Roy Cross's Blog

I never really know whether to mention events good and early (and run the risk of people forgetting all about them before they happen) or closer to the time, by which time diaries may already be full. Anyway, here goes with no fewer than three events next Thursday, 24th February.

1. At 14:00 UK time that day, Simon Borg will be giving a talk for Aqueduto, the Association for Quality Education and Training Online https://aqueduto.com/about-aqueduto/, on COVID-19 and the Shift to Online Teacher Education. Register here https://bit.ly/34y6YaQ PDF of Simon’s abstract below.

2. The second event next Thursday, 24th February, at 19:30 UK time, is an interview with Abdulrazak Gurnah, who recently won the Nobel Prize for Literature “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”, talking about ‘After the Nobel Prize for Literature’. On YouTube, so no need to register https://youtu.be/tN7IfgNIe0g

I could imagine his life has changed quite a lot in the last three months! And just in case you’re interested, here’s a list of all the Literature winners since 1901 https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/all-nobel-prizes-in-literature/

3. The third one sounds intriguing – A Narrative context lesson: The Class is the Story. Earlier in the day, at 11:00 UK time on 24th February; more info and registration here https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/a-narrative-context-lesson-class-story

4. ‘Belonging inclusion and mental health are all connected’ is the title of this WONKHE blog post, which reports on recent research by WONKHE and Pearson with over 5,000 university students https://wonkhe.com/blogs/belonging-inclusion-and-mental-health-are-all-connected/ “It’s been known for at least a decade that feeling a “sense of belonging” while at university can make or break students’ overall experience” – it’s the ‘key variable’. PDF of report below.

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5. Here’s a good short clear (adjective order OK?) piece on the current Ukraine crisis from Robin Niblett of Chatham House: https://www.chathamhouse.org/2022/02/russias-end-games-and-putins-dilemmas

6. And, finally, a high-flying wheelie bin from earlier today somewhere in London https://twitter.com/putasinghonit/status/1494349347470954503?s=20&t=KfbJf5iUiXhUqUI2cLXq6A

In Cambridge thus far – thus far – we’ve got off very lightly!

1. More or less this time next week, at 19:00 UK time on Thursday, 24^th February, the National Centre for Writing here in the UK are hosting ‘Meet the World: Translation as Witness’. More info and registration here  https://nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/whats-on/meet-the-world-translation-as-witness/ NB: you need to register in advance.

2. Available any time you like, this piece in The New York Times about Jennifer Croft, who recently declared “I’m not translating any more books without my name on the cover” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/11/books/literary-translation-translators-jennifer-croft.html

3. Another free piece from the current issue of International Affairs, this one by Amitav Acharya, ‘Race and racism in the founding of the modern world order’ https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/98/1/23/6484842

Acharya calls for racism to be viewed “as an inter-linked global challenge, (…) integral to the emerging research agenda of Global International Relations.” PDF below.

4. I mentioned Scott Thornbury last week, and now he’s re-vamped his website http://www.scottthornbury.com/ Not entirely sure I can claim cause and effect.

5. And, finally, Kate Folk reads her own story, ‘Out There’, for The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-writers-voice/kate-folk-reads-out-there

Text of ‘Out There’ here, all being well with the paywall https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/23/out-there

1. The Wonder Foundation’s mission is to empower women and girls to get the education they need to exit poverty for good https://wonderfoundation.org.uk/

They’ve recently produced a report on women’s exclusion from online learning and the gender digital divide more generally https://wonderfoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Women-Disconnected-Report.pdf PDF below and thanks to Ellen Darling for this tip!

We’ve all heard stories, I’m sure, of how school-age daughters are right at the end of the queue for use of the family mobile, behind father, mother and brother(s).

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2. With each year that passes, the ELTons Innovation Awards become more international, and nominations are now open until 17th March for the 2022 awards. More info here https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/eltons-innovation-awards-2022-applications

Excellence in Course Innovation, Innovation in Teacher Resources, Innovation in Learner Resources, Digital Innovation and Local Innovation are the five categories – the judges may not thank me, but the more applications they receive, the better!

Fair to say that most innovation nowadays is to some extent digital, which might render the digital innovation category ever-so-slightly problematic?

3. This Saturday, 19^th February is the 2022 Qudwa-PISA Global Competence Forum, a partnership between the OECD and the Bussola Foundation. More info on speakers and programme here https://www.qudwa.com/ and registration here https://registration.qudwa.com/StandAloneRegistration/Registration

The Arabic word ‘qudwa’ means ‘example’ or ‘model’ in English (I think).

 4. If, like me, you’re not quite 100% sure what is meant by ‘competence’, here’s a useful piece from Cambridge on the topic, What is Competence? https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/insights/What-is-competence-A-shared-interpretation-of-competence-to-support-teaching-learning-and-assessment PDF of report below.

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5. And, finally, how about some humility? Here’s a piece from Psychology Today, Are You Intellectually Humble? https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-questionologist/202103/are-you-intellectually-humble How does that reconcile with this week’s phobia, the barely pronounceable kakorrhaphiophobia, I wonder?

1. Another piece from the Danish Development Research Network (DDRN): “Sami-youth in Finland: ‘Our culture is threatened by climate change – and we are not even part of the conversation about it’”, in which a young member of the Sami Parliament in Finland, a reindeer-herder by tradition and profession, talks about the impact of climate change on her people. https://ddrn.dk/7147/

 2. The EU (…) is moving to label nuclear energy sustainable if it meets certain criteria, says this World Economic Forum (WEF) piece, which also makes mention of a recent report which found that the nuclear sector helped avert the emission of 74 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide between 1971 and 2018 https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/02/nuclear-energy-fuel-supply-crunch/

3. This one from NESTA is for anyone that uses gas to heat their home or their water,  https://www.nesta.org.uk/project-updates/how-much-your-gas-boiler-costing-earth/ I tried their calculator and our gas heating produces approximately 2,927 kg of CO² per year – the equivalent of nine transatlantic flights or 18 trips from Land’s End to John O’Groats – 24,300 kms – by car. Which maybe isn’t a complete disaster?

4. An honest piece in The Scottish Review by Anthony Seaton from Aberdeen University, ‘Preparing for Climate Change’ https://www.scottishreview.net/AnthonySeaton604a.html “I’m not sure that my profession has done a very good job of explaining the implications of climate change,” says Professor Seaton.

5. Here’s more lesson plans than you can shake a stick at from the Climate Action in Language Education team https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/climate-action-language-education-lesson-plans

 6. And, finally, ‘The epitome of joy’, a Guardian celebration of the life and songs of Lata Mangeshkar https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/feb/08/the-epitome-of-joy-10-of-lata-mangeshkars-greatest-songs

1. The University of Bristol is offering a number of PhD scholarships in fields including Education https://www.bristol.ac.uk/fssl/courses/postgraduate/scholarships/ Closing date 28^th March – nothing ventured, nothing gained?

2. Here’s a speaking lesson plan from onestopenglish on Film and TV: Romance movies  with downloadable pupil worksheet and teacher’s notes https://www.onestopenglish.com/speaking-lesson-plans/film-and-tv-romance-movies/556095.article PDFs below. Scroll down the page for lots more film and television lesson ideas and materials.

3. The OECD use the attainment gap within a country’s education system between weaker and stronger pupils as a useful indicator of the quality and equity of that system, and eligibility for ‘free school meals’ has long been used in the UK as both a reliable indicator of disadvantage and a useful way of tracking progress made (or not made) by disadvantaged pupils relative to their non-disadvantaged peers. This press release from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) about a new report, Investigating the changing landscape of pupil disadvantage by Jenna Julius and Anusha Ghosh, explains how that’s all about to become more difficult https://www.nfer.ac.uk/news-events/press-releases/changes-to-fsm-eligibility-will-make-tracking-progress-of-disadvantage-pupils-almost-impossible/ Report download here https://www.nfer.ac.uk/investigating-the-changing-landscape-of-pupil-disadvantage/ and PDF below.

4. And, finally, a free piece from the next issue of the London Review of Books to encourage those of you that don’t subscribe to do so, Out of Sir Vidia’s Shadow by Paul Theroux https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n04/paul-theroux/diary Cross fingers crossed this works; PDF below in case it doesn’t.

Another late return to Cambridge from Yorkshire today …

1. The impact of informal second language learning, motivation and formal instruction on EFL learners’ spoken use of discourse markers is the title of Christina Lyrigkou’s talk next Wednesday, 16^th February for the University of Reading Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism Research at 16:00 UK time.

Registration here https://forms.office.com/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=xDv6T_zswEiQgPXkP_kOXwztINXnyqFGmnzjsWjaQMFURU5FQ1Y4WkczOE0zUkdJQ0xZSFlFWlpWRS4u and home-made PDF below.

I have to admit that over-use of discourse markers such as well, so, you know, I mean, is a bit of a red rag to the Cross bull, whether or not it’s “considered an integral part of spoken discourse”!

2. Are teachers workers? Simple question, simple answer? The Teachers as Workers SIG certainly thinks so https://www.teachersasworkers.org/ Here’s a piece from their blog from a while back in which Phil Longwell talks openly about mental health https://www.teachersasworkers.org/time-to-talk-about-mental-health-interview-with-phil-longwell/

3. Nedim Türfent has been imprisoned in Turkey for six years. Here’s his reply to a letter he received from Ai WeiWei on the English PEN blog https://pentransmissions.com/2022/02/08/something-shadowless-like-you-nedim-turfent-writes-back-to-ai-weiwei-from-prison/

4.And, finally, a video from the Bradford Literature Festival: ‘Squib’ by Anthony Anaxagorou and the One6th Animation Studio https://youtu.be/eScWbcCksKg

1. Perhaps more for information than for action for most of us, the European Commission’s Safeguarding endangered languages in Europe initiative: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/horizon-cl2-2022-heritage-01-01 Click on the ‘show more’ buttons.

2. Why do we always have to tell people where we come from? is the title of the most recent post on the Danish Development Research Network (DDRN) blog https://ddrn.dk/

3. The Universitas Negeri Jakarta’s Zoominar programme for Semester 2 starts at 09:00 UK time next Thursday, 17^th February with Subhan Zein from the Australian National University talking about Examining Indonesia’s sociolinguistic situation: From diglossia to superglossia Zoom link to follow as soon as I have it, and home-made Cross PDF of the whole programme below.

4. Community Languages and EAL Can Benefit Each Other is the title of a recent Bell Foundation webinar by Li Wei from UCL Institute of Education https://youtu.be/q3iY-ogrKEk

Lots of other videos to explore on the Bell YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz4Z-7UIVaKNiC23EYjl1eg

including this series of ‘Great Ideas’ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoFvKa9dRKjcl01Pfo_gjgRZPmfqs9SCF

5. And, finally, the story of How Killer Rice Crippled Tokyo and the Japanese Navy https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/rice-disease-mystery-edo-tokyo-navy-beriberi

1. A possibly over-optimistically entitled event from the Abidjan Principles team at 14:00 UK time next Monday, 14^th February: “Towards the end of profit and commercial practice in education?” https://www.abidjanprinciples.org/ Scroll halfway down the page for more info on a stellar speaker line-up and all the way to the bottom to register.

2. An article from Ross Crichton, Adam Edmett and Steve Mann in the English Language Teacher Education and Development (ELTED) Journal about a project in Thailand that I became very fond of, after its inauspicious ‘give ’em a quick single-dose shot of training’ beginning, Video based observation and feedback for Thai in-service teachers: the mentor’s role https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/video-based-observation-feedback-thai-service-teachers-mentors-role

Here’s the article itself http://www.elted.net/uploads/7/3/1/6/7316005/crichton_vol._22.pdf and PDF below.

3. Registration’s still open for the Taking Action! Conference on Social Justice in Language Classrooms and Teacher Education on 18^th and 19^th February.

More info here https://div.kuwi.tu-dortmund.de/institut/veranstaltungen/details/taking-action-14603/ and registration here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/taking-action-tickets-211077326967 PDFs of programme and abstracts below.

4. Strictly speaking, this weeks’ phobia, procrastination, is not a phobia. It’s clearly not one the organisers of the Taking Action! conference suffer from. Here’s a Huffpost blog post on procrastination from a few years back, How to Get Over Your Fear of Taking Action, by Morty Lefkoe https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-to-get-over-your-fear_b_4598494

5. And, finally, I’m glad I wasn’t on this plane https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/feb/01/ba-jet-in-near-miss-at-heathrow-after-landing-aborted-in-high-winds

1. Ladies and gentlemen, a big hand please for the ten winning schools in the Climate Action school video competition! https://www.britishcouncil.org/climate-connection/get-involved/action-language-education/school-video-competition/winners

Scroll down the page for links to all the prizewinning videos: start with Our Climate Hero from Ethiopia https://youtu.be/JHAy8ckDITg and if you allow it to, YouTube will play all ten videos one after another.

 2. Today is Safer Internet Day here in the UK https://saferinternet.org.uk/safer-internet-day/safer-internet-day-2022/educational-resources There’s lots of resources and quizzes for all age-groups: PDFs of the resources for 7-11 year-olds, by way of example, below, and here’s a working link to the Digiduck materials referred to in the resources https://www.childnet.com/?s=digiduck

3.  You’ve still just time to register for this event with Scott Thornbury at 13:00 UK time tomorrow, Wednesday 9^th February: Dogme ELT at 21: Has it come of age? https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/dogme-elt-at-21-has-it-come-of-age-tickets-261127458257?keep_tld=1 Here’s some homework reading on Dogme: a Wikipedia page that someone is looking after carefully https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogme_language_teaching two pieces that Scott wrote for TeachingEnglish  https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/methods-post-method-m%C3%A9todos and https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/dogme-nothing-if-not-critical and I’ve attached a PDF of the original piece Scott wrote on Dogme for IATEFL Issues.

4. You need to collect no fewer than 151 stamps to be entitled to claim that you’ve walked the length of Hungary’s National Blue Trail https://www.calvertjournal.com/features/show/13432/hungary-hiking-leisure-outdoors-bureaucracy-blue-trail

5. And, finally, here’s a phrase that took me (and MS Word) by surprise in a meeting agenda the other day: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/were-just-spitballing-here I shall be spitballing – with some misgivings – tomorrow. Good that it’s an online meeting!

Early notice of Oxford University Press’s ELTOC 2022 on 4^th and 5^th March, so you can register in good time https://elt.oup.com/events/global/eltoc-march-2022?cc=us&selLanguage=en I’m guessing ELTOC means ELT Online Conference? Three strands to the conference: Climate Action, Digital Learning, and Classroom Management. One of those is not such a new topic! PDF of programme below.

2. Chris Sowton and Kris Dyer’s podcast for TeachingEnglish has already reached Episode 6, to my surprise: How can I teach in challenging circumstances? https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/british-council-teachingenglish-episode-6-how-can-i-teach-effectively-challenging-contexts

PDFs of show notes and transcript below, plus a low-fi audio file of the podcast.

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3. I was too slow off the mark with this new series from National Geographic Learning https://www.ngl-emea.com/voices-launch-hub-webinars which began with Chia Suan Chong & Rachael Gibbon on Intercultural skills for the real world on 26th January. Next one is Marek Kiczkowiak on 23^rd February with How to teach pronunciation for global communication. The recording of the one we missed is up on the site. PDF of whole programme below.

4. And, finally, how about an hour of global vinyl via Havana from Cuban record collector & DJ Cami Layé Okún? https://www.nts.live/shows/cami-laye-okun/episodes/cami-laye-okun-1st-february-2022

I want to call it ‘funky’ but I’m not sure people younger than me still use that word …