Roy Cross's Blog

1. Something for your students or children, probably, on the (I hope reasonable) assumption that not too many under-30s read this message: Youthwise is the OECD’s ‘Youth Advisory Board’ and applications are now being accepted. More info here https://www.oecd.org/about/civil-society/youth/youthwise/  and registration here https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/7YNKX23 PDF with more info below

and here’s more on OECD work with youth https://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/en/youth

Me, I’ve never quite come to terms with the fact that you can be 30 and still qualify as ‘youth’.

2. A treasure trove from King’s College London, Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies https://kcl.academia.edu/WorkingPapersinUrbanLanguageLiteracies

PDFs of one by Ben Rampton, Sociolinguistics: 50+ years in under 10 minutes, and one by Pippa Sterk, Navigating airport security as a Person of Colour, below. If you register with https://www.academia.edu/ (for free) you can download them all and a whole lot more besides.

3. Two good recent pieces on the Cambridge University Press and Assessment website:

Diary insights into teaching during lockdown https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/insights/teachers-diaries

and Why don’t we just put our high stakes exams on screen? https://cambunipress.prod.acquia-sites.com/news-and-insights/insights/Why-don%E2%80%99t-we-just-put-our-high-stakes-exams-on-screen

4. PMQs – Prime Minister’s Questions – was an especially bruising encounter for Boris Johnson today:  https://youtu.be/Sh9yEhbYZyE Starts just shy of eleven minutes in.

5. And, finally, Pride or Prejudice: How we Read Now – three half-hour BBC Radio 4 programmes on Reading, Teaching and Writing Novels with Abigail Williams from Oxford University https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0010x29

Did Elizabeth Bennet or Fitzwilliam Darcy suffer from this week’s phobia, pistanthrophobia, I wonder? Or any other characters here? https://www.theguardian.com/culture/gallery/2013/jan/05/jane-austen-10-best-characters

1. Here’s a good, comprehensive FutureLearn blog post that would make the basis for a lesson or even a project: How to reduce plastic waste: 20 tips to save the planet https://www.futurelearn.com/info/blog/how-to-reduce-plastic-waste

Here’s one worrying quote from it: “In 2014, the ratio of fish to plastic (in the oceans) was 5:1. (The WEF) predicted that by 2050 this ratio would be 1:1, so there would be as much plastic as fish.”

2. There’s an online event in NESTA’s A sustainable future series at 13:00 UK time next Tuesday, 18^th January with ‘three carbon-cutting pioneers’, Stories from the frontline: let’s hear from our green home pioneers: more info and registration here https://www.nesta.org.uk/event/stories-from-the-frontline-green-home-pioneers/

and here’s the home page for A sustainable future https://www.nesta.org.uk/sustainable-future/

3. The World Economic Forum has a short piece, These countries are leading the transition to sustainable energy, on its Fostering Effective Energy Transition 2021 report, which highlights global progress in tackling greenhouse gas emissions from energy generation.

On the one hand, says the report, more than 70% of tracked countries have made progress on energy access and security; on the other, just 13 out of 115 countries have made consistent improvements over the past 10 years.

Piece here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/04/these-countries-are-leading-the-transition-to-sustainable-energy/ and PDF of report below.

4. And, finally, from The New York Times, 52 Places for a Changed World – ‘places around the globe where travellers can be part of the solution, a choice of 52 places to travel to in 2022’. Window shopping for most of us, I think, but fun, nonetheless! https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/travel/52-places-travel-2022.html (I think you’ll find it’s easier to use the page down key if you’re on a laptop.)

1. This four-week course, Teaching pathways: How to teach speaking, which is intended to help with the design of speaking tasks and improve the speaking skills of your students, starts tomorrow: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/teaching-pathways-how-teach-speaking

You need to register – that’s free – and you can enrol at any point in January. For participants who successfully complete all tasks and achieve a score of 70% or above in the online exercises, there’ll be a downloadable certificate of completion at the end of the course.

2. The OECD are running a series of three events on Fostering 21st-century skills in higher education – How can governments and institutions support students’ skill development? Unless you’re the leader of an institution, you may find Sessions 2 and 3 more interesting.

Session 1: Institutional perspective: Dialogue with institutional leaders on Wednesday 12^th January at 12:30 UK time: more info and registration here https://meetoecd1.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_WTUzG1yWQwa9KaVkiLhzXQ

Session 2: Approaches to 21st-century skills in Europe and North America on Wednesday 12^th January at 15:00 UK time: more info and registration here https://meetoecd1.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_X64LroVjQXmLBizAcGWnhA

Session 3: Approaches to 21st-century skills in Asia-Pacific on Thursday 13 January at 08:30 UK time: more info and registration here https://meetoecd1.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_1Tnh36KJSYOAIS5MJZ2UvQ

If I taught in school, I’d be tempted to listen in to Session 2 or 3, to see what value my HE colleagues place on the work I do in school.

3. This coming Saturday, 15^th January, at 09:00 UK time, Hanoi University of Science and Technology and Coventry University will be presenting their Viet Nam Virtual Exchange for English Language Teaching (ViVEXELT) project.

More info here https://www.facebook.com/vivexelt/

registration here https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=wXVirt3MRkCyoWJFosyj7EO4mKBTgeJLur0DDnrxbaBUOTRVTUI4SFlQNTU4RkhCUlNVNUg5UDRRTy4u

and an informative blog post here https://vivexelt.com/2021/08/16/post1/

4. And, finally, five things to be optimistic about in 2022 at least according to the World Economic Forum’s positive assessment of a recent Ipsos survey of 22,000 people in 33 countries https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/most-think-2022-will-be-better-year/

Here’s the Ipsos survey itself, which has a slightly less sanguine introduction: “Of the nine questions where we have trend data since 2020, four show significant change, indicating a more optimistic view of what 2022 will bring. Nonetheless, concerns about the environment and rising prices persist. And while most expect greater COVID vaccination rates around the world, half (47%) expect a new deadly strain of the virus to appear.” https://www.ipsos.com/en/global-predictions-2022 PDF below.

And here’s a thirty-minute Ipsos discussion of the year just ended, The year in review: Making sense of 2021 https://youtu.be/HKszqZdnEH0 PDF of the report that’s being discussed below.

‘Long Friday’ with some longer reads for the weekend!

1. Short notice, this one: ‘Surviving burnout’ – an IATEFL webinar presented by Carol Griffiths tomorrow, 8th January at 13:00 UK time https://www.iatefl.org/events/229

plus lots of other interesting free events (with less short notice) here https://www.iatefl.org/events

2. This one could easily take up your whole weekend on its own: Best Digital Education Tools For Teachers To Teach Online https://taughtup.com/best-digital-education-tools-for-teachers-to-teach-online/

3. A piece by Vaclav Brezina from Lancaster University on ‘Five ways the internet era has changed British English – new research’ https://theconversation.com/five-ways-the-internet-era-has-changed-british-english-new-research-172432 We shall soon be bidding farewell to ‘shall’, it seems!

4. One Serb is in the news for the wrong reasons at present, down under, but here’s the December issue of the excellent as ever HLT, very largely written by his compatriots https://www.hltmag.co.uk/dec21/

Try this section on 21st Century Skills : Teaching Online https://www.hltmag.co.uk/dec21/21st-century-skills-teaching-online

5. And, finally, a wonderful piece from The Conversation on Victorian detective stories https://theconversation.com/beyond-sherlock-holmes-five-victorian-detective-stories-you-must-read-173082 which includes links to free online reading by all five authors mentioned: for example, Catherine Louisa Pirkis https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/pirkis/brooke/brooke.html and Arthur Morrison https://www.gutenberg.org/files/53341/53341-h/53341-h.htm

PDF facsimile below of Ghosts: Being the Experiences of Flaxman Low published in 1899 by E. and H. Heron, the noms de plume (or nom de plumes? Two sodas and lime or two soda and limes?) of mother and son team Kate O’Brien Prichard and Hesketh Prichard.

If you’ve had chance to get a break since I last wrote, I hope it was as restorative as mine was!

1. Early notice (because next Thursday may be too late) of the first NATESOL Free Webinar of 2022, Multilingualism in the Classroom: Productive strategies for supporting teaching and learning, at 10:00 UK time on Saturday 15^th January with Eowyn Crisfield from Oxford Brookes University. PDF with more detail below; register here before 17:00 UK time next Friday, 14^th January https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd0IsENkrKvAFeJzZKVyfcIfcnVKNvjx-Xs0VM06wes4yJSxg/viewform

Eowyn’s abstract begins “The term ‘translanguaging’ is the new academic buzz word, and everyone is wondering what exactly it means for our classrooms …” Tune in on the 15^th to find out exactly what it does mean.

2. Emma Dafouz’s presentation on Approaching English-medium Education in Multilingual University Settings through the ROAD-MAPPING framework in the UCL Centre for Applied Linguistics Research Seminar series, originally planned for December, has been rescheduled for 16:00 UK time on Tuesday, 11^th January 2022. PDF with more detail below; register here https://forms.gle/qYEGoiMznV2dUXCP7

Emma’s abstract begins “Two decades into the 21st century, the use of English as vehicular language for higher education for the sake of internationalisation is a growing reality …” Interesting use of ‘vehicular’ there, which I think I understand as Emma means me to.

3. A good blog post by Sulaiman Jenkins that I missed first time round, Is the ‘native speaker/ non-native speaker’ teacher dichotomy really necessary anymore? “The short answer”, says Sulaiman, “is no; the issue, however, is much more complex than a simple one-word response.” https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/sulaiman-jenkins/%E2%80%98native-speaker-non-native-speaker%E2%80%99-teacher-dichotomy-really-necessary PDF copy below just in case that’s easier; I hope I don’t get into trouble with Paul Braddock.

4. And, finally, From apanthropy to zwodder, Susie Dent’s A-Z of Christmas (words) https://inews.co.uk/opinion/apanthropy-zwodder-susie-dents-a-z-christmas-1367064 Was anyone wearing hufflebuffs over the holiday period, I wonder?

This is the last ‘Free Resources’ message till 6^th January. If you’re getting a break, luxuriate!

1. This has been around since 2016 but was new to me earlier this week: If The World Were 100 People https://youtu.be/QFrqTFRy-LU

2. Eating eels, electing bean kings and Roland the Farter: part of the medieval Christmas and New Year festivities in the UK https://theconversation.com/eating-eels-electing-bean-kings-and-roland-the-farter-part-of-the-medieval-christmas-and-new-year-festivities-174003 With a free Latin word at the end of the piece: bumbulum!

3. I don’t always – often! – agree with the political views expressed in The Spectator magazine https://www.spectator.co.uk/ but this list of The Spectator’s best films of 2021 includes a number I hope to watch over the Christmas break https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-spectator-s-best-films-of-2021 Starting with The Power of the Dog tonight, which I hope is at least half as good as Thomas Savage’s book https://youtu.be/LRDPo0CHrko

4. And, finally, a fun piece by Sarah DeVries from Mexico News Daily, Learning a language leads to something greater than the sum of its parts https://mexiconewsdaily.com/opinion/sarah-devries/learning-language-more-than-collecting-words/

See you next year – thanks for reading!

1. Here’s the recording of Kristina Hultgren’s talk, Multilingualism vs English: are they reconcilable? at the recent ICLHE (Integrating Content and Language in Higher Education – grown-up CLIL?) symposium in Maastricht on The Englishization of Higher Education https://youtu.be/ptUQwYSfi1g You can find a PDF of the whole symposium programme below, with links to the recordings of (nearly) all the talks.

2. There’s a range of recordings (and lengths of recording) of talks by Lena Boroditsky on How language shapes the way we think (or variations on that theme) available on YouTube and Facebook. Here’s a) a nineteen-minute version https://youtu.be/S_EHrS1b7os b) a one-hour version (plus Q&A) https://youtu.be/I64RtGofPW8 and c) a ninety-second version, for the bus home https://youtu.be/lST0HpO79Hc Several other lengths of talk are available!

3. An article from a Cambridge friend, John Drew, on How East India traders brought cricket to Indian shores 300 years ago this fortnight https://scroll.in/article/1013180/how-east-india-traders-brought-cricket-to-indian-shores-300-years-ago-this-fortnight One way or another, language will need to have been found to explain the concept of LBW (leg before wicket) – unless that was a later complication? PDF below.

If you were John Hattie, would you have agreed to a public debate with Steen Nepper Larsen, the author of a review of your book, The Purposes of Education, that culminated (fulminated?) as follows: “The concluding remark must be that the advantage of John Hattie’s evidence credo is that it is so banal, mundane and trivial that even educational planners and economists can understand it”?

Hattie did, and this engaging blog post by Jenny Mackness tells the story https://jennymackness.wordpress.com/2021/12/14/the-purposes-of-education-john-hattie-and-steen-larsen/

Here’s the video of their discussion at the World Education Summit earlier this year, probably best summed up as agreement to disagree!  https://vimeo.com/592547281/e95b60b935

5. And, finally, how about a little cheese? Here’s Marc King, the head cheesemaker at Fen Farm Dairy in Norfolk https://youtu.be/mlsfV7yESLs

1. Well worth exploring when you have a little time, Alexandra Mihai’s last post on her Educationalist blog for 2021, on hybrid teaching this time. “There is no secret that I am no big fan of hybrid teaching”, she says, but she still serves up a great list of articles and podcasts on the topic https://educationalist.substack.com/p/wrapping-up-2021

plus a rather splendid bonus this time round, an anthology of guest posts on her blog during the year on faculty (staff) development. This one from Sanna Eronen, from the University of Vaasa in Finland, caught my attention, ‘From solo artists to jazz ensembles: Peer support as a tool for teacher development’ https://educationalist.eu/from-solo-artists-to-jazz-ensembles-peer-support-as-a-tool-for-teacher-development-78a05e18cdcc

2. More on hybrid, from McKinsey, ‘It’s time for leaders to get real about hybrid’. Not specifically about education, not least because most pupils and students don’t have the option of resigning and moving to another school or university, but I don’t think it’s completely irrelevant. Many organisations are keen to have their employees return to the office, simply, one suspects, because the office is empty and expensive:

“Employers are ready to get back to significant in-person presence. Employees aren’t. The disconnect is deeper than most employers believe, and a spike in attrition and disengagement may be imminent.” https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/business%20functions/people%20and%20organizational%20performance/our%20insights/its%20time%20for%20leaders%20to%20get%20real%20about%20hybrid/its-time-for-leaders-to-get-real-about-hybrid.pdf

More readable than most ‘management’ literature! PDF below.

3. If you get a bit of a break over Christmas and New Year, there’s still stacks of free courses on FutureLearn:

• English for the Workplace: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/workplace-english

• Exploring English: Language and Culture: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/explore-english-language-culture

• Exploring English: Food and Culture: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/exploring-english-food-and-culture

• Exploring English: Shakespeare: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/explore-english-shakespeare

• Teaching Young Learners Online: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/teaching-young-learners-online

• Teaching English: How to Plan a Great Lesson: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/teaching-english-great-lesson

• English in Early Childhood: Language Learning and Development: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/english-in-early-childhood

4. And, finally, something completely different https://carnegiemoscow.org/commentary/86013

I rather doubt that the Russia-Ukraine stand-off attracts as much attention around the world as it does in Europe, so apologies if this one’s not your cup of tea or you suffer from severe nucleomitophobia! (All sensible people should suffer from moderate nucleomitophobia, shouldn’t they?)

1. Lots of videos on the WWF International YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5MDIy3yhWDrx0MyDo4QmYg including these climate action stories from Monteria (Colombia), Park City (USA), Karachi (Pakistan) and London (UK) https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/wwfurbanart

2. Christopher Graham from Footprint ELT UK chaired a panel discussion at the New Directions East Asia conference last week on Climate Action in Language Assessment https://youtu.be/-cxQ6MZ43CQ

Topics covered included the negative impact on the environment of the testing and assessment community, the steps that can be taken to reduce that impact and their effectiveness, the challenges these measures present and how technological developments in the next few years may allow the sector to become substantially greener.

3. In my own mind, the climate and pandemic emergencies have been conflated over the last eighteen months, which I hope offers sufficient excuse for the inclusion this Climate Tuesday of a piece by my favourite ex-PM about the “inescapable and unacceptable fact that of the billions of doses of vaccine administered, only 0.6% ended up in low-income countries, while over 70% have been administered in high- and upper-middle-income countries” and his plan to put that right https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/20/money-medicines-vaccinate-world-rich-countries-gordon-brown

4. And, finally, how should we understand Amazon’s decision to remove from their Chinese website all reviews of President Xi Jinping’s new book with less than five stars?

1. The first of two from Stephen Downes’s OLDaily newsletter: “How do some teachers hold the attention of their whole class, while others may struggle to keep them engaged?” Find out here, in this piece by Kris Taylor on his Taughtup blog, A Guide to Learning Styles and The Best Teaching Strategies to Use https://taughtup.com/guide-to-learning-styles-and-the-best-teaching-strategies-to-use/

2. Here’s the second: Revising ‘Teaching in a Digital Age’: the Impact of Covid-19 is Tony Bates’s interesting – and, on the face of it, genuine – exercise in writing a new, third edition of his successful book in public https://www.tonybates.ca/2021/12/16/revising-teaching-in-a-digital-age-the-impact-of-covid-19/

 3. Got time for another visit to the EdTech Hub? https://edtechhub.org/blog/ Unlocking data in Uganda https://edtechhub.org/2021/11/11/the-story-of-unlocking-data/, Using technology to mitigate the impact of the pandemic in Pakistan https://edtechhub.org/2021/12/09/building-forward-better-in-pakistan/ and a page of references for future reading, including EdTech and Covid-19: 10 things to know https://edtechhub.org/2021/11/22/cost-effectiveness-and-edtech-copy/   

4. And, finally, just in case you’ve not already been doing it for years, here’s today’s Quick crossword from The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/quick/16106 The answer to 1 across is the same as the answer to the question ‘Which county is giving Boris Johnson a headache at present?’!