner of a car for the first time in nearly twenty years – the opposite rather!

1. Early warning – and if I remember, I’ll remind you next Tuesday, too – of an event on 28^th March, starting at 10:00 UK time, The Climate Connection Global Knowledge Exchange https://www.britishcouncil.org/climate-connection/get-involved/global-exchange There’s a focus session on the Climate Action for Language Education (CALE) programme at 11:00 UK time at which Colm Downes will announce a number of exciting new CALE developments around World Earth Day on 22^nd April.

2. I don’t think this is too technical; I’m a little less sure, though, for how much of the world a heat pump is a viable option. NESTA have just published a range of reports into heat pumps and people’s attitudes (here in the UK) towards their use and cost https://www.nesta.org.uk/project/reducing-cost-heat-pumps/ PDFs of three of the NESTA reports below.

3. In part climatic, this year’s Cultural Heritage for Inclusive Growth Symposium starts in Nairobi tomorrow, with a focus on “Decolonization & Cultural Heritage in Africa”: more info here https://www.kbc.co.ke/the-cultural-heritage-for-inclusive-growth-symposium-begins-tomorrow/ and registration here https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Uum74kmSSv-mkkpv8ccy6g

4. Possibly not at all climatic but quite likely climactic is the next event in the China TESOL Master Class Online Series, David Crystal talking about The Future of Englishes at 12:00 UK time on 18th March. More info and registration here (and in the PDF below) https://tesol.i21st.cn/yanxiu/ – click on the English button if your Chinese is rusty! All welcome!

5. And, finally and at very short notice, the March ViVEXELT Symposium, on Sharing synchronous online ELT practice through a Virtual Exchange with a keynote by Robert O’Dowd from Universidad de León on Virtual Exchange and its role in Teacher Education is tomorrow, Wednesday 16^th March, at 12:50 UK time. Full details in the PDF below; registration (but absolutely no information!) here https://coventry-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMvceiqrjwjEty28LYBLK6c5zRXRRM5zzC- The ViVEXELT (Vietnam Virtual Exchange for English Language Teaching) project is a collaboration between Coventry University in the UK and Hanoi University of Science and Technology in Vietnam https://vivexelt.com/

1. Eaquals have a webinar at 10:00 UK time tomorrow, 15^th March with Elena Deleyto La Cruz & Thom Kiddle on Using authentic video in language teaching and learning – why, what and how? https://www.eaquals.org/eaquals-events/event/using-authentic-video-in-language-teaching-and-learning-why-what-and-how/ At risk of giving offence to Thom, I’m intrigued by Elena’s plan to ‘show how a very simple interactive learning structure can provide the means for autonomous video-based learning’.

2. The 120^th issue of BAAL News has just come out https://www.baal.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/BAAL-News_Winter_120.pdf PDF below as well. An interesting interview with David Crystal looking back over BAAL’s history: he organised their first ever event!

3. FOLLM, the Forum on Language Learning Motivation, have a webinar at 09:00 UK time next Monday, 21^st March, in partnership with the Department of English and Communication of Hong Kong Polytechnic University, with Jean-Marc Dewaele from Birkbeck College and Stephen Ryan from Waseda University on Novel Insights into Motivation and Emotions Research More info here https://follmresearch.wordpress.com/ and registration here https://www.polyu.edu.hk/pfs/index.php/819474?lang=en

4. And, finally, The Guardian won the best short film BAFTA award last night for its documentary film, The Black Cop https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2022/jan/19/the-black-cop-a-police-officers-story-of-racism-remorse-and-resistance-documentary

A variety of reading for the weekend …

1. Free online till 24^th March, Intercultural and Transcultural Awareness in Language Teaching by Will Baker in the Cambridge Elements in Language Teaching series https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/intercultural-and-transcultural-awareness-in-language-teaching/15F00F50FE93E3D583C22D4600CA1C54# PDF below just in case that’s easier.

Pedagogical Translanguaging by Jasone Cenoz and Durk Gorter remains free to download https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/pedagogical-translanguaging/67802C1E5AE4A418AE3B8E2DEFBAD30A

and details of the other books so far in the series here https://www.cambridge.org/core/what-we-publish/elements/language-teaching

2. One for us men to read over the weekend? Gender Equality in Higher Education: Maximising Impacts – “an in-depth analysis of how gender inequality is reflected, reinforced and challenged in higher education worldwide” https://www.britishcouncil.org/gender-equality-higher-education-maximising-impacts PDF copies of both full report and summary below.

3. No prizes for guessing what a number of the articles in this month’s issue of International Affairs directly or indirectly focus on https://academic.oup.com/ia/issue/98/2 PDF of this month’s Editor’s Choice article, Rethinking strategy and statecraft for the twenty-first century of complexity: a case for strategic diplomacy,by Jochen Prantl and Evelyn Goh, below. All open access except the abstracts curiously!

4. This one’s a bit of a rant, but a readable one: Hope for the Future by Audrey Watters, ‘Ed-Tech’s Cassandra’ https://hackeducation.com/2022/03/08/hope

5. And, finally, unschooling https://www.thenationalnews.com/lifestyle/family/2022/02/28/what-is-unschooling-meet-the-families-who-have-shunned-the-formal-education-system/ and a family who live in a bus (not a shoe) https://www.worldschoolingnomads.com/

1. One week today, Thursday 17^th March, at 09:00 UK time sees the next event in the Universitas Negeri Jakarta’s Zoominar programme: Kathleen Heugh from the University of South Australia will be talking about The Role of Local, Regional and International Languages in Multilingual Education to Achieve Equality and Inclusion. Zoom meeting ID 927 4818 6553 and password PASCAUNJ.

Kathleen’s rubric reads as follows: “The focus is on the relationship between literacy and learning to read and write and using reading and writing to learn. For most students in the world this means literacy in a minimum of two languages, usually three, and often four. I discuss the research data, what we know now, and how we can achieve what is necessary for all students. I discuss, with practical examples, how to ensure that all students and teachers know how to translate knowledge in one language into another language and how they learn how to work with translanguaging and transknowledging.”

2. The next event in the Eaquals Plurilingual Webinar Series is tomorrow et c’est en français: «Il était une fois un conte qui… voyageait» avec Katia Ioannidou et Natacha Madentzoglou. Cliquez ici pour vous enregistrer https://www.eaquals.org/eaquals-events/event/katia-ioannidou-matacha-magentzoglou-il-etait-une-fois-un-conte-qui-voyageait/

3. Here’s the archive of the TESL Canada Journal https://teslcanadajournal.ca/index.php/tesl/issue/archive There’s a number of articles in Vol. 36 No. 1, which was a special issue on Language and Higher Education, on translanguaging and plurilingualism https://teslcanadajournal.ca/index.php/tesl/issue/view/159 and the journal generally pays a fair bit of attention to languages in education.

4. And, finally, time for a spot of Punglish at long last, I think. Here’s Daljit Nagra talking about his retelling of the Ramayana: https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/the-joy-of-cultural-mixing-daljit-nagra-on-retelling-the-classic-ramayana-i  

1. I’ve been getting e-mails from JISC for ages, but I’ve only just learnt that JISC stands for – or used to stand for – Joint Information Systems Committee, which is/was a bit of a grey name. They’ve just published Principles of good assessment and feedback: how good learning, teaching and assessment can be applied to improving assessment and feedback practice, which offers a very useful tour of the assessment and feedback horizon https://www.jisc.ac.uk/guides/principles-of-good-assessment-and-feedback  You might find it helpful to click on the ‘view full guide as a single page’ link.

2. And another in a related field, the latest blog post from Alexandra Mihai, Thesis Supervision 101 https://educationalist.substack.com/p/thesis-supervision-101?s=r Thrown in the thesis supervision deep end herself this year, Alexandra has collected together with her customary thoroughness a wide range of resources on the topic to help “the many thesis supervisors who receive little to no guidance when getting started, and have to rely on their own experiences as a student, or their colleagues’ experiences”. Lots of stuff in there for those of us who don’t supervise theses as such, too.

3. What’s not to like in a MOOC called How to Plan a Great Lesson? https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/teaching-english-great-lesson Free, unless you want a certificate, and available now, with educators providing online support for the next four weeks. Two hours a week for four weeks. Click on the ‘More Courses’ tab for other suggestions.

4. And, finally, possibly prompted in some strange way by the excellent talk I went to yesterday evening on Philip Oltermann’s The Stasi Poetry Circle, Poems on the Underground, thirty-five years old now and still going strong www.poemsontheunderground.org The first poem on the homepage at present is You took away all the oceans and all the room by Osip Mandelstam, and this week’s Poem of the Week is a cracker by Choman Hardi https://poemsontheunderground.org/poem-of-the-week Judith Chernaik, who’s been running the scheme since it started, and her fellow editors, Imtiaz Dharker and George Szirtes, would welcome comments in support of their application for continued funding. Please send them to me to pass on.

5. This week’s phobia, claustrophobia, will not interfere with enjoyment of Poems on the Underground on their website – in situ on Underground trains might be a different matter.

A little earlier today than usual as I’m off to listen to Philip Oltermann talk about his new book, ‘The Stasi Poetry Circle’ https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/mar/03/the-stasi-poetry-circle-by-philip-oltermann-review-paper-spies

1. Can we reduce the environmental impact of plastics? is the title of a recent OECD report. Good short introductory video here https://youtu.be/MAoBi9bK7c8 , full online report here https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/de747aef-en/index.html?itemId=%2Fcontent%2Fpublication%2Fde747aef-en and PDF of highlights below.

2. Fact World has been exploring Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) for over twenty years https://www.factworld.info/ Keith Kelly, who’s based in Bulgaria, is one of the leading lights, and here’s the latest issue of FACT Journal, number 24, in which Keith describes recent work with teachers from pre-primary schools in Cyprus https://www.factworld.info/en/Bulgaria-FACT-Journals-Issue-24 PDF below.

3. Here’s a recording of a recent Royal Society of Arts event in which Helen Thompson talks about her new book, The Story of Disorder https://youtu.be/-7FpEMR0qpc  and “explores how the ever-present question of how we produce and consume energy continues to define our world, and how the fallout from this is taking shape across the West and in its relationship with the Middle East, China, and beyond”. Helen’s talk begins with her analysis of the crisis in Ukraine and its origins in the Suez Crisis of 1956. She’s also a regular on a popular podcast here in the UK, Talking Politics https://www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com/

4. And, finally here’s an online anthology from Words without Borders of Writing from Ukraine  https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/voices-from-ukraine Text, video and audio aplenty!

Normal service resumes! Sorry for the break in service last Thursday and Friday: it’s been a busy few days on the family front.

1. The first of two webinars this Wednesday, 9^th March: at 13:00 UK time and hosted by the UCL Centre for Applied Linguistics, Language Learning of Adult Migrants in Europe with Glenn Levine-West from the University of California, Anke Grotlüschen from Hamburg University and Nafisah Graham-Brown from ELATT, an education charity here in the UK https://www.elatt.org.uk/ Registration here https://forms.gle/HYhmMGf6iwtSBmNn8 and smart McKinley PDF of abstract below.

2. Second, at 16:00 UK time and hosted by the Manchester Centre for Research in Linguistics at Manchester Metropolitan University, Exploring the link between bilingualism in the family and child well-being with Lisa-Maria Müller from the Chartered College of Teaching. Registration here https://www.eventbrite.com/e/what-difference-does-bilingualism-make-tickets-291208361047 and home-made Cross PDF of abstract below.

3. Here’s the latest issue of the European Language Gazette from our colleagues at the ECML in Graz, full of good stuff as ever, including the recipe book from the European Day of Languages’ 20th Anniversary Great Bake-Off: https://ecml.at/News/Newsletter/Gazette59/tabid/4429/language/en-GB/Default.aspx PDF of recipe book below, including Magic Forest Cake from the UK – a new one on me, but I’ll give it a go!

4. And, finally, ninety-nine years old today: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42891/stopping-by-woods-on-a-snowy-evening plus the interesting backstory to the poem https://storyoftheweek.loa.org/2019/12/christmas-trees.html

Back from Yorkshire, reinvigorated!

1. This MOOC on How to teach pronunciation started yesterday; you can still enrol! https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/teaching-pathways-how-teach-pronunciation

The rubric says, “In this practical 4-week online course, you will increase your understanding of phonology and your ability to support learners with effective pronunciation activities in the classroom”.

 2. David Spiegelhalter is Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at Cambridge University and has become quite a celebrity here in the UK since the start of the pandemic.

Together with his fellow author, Anthony Masters, the ‘Statistical Ambassador’ for the Royal Statistical Society, he’ll be discussing their new book, ‘COVID by Numbers: making sense of the pandemic with data’, at this LSE event at 16:00 UK time next Monday, 7^th March  https://www.lse.ac.uk/Events/2022/03/202203071600/data – and he’s very good at communicating risk and evidence issues!

3. The Booker Prize has a great mini-site devoted to ‘The Promise’, the novel by Damon Galgut that won the prize last time round, with a reading from the novel, videos and interviews with the author https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/books/the-promise

4. And, finally and paywall-hopefully, A Smattering of Haiku for the Burnout Age from The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/a-smattering-of-haiku-for-the-burnout-age

And just in case it doesn’t work, here’s one of the best, by Ayo Edebiri:

There’s nothing sadder

Than writing a haiku and

Getting writer’s block.