Roy Cross's Blog

1. There’s still time to enter the Climate Action for Language Education (CALE) school video competition https://www.britishcouncil.org/climate-connection/get-involved/action-language-education/school-video-competition

I left out one very important partner when I first mentioned this competition last Tuesday, namely IATEFL Global Issues SIG (GISIG) https://gisig.iatefl.org/ Sorry, GSIG!

2. The next CALE Education Exchange digital event will be at 16:00 UK time on Wednesday, 22^nd September on Climate change and language learning. More info on this event and future events in the series, plus recordings of previous events here https://www.britishcouncil.org/education/schools/education-exchange-digital-events/climate-change-language-learning

3. Some sobering climate facts in this new BBC report, Climate change: World now sees twice as many days over 50⁰C https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58494641

Many years ago, lulled into a false sense of security by the efficiency of our car’s air conditioning, I once stopped in a desert lay-by on the way home from Kuwait to Baghdad and opened the car door – ouch! Must have been at least 50⁰. I also learnt that a sunroof is not a sunroof in that part of the world; it’s a moonroof!

4. Courtesy of Mark Henebury, here’s more on non-lexical language https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210818-the-hand-gestures-that-last-longer-than-spoken-languages?ocid=twfut (I hope that non-lexical is the right word to use here.)

More articles on language from the BBC Future site here https://www.bbc.com/future/tags/language

5. And, finally and not at all light-heartedly, here’s a prescient piece that Dexter Filkins wrote for the New Yorker in 2012 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/07/09/after-america

Should you ever get chance to read his The Forever War: Dispatches from the War on Terror, do take it.

PS ~ PRELIM 2 is coming …..

1. British Council colleagues in East Asia are running a series of webinars on Teacher Takeaways: Practical Ideas for Classroom Teaching in partnership with the China English Teacher Professional Teachers Association. More info and registration details here https://www.britishcouncil.cn/en/teach/2021webinar

Fraser Bewick opens the batting at 09:00 UK time this Thursday, 16^th September with a session on Adapting and experimenting with tasks to encourage thinking skills in classroom tasks. Full details of the whole Teacher Takeaways programme in the PDF below.

2. Thanks, as so often, to my colleague Andrew Skinner for this efficient short video introduction to ‘Assistive Technology’ from Microsoft: https://youtu.be/DBxmADjQlI4

Here’s another I found ‘all by myself’ (as my granddaughter often says with pride) where Microsoft employees describe the use they make of assistive technology in their work https://youtu.be/QJgca3Sb8iQ

Yes, at one level they’re advertisements for Microsoft, but the features they demonstrate are part of software that many of us who use it every day are unaware of.

3.  This quarter’s Poetry Book Society selection is Hannah Lowe’s ‘The Kids’, a collection of sonnets celebrating the children she taught in sixth form college in London – wonderful stuff! She’s giving a free reading at 19:00 UK time this Thursday, 16th September with Selima Hill and Stephanie Norgate https://www.eventbrite.com/e/launch-reading-by-selima-hill-hannah-lowe-and-stephanie-norgate-tickets-166293344871

4. And, finally, another resource from the ECML for the forthcoming European Day of Languages on 26^th September, “20 things you might not know about Europe’s languages” https://edl.ecml.at/

I’d no idea that there is an ancient whistling language in Spain that’s still being taught in local schools – are there lots more whistling or non-lexical languages out there round the world?

You can look at some of the statistics from the other end of the telescope: Europe is now home to only 225 or 3% of the world’s languages – presumably that was once a significantly higher percentage? How many languages is Africa home to? Copy of poster below.

1. I remain hopelessly and culpably unclear what’s free and what’s not on onestopenglish, but here goes with the latest Vocabulary Builders lesson, Internet Language: What is the difference between patois, jargon, and slang? It’s designed to help your students discover more about language variations https://www.onestopenglish.com/vocabulary-lesson-plans/vocabulary-builders-internet-language/1000284.article

Pretty sure you’ll need to register but free to access once you have. PDFs of worksheet and teacher’s notes below.

2. A swift return for Teacher Tapp, as I think this week’s three questions – on teacher fashion, teacher attitudes to the pandemic and vaccination, and teacher optimism – travel round the world pretty well! https://teachertapp.co.uk/first-week-back-and-your-attitudes-towards-vaccines/

3. Teaching pathways: How to motivate learners is a new online course from TeachingEnglish. It starts on 21^st September; more info and registration here https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/teaching-pathways-how-motivate-learners

The nine-hour course is intended to help teachers start creating their own motivational learning environment, learn about what affects motivation and discover some of the different ways to energise and engage students. It includes two live events with the course tutor and language teaching experts.

4. The Slow Burn of Inner Chaos: Writing from Malaysia is the latest issue of the Words without Borders monthly magazine https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/issue/september-2021-malaysia

Try Mona Fandey’s Cassette, or Gray Feather by Malaysian Tamil writer, Navin Manogaran https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/september-2021-malaysia-mona-fandeys-cassette-or-gray-feather-m-navin-sreed

5. Perhaps not for the faint-hearted, an extended excerpt from The House of Ashes, the new book from the ‘King of Belfast Noir’, Stuart Neville https://books.sohopress.com/the-house-of-ashes_disp-emlcr-9121#Excerpt

6. And just in case you should need one, here’s an antidote to the Neville extract, a showcase of and by the young dancers of the UK Royal Ballet https://youtu.be/UHT5dnr4gVs

Multi-lingual Thursday will return next week. I’m very sorry for the disruption to normal service. The Virgin broadband engineer comes tomorrow morning ….

1. Details here of Oxford University Press’s ELT Together 2021 event, which runs on six days in the period from 27^th September to 8^th October, from 17:00 to 20:00 UK time each day https://elt.oup.com/events/global/elt-together-2021?cc=global&selLanguage=en

The topics covered include Assessment for Learning, Pronunciation, Literature and Extensive Reading, How Languages are Learned, Learner Agency and Diversity and Inclusion. This kind of event often books up (annoyingly) early, so I hope this gives you good notice!

2. Also starting on 27^th September is the mEducation Alliance’s 11^th annual symposium, this time on EdTech To Accelerate Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) in Low-Resource Contexts; more info and registration here https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2021-meducation-alliance-symposium-tickets-160966349685

Their avowed intention is to “explore untraditional formats to maximize knowledge-exchange and networking among presenters and participants”. (Thanks to Adam for this one!)

3. Another attractively eclectic selection this year in the University of Westminster’s English Language and Linguistics Research Seminar programme. I’m not sure their website has caught up yet, but there’s full details in the PDF below. I’m looking forward to Sylvia Shaw’s session on 17^th November: ‘Supine, protoplasmic invertebrate jellies’: the linguistic style of Boris Johnson.

4. For a change, there is almost certainly NOT a lesson in this one, but I hope there might be an article or two that appeal in the latest, free-to-read issue of International Affairs from the Chatham House thinktank https://academic.oup.com/ia/issue/97/5

5. And, finally and poetically, read https://poets.org/poem/henrys-bar

or listen https://dcs.megaphone.fm/POETS2784522517.mp3?key=f08ded324faaf0d36813a05c53dcaaac

or do both concurrently or consecutively to For Henry’s Bar by Joseph Rios.

1. The latest Climate Action in Language Education newsletter is attached below, including details of the latest podcasts and this school video competition, in partnership with Digital Learning Associates (DLA) https://www.britishcouncil.org/climate-connection/get-involved/action-language-education/school-video-competition

And just in case you’ve forgotten, you can now find all the DLA Ready to Run videos on the NILE website https://digitallearningassociates.com/ready-to-run-schools-nile

2. ‘A Planet in Crisis: Ideas for Action’ was one of the themes at this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/whats-on/themes/a-planet-in-crisis-ideas-for-action?page=1

Try ‘Dreaming Big on Climate’ with Mya-Rose Craig where she talks about her new book We Have a Dream, which is a conversation with thirty young environmental campaigners from around the world https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/whats-on/dreaming-big-on-climate-with-mya-rose-craig

3. Dave Reay’s job title at Edinburgh University is Professor of Carbon Management & Education. Here’s two of his talks:

a clear, short introduction to how we can mitigate climate change by reducing our greenhouse gas emissions  https://youtu.be/AXC5vjV1YCc

and a longer lecture on why we need global agriculture to be ‘climate-smart’ to feed our ever-growing population https://youtu.be/s_YvrSkESe0

4. The Conversation has a rich collection of articles on the environment https://theconversation.com/uk/environment Here’s two recent ones:

one on the lingering of lead in our environment https://theconversation.com/leaded-petrol-is-gone-but-lead-pollution-may-linger-for-a-very-long-time-167214

and a second on the need to ensure that electric cars are introduced in a fair way, without disadvantaging those who can’t afford them https://theconversation.com/charging-ahead-how-to-make-sure-the-electric-vehicle-transition-is-sustainable-and-just-166685

5. And, finally and less climatically, at 12:00 UK time on 9th September you can join the first talk in NESTA’s ‘Transforming the Education Conversation’ series on Using motivational thinking to change how we nurture young minds with Sharath Jeevan, the founder of STIR Education https://www.nesta.org.uk/event/nesta-talks-to-sharath-jeevan/ Here’s the STIR Education site, too https://stireducation.org/

1. A full programme from Pearson over the next few weeks, outlined in this blog post, Back to School: What to expect in the coming weeks https://www.english.com/blog/back-to-school-2021/

Week 1 activities include a ‘back to school worksheet’ https://www.english.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Worksheet_A4-BrE.pdf to help teachers and their new classes get to know each other better. PDF below.

2. I didn’t know we had a Student Futures Commission in the UK https://upp-foundation.org/student-futures-commission/ Its Chair, Mary Curnock Cook, has just written this piece for the WONKHE blog on post-Covid 19 priorities for supporting student success https://wonkhe.com/blogs/students-need-universities-to-prioritise-inclusion-and-academic-confidence-in-the-years-ahead/

She highlights one comment by Geoff Layer, chair of the Disabled Students’ Commission https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/promoting-equal-opportunities/disabled-students-commission/ who noted that disabled students felt that the things they had been asking for over many years, but were told they couldn’t have, had been delivered in days and weeks when the pandemic hit

and another by Mhairi Underwood from The Student Room https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/ who had heard students identifying as being from the “cohort with the fake grades” (as a result of the cancellation of school exams).

3. I checked with colleagues in South East Asia earlier today if this piece on Forgetting My First Language from the New Yorker could be read without a subscription, and they said yes, so here goes: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/forgetting-my-first-language PDF below, as it seems (surprisingly?) to be free access.

4. And, finally and much less light-heartedly than is often the case, here’s the Swedish PEN special issue on Hate Speech https://www.penopp.org/all-themes/hatespeech

and here’s the one on Linguistic Rights https://www.penopp.org/all-themes/linguistic-rights, both a mixture of short and long pieces and poems.

‘What is really a mother tongue?’ asks Carlos Torner in this piece https://www.penopp.org/articles/mother-tongue-babel?language_content_entity=en

1. Issue 57 of the European Language Gazette came out today: https://www.ecml.at/News/Newsletter/Gazette57/tabid/4427/language/en-GB/Default.aspx

Lara’s Language Journey across Europe booklet https://edl.ecml.at/Activities/languagejourney/tabid/3223/Default.aspx

Languages Tree https://edl.ecml.at/Portals/33/documents/language-journey/pdf/language-tree-EN.pdf

Language sounds https://edl.ecml.at/Activities/languagejourney/Sounds/tabid/3224/Default.aspx Includes numbers from 1 to 10 in 46 different languages (if I counted right).

You can’t hold it against the European Centre for Modern Languages that they’re Euro-centred, I think. Might these examples from Europe translate into similar exercises in other parts of the world?

PDFs of the booklet and the tree below.

2. Teacher Tapp this week covers the controversial topics of which kind of marker pen, the bullet tip or the chisel tip, is most popular and which timetable layout, days across the top or lessons across the top, works best https://teachertapp.co.uk/start-of-term-2021/

3. The Noirwich – there’s a pun there, it’s not my spelling – festival of crime writing starts next Thursday, 9^th September https://noirwich.co.uk/the-line-up/

Lots of free events, including David Peace talking about Murder in Tokyo at 19:00 UK time on Saturday, 11^th September.

4. And, finally, follow the links on this page through to a short story or poem or extract from each of the 11 Asian women writers listed https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/11-translated-books-by-asian-women-writers-to-read-this-witmonth

Some good stuff – try the two Korean writers, Kyung-sook Shin and Keum Suk Gendry-Kim.

1. First today, “Rejecting abyssal thinking in the language and education of racialized bilinguals: A manifesto”. Trenchant, thought-provoking stuff from Li Wei and colleagues that aims to “challenge prevailing assumptions about language, bilingualism, and education that are based on raciolinguistic ideologies with roots in colonialism” https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15427587.2021.1935957 When you get chance, give this serious piece the time it deserves.

2. Good notice of the launch of The Invention of Multilingualism by David Gramling on Monday, September 20^th at 17:00 UK time; David will be ‘in conversation’ with Claire Kramsch and Zhu Hua.

Registration here https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/5716297143381/WN_bjzB0q7HQl6ll08f0IB4IQ

and more info on the book and the series it’s part of here https://www.cambridge.org/core/series/key-topics-in-applied-linguistics/26B8BA9543A4AFC67B5195C07502B3C0

3. Courtesy of my colleague Ann, three pieces by and about Riz Ahmed:

first, his film The Long Goodbye https://youtu.be/Lzz50xENH4g Compelling watching and, be warned, violent in parts;

second, a piece discussing the translanguaging and code switching in The Long Goodbye from the Creative Multilingualism website https://www.creativeml.ox.ac.uk/blog/exploring-multilingualism/we-code-switch-riz-ahmed/index.html

third, a review of the stage version of The Long Goodbye, to give you a sense of the themes to do with British Asian identity that Ahmed explores https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/feb/07/riz-ahmed-the-long-goodbye-livestream-review-mif-manchester-international-festival

4. And, finally and funkily, Franc Moody https://youtu.be/ey7IbZslpZI

Other musicians are available, here https://music.britishcouncil.org/selector-radio/selector-sessions

A social-emotional focus of sorts to today’s message …

1. The international launch of a new report, Beyond Academic Learning, based on the OECD’s survey on Social and Emotional Skills, takes place at 15:00 UK time on Tuesday 7^th September. More info and registration here https://msftedumarketing.eventbuilder.com/event/48213 and a flyer on the survey below

2. Here’s nine social and emotional learning tips from eSchool News, including ‘thresholding’ and ‘brain breaks’ https://www.eschoolnews.com/2021/08/23/9-social-emotional-learning-tips-to-take-into-this-school-year/

3. We all know that our capacity for friendship is limited to 150 people, don’t we? Robin Dunbar has just published a new book explaining why.

Here’s The Guardian’s review https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/feb/21/friends-by-robin-dunbar-review-how-important-are-your-pals

here’s a video of an interview with him explaining his ideas https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/mar/14/my-bright-idea-robin-dunbar

and here (below) is a graphic that I think might work quite well in the classroom

4. The Hay Festival in Queretaro, Mexico started yesterday – sorry!

Full programme here, a mixture of Spanish and English and almost invariably translated https://www.hayfestival.com/queretaro/inicio

Check the timings!

5. I’m not at all sure that this week’s phobia qualifies as a phobia, if you take the (fairly typical) definition from the Cambridge English Dictionary: an extreme fear or dislike of a particular thing or situation, especially one that is not reasonable https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/phobia What’s irrational or unreasonable about taphophobia?

This is my last message till Tuesday 31^st August: these next two weeks, I’ll be helping my father publish his first novel!

1. An interesting account in The Conversation from Christopher Smith of St Andrew’s University of how humankind has responded to previous plagues and pandemics through history, Plagues and classical history – what the humanities will tell us about COVID in years to come https://theconversation.com/plagues-and-classical-history-what-the-humanities-will-tell-us-about-covid-in-years-to-come-165848

In fifth century Athens, for example, “some Athenians were dutiful in caring for others, which usually led to death, but many simply gave up, or they ignored family or the dead, or they chased pleasure of every kind in what time was left to them”.

2. More on plagues: a review by Dwight Garner for the New York Times of three books about disease https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/02/books/review-year-of-plagues-fred-daguiar-life-like-yours-jan-grue-blind-mans-bluff-james-tate-hill.html “As a genre, disease and illness memoirs are permanently interesting if honest and sharply observed. The writer is dealt a joker from the pack. It’s an excuse to open a life for examination, now with a flame-burst of urgency.” (Hope this link works; you may need to register.)

3. It was Fred D’Aguiar’s name that caught my eye. His book, Year of Plagues, is being launched by Carcanet Press next Wednesday, 18^th August, at 19:00 UK time. Strictly speaking, ineligible for this message as it costs £2 to join; more info and registration here https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ChKaz30zRI6wJXNW3SbAZQ

Here’s an ever-so-slightly out-of-date page on Fred from our Literature Department https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/fred-daguiar with a free poem, Stone and Shell, at the end: I used a stone to pound a shell.// I pounded it to smithereens // Then ground it into dust. // Now the shell is hushed, // I weigh the stone against the dust.

4. And, finally, this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival opens tomorrow https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/ Still plenty of time to book – all free – and lots of good stuff for children that your students (or your children!) might enjoy, too.

This one with Jeffrey Boakye, available from tomorrow, looks good https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/whats-on/jeffrey-boakye-music-is-power-music-is-life-15912

as does this one with Jenny Erpenbeck at 10:15 tomorrow https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/whats-on/jenny-erpenbeck-freedom-came-at-a-price