Tuesday, 22nd July (Richmond)

Posted on July 22, 2025 by roycross

1. This one’s a bit nerdy, a bit late, and a bit important. The Open Data Institute is launching its European Data and AI Policy Manifesto at 16:00 UK time tomorrow, Wednesday 23rd July. More info and registration here https://theodi.org/news-and-events/events/odi-european-data-and-ai-policy-manifesto-launch/

Join the Open Data Institute (ODI) for the online launch of our ODI European Data and AI Policy Manifesto. This event will explore the rapidly evolving data and AI landscape in Europe and the regulatory challenges shaping its future. The webinar takes place as we launch the ODI’s EU Data and AI Manifesto, based on its six core principles for open, trustworthy data ecosystems: strong data infrastructure, open data, trust, independent oversight, a diverse and inclusive data ecosystem, and support from skilled, knowledgeable data leaders. The discussion will examine and discuss the divergent policy approaches emerging across the EU, UK, and US, and explore how legislators can strike the right balance between enabling innovation, maintaining global competitiveness, and ensuring regulation remains proportionate and socially beneficial.

2. Three recent pieces from Engelsberg Ideas that I’ve enjoyed:

A paean to the Paris Métro by Agnès Poirier https://engelsbergideas.com/notebook/a-paean-to-the-paris-metro/

Paris, 1900. There was seldom a city and a year that better defined modernism and style. It was the year of the Exposition Universelle, attended by a record 50.6 million people, and the year of the Métropolitain, Paris’s first underground line, running trains from Porte de Vincennes to Porte Maillot, a 13-kilometre straight line from the east to the west of the French capital. London, followed by Budapest and Chicago, was first – a good thing for Paris engineers and town planners. As Andrew Martin, author of Metropolitain: An Ode to the Paris Metro, explains: ‘The London Underground was the world’s first metro, and Paris, having taken a long, cool look at it, decided to do the opposite.’ Le Métro would be the antithesis of the London Underground.

The West in the age of Westlessness by Samir Puri https://engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the-west-in-the-age-of-westlessness/

What does it mean to defend Western values when the power of the West is in decline?

A window into Hitler’s soul by Samuel Rubinstein https://engelsbergideas.com/notebook/a-window-into-hitlers-soul/

Reading Mein Kampf, 100 years on from its first appearance, can help us understand a historical moment which, as it fades into the distance, still profoundly structures our world.

3. A new TeachingEnglish online course, Teaching English in primary, started earlier this month. Three modules, each of which will take you 3 to 4 hours to complete, and a certificate at the end. PDF of the course workbook attached to give you an idea of what to expect. More info and registration (if you don’t already have an account) here https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/training/courses/teaching-english-primary

Discover how primary children learn and apply this understanding to your classroom practice. Explore the role of assessment in the primary classroom and learn engaging, age-appropriate strategies for learner evaluation.

More information on the whole of the TeachingEnglish programme for July, August & September here https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/community/top-stories/july-september-2025-assessing-learning

Teaching_English_in_primary_workbook_2025Download

4. Two different perspectives, both very readable, on the use of AI in education:

An editorial for TechTrends by David Wiley, Asking a More Productive Question about AI and Assessment https://tinyurl.com/yuzu5pw6

A post by Dan McQuillan on his blog, The role of the University is to resist AI  https://danmcquillan.org/cpct_seminar.html

5. And, finally, a piece from The Equality Trust on the ever-increasing concentration of wealth in ever fewer hands in the UK https://equalitytrust.org.uk/evidence-base/billionaire-britain-2025/

From The Equality Trust’s mission statement: UK income inequality is among the highest in the developed world and evidence shows that this is bad for almost everyone. The Equality Trust works to improve the quality of life in the UK by reducing economic and social inequality. People in more equal societies live longer, have better mental health and have better chances for a good education regardless of their background. Community life is stronger where the income gap is narrower, children do better at school and they are less likely to become teenage parents. When inequality is reduced people trust each other more, there is less violence and rates of imprisonment are lower.

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Friday, 18th July (on the train from Norwich to Cambridge – or would have been, had Greater Anglia wifi been up to it!)

Posted on July 18, 2025 by roycross

Only one post this week, a bit longer than usual, as I got in a right tiz-woz over some work I had to do for NILE with French school teachers of English yesterday and today. On reflection, the Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath stuff was probably a mistake!

1. A recent piece from The Conversation, Africa’s linguistic diversity goes largely unnoticed in research on multilingualism by Robyn Berghoff & Emanuel Bylund  from Stellenbosch University https://theconversation.com/africas-linguistic-diversity-goes-largely-unnoticed-in-research-on-multilingualism-208204

Language is a uniquely human skill. That’s why studying how people learn and use language is crucial to understanding what it means to be human. Given that most people in the world – an estimated 60% – are multilingual, meaning that they know and use more than one language, a researcher who aims to understand language must also grasp how individuals acquire and use multiple languages. The ubiquity of multilingualism also has practical consequences. For example, in the early schooling years, children learn more effectively when they are taught in their mother tongue rather than a second or third language. Research also shows that people make different decisions depending on whether they are thinking in their first or second language. The problem is that much of the published research about multilingualism is not conducted in the world’s most multilingual societies. For example, the African continent is home to some of the most multilingual countries in the world. Cameroon has a population of around 27 million people; over 250 different languages are spoken as first languages, often alongside English and French or both.

2. Russell Stannard’s videos on technology and language learning are always worth watching. Here’s a recent one with a characteristically upbeat title, Unbelievably Useful Interactive Language Worksheet Generator for Teachers & Students https://youtu.be/X0g78eaKPW0 Here’s his YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKjOFIFE0q71IJ4GFx4brng

3. A useful open access article in the International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, Artificial intelligence in higher education: the state of the field by Helen Crompton & Diane Burke https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/S41239-023-00392-8 PDF below, just in case.

Undergraduate students were the most studied students at 72%. Similar to the findings of other studies, language learning was the most common subject domain. This included writing, reading, and vocabulary acquisition. In examination of who the AIEd (AI in Education) was intended for, 72% of the studies focused on students, 17% instructors, and 11% managers. In answering the overarching question of how AIEd was used in HE, grounded coding was used. Five usage codes emerged from the data: (1) Assessment/Evaluation, (2) Predicting, (3) AI Assistant, (4) Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS), and (5) Managing Student Learning.

Artificial intelligence in higher education – the state of the fieldDownload

4. That Large language models fall short in classifying learners’ open-ended responses may not be this week’s most surprising finding, but Atsushi Mizumoto & Mark Feng Teng write it up well in Research Methods in Applied Linguistics https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277276612500031X?ref=pdf_download&fr=RR-2&rr=96001cc25e462547 PDF below.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), based on large language models (LLMs), excels in various language comprehension tasks and is increasingly utilized in applied linguistics research. This study examines the accuracy and methodological implications of using LLMs to classify open-ended responses from learners. We surveyed 143 Japanese university students studying English as a foreign language (EFL) about their essay-writing process.

Large Language Models fall shortDownload

5. A hopeless piece (in one sense) by Aaron MacLean for Engelsberg Ideas, A warning to the young: just say no to AI https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/a-warning-to-the-young-just-say-no-to-ai/

I have a warning for you. There is a conspiracy afoot in the land, targeting all of us. The computers in our pockets and the screens all around us have for years paired incredible access to all the world’s information with increasingly ruthless attacks on our capacity for focus, or for what some call ‘deep work’. That’s old news. We all fight this battle every day and it’s important to develop techniques to win it.

6. The Social Investment Consultancy (TSIC) have just produced this impact study for the British Council, Empowering girls through education: a long-term impact evaluation of the English and Digital for Girls’ Education (EDGE) project https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/publications/case-studies-insights-and-research/empowering-girls-through-education PDF below.

In South Asia, 81 per cent of out-of-school girls are unlikely to ever start school, compared to 42 per cent of boys. The region also faces a significant gender digital divide, with women 26 per cent less likely to own a mobile phone than men. To address these disparities, the British Council launched the English and Digital for Girls’ Education (EDGE) programme in 2016. Aimed at out-of-school girls aged 13–19 from marginalised communities, EDGE enhances English, digital skills, social awareness, and self-confidence through a peer-led model. Trained Peer Group Leaders (PGLs) facilitate club sessions. By February 2024, EDGE had reached over 20,000 girls and trained nearly 2,000 PGLs across eight countries, including India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

That 81% figure fair takes one’s breath away …

Mir_et_al_2025_Empowering_girls_through_educationDownload

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7. And, finally, some common sense from Rod Bristow, Beyond Hype and Fluff: Lessons for AI from 25 Years of EdTech https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2025/07/10/beyond-hype-and-fluff-lessons-for-ai-from-25-years-of-edtech/

Steady growth in investment over the last decade culminated in a huge peak during Covid. Hype and ‘fluff’ overtook rational thinking, and several superficially attractive businesses spiked and then plummeted in value. In education, details and evidence of impact (or efficacy) matter. Without them, lasting scale is much harder to achieve. The pendulum has now swung the other way, with investors harder to convince. Investors and entrepreneurs need to ask the question, ‘Does it work?’ before considering how it scales. If they do, they will see plenty of applications that both work and scale, and better-educated investors will be good for the sector. One of the biggest barriers to scale is the complexity of implementation with teachers, without whom there is little impact. Without getting into the debate about teacher autonomy, most teachers like to do their own thing. And products which bypass teachers, marketed directly to consumers, often struggle to show as much impact and financial return.Emily#1987

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Thursday, 10th July (Cambridge)

Posted on July 10, 2025 by roycross

An unavoidably vain attempt today to keep up with developments in AI and thinking about AI.

1. The New York Times recently ran an opinion piece by David Brooks, Are We Really Willing to Become Dumber?, about an MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) study comparing what happens in the brains of three groups of students: those using Large Language Learning models, such as ChatGPT; those using search engines, such as Google; and those using only their own brain https://tinyurl.com/3fcye5wj

But here’s where things get scary. The researchers used an EEG (electroencephalography) headset to look at the inner workings of their subjects’ brains. The subjects who relied only on their own brains showed higher connectivity across a bunch of brain regions. Search engine users experienced less brain connectivity and A.I. users least of all. (…) The brain-only writers had the highest intra-brain connectivity. The search engine group demonstrated between 34 percent to 48 percent lower total connectivity, and the A.I. group demonstrated up to 55 percent lower D.D.T.F. connectivity. The researchers conclude, “Collectively, these findings support the view that external support tools restructure not only task performance but also the underlying cognitive architecture.”

Here’s another, less self-avowedly opinionated account of the same study, from Ness Labs which ends with five practical tips on the use of AI https://nesslabs.com/is-chatgpt-really-rotting-our-brains

2. From Google, Advancing education with AI https://edu.google.com/intl/ALL_uk/ai/education/ which has links to a wealth of videos, AI training, toolkits and guides for educators.

Bold technology, applied responsibly, says Google: AI can never replace the expertise, knowledge or creativity of an educator (says Google) — but it can be a helpful tool to enhance and enrich teaching and learning experiences. As part of our Responsible AI practices, we use a human-centered design approach. And when it comes to building tools for education, we are especially thoughtful and deliberate. AI can help educators boost their creativity and productivity, giving them time back to invest in themselves and their students.

I suggest you keep those Ness Labs tips in mind when engaging your brain with Google’s bold technology …

3. In recent weeks, Joe Dale has been running his Listening, Speaking & Fluency with AI online event around the world for the British Council, and the next iteration is on 23rd July at 09:00 UK time. I’m including it early as it fits with today’s topic, not least because it makes me feel really off the pace!  https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_6MrnjtLCSLmo1YDPzv5a-w#/registration

Here’s Joe’s blurb:

This session focuses on low-prep, high-impact tools that enhance pronunciation, speaking confidence, and listening comprehension. We’ll explore:

Interactive warm-up with a DirectPoll quiz: “How AI savvy are you?”

A shared Padlet backchannel will run throughout the series for collaborative sharing of links, prompts, and examples

Suno – Create custom AI-generated songs to teach grammar, vocabulary, or pronunciation in a memorable way

Vidnoz – Turn student writing into animated talking avatars to boost speaking fluency and reduce performance anxiety

TurboScribe – Transcribe YouTube clips or audio into editable texts for creating listening and gap-fill activities

Brisk Teaching – Automatically generate self-marking Google Form quizzes from YouTube videos or Google Docs

4. AI will feature in the South Asia TeachingEnglish Online Conference 2025, which has a great line-up of speakers (including Dale, J.) https://www.britishcouncil.org.bd/en/programmes/teach/sa2025/speakers The conference runs on three days from 17th to 19th July, starting each day at 10:00 UK time: more info and registration here https://www.britishcouncil.org.bd/en/programmes/teach/sa2025

The overall conference theme is Supporting teachers’ professional development and sub-themes include Adopting inclusive practices to support all learners, Integrating 21st century skills into English Language Teaching and Leveraging digital technologies, including AI, to enhance learning and teaching.

5. And, finally, from Rolling Stone, something which ought not to be at all amusing, Elon Musk’s Grok Chatbot Goes Full Nazi, Calls Itself ‘MechaHitler’ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/elon-musk-grok-chatbot-antisemitic-posts-1235381165/

Here’s what Claude had to say about Grok https://claude.ai/chat/b4db2789-4804-4465-a640-3555ad02470f PDF of Claude’s reply attached, just in case.

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What do you think of Elon Musk’s LLM Grok ClaudeDownload

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Tuesday, 8th July (Richmond)

Posted on July 8, 2025 by roycross

1. 100 Years of Mein Kampf is a programme that John Kampfner has just made for BBC Radio 4 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002fj5g

Here’s (part of) the blurb, to help you decide if you want to listen. I thought it was good.

A century has passed since the publication of Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler’s notorious book. Part-autobiography, part-political manifesto, few today have read it – and even fewer admit to doing so. Yet its ideas, expressed in often meandering and barely coherent prose, laid out the groundwork for the most destructive ideology of the 20th century. John Kampfner, whose Jewish father fled Czechoslovakia in 1939, sets out to explore the book’s origins, its impact and its disturbing echoes in today’s world. From its early slump to the sale of 12 million copies, Mein Kampf came to be seen as more than just a book – it was a symbol, a Nazi devotional object. After the war, and the horrors of the Holocaust, prosecutors at Nuremberg cited the book as the “blueprint of Nazi aggression”. Victorious Allied forces tried to suppress it, while wrestling with how to do so without mirroring the censorship of the very regime they had defeated.

2. You must judge for yourself if this piece by Timothy Snyder on his Thinking About blog is OTT, Concentration Camp Labor https://snyder.substack.com/p/concentration-camp-labor

With the passage of Trump’s death bill, we face the prospect of many great harms, including an archipelago of concentration camps across the United States. Concentration camps are sites of tempting slave labor. Among many other aims, the Soviets used concentration camp labor to build canals and work mines. The Nazi German concentration camp system followed a capitalist version of the same logic: it drew in businesses with the prospect of inexpensive labor. We know this and have no excuse not to act.

3. A thoughtful piece by Kyuseok Kim from IES Abroad (which is a much bigger organisation than I’d realised) on the SRHE (Society for Research into Higher Education)  blog on international branch campuses and English-medium instruction, Branch campuses and the mirage of demand https://srheblog.com/2025/07/04/branch-campuses-and-the-mirage-of-demand/

US institutions often assume that English-medium instruction (EMI) automatically confers competitive advantage in Asia. At IGC, all programs are delivered entirely in English, and faculty are predominantly international; 188 of the 304 faculty members across the five campuses are foreign nationals. On paper, this aligns with global academic norms and affirms a commitment to international standards. However, EMI can paradoxically limit access. While affluent Korean students may see EMI as an elite advantage, students from Vietnam, China, and Indonesia often seek local cultural immersion, language acquisition, and regional relevance. For many Chinese students in particular, one of the draws of studying in Korea is precisely to learn Korean and gain access to Korean labour markets. EMI-only models thus alienate both local integration seekers and English-language learners.

4. Student use of AI is a decidedly grey area, at least at the Nanyang Technical University in Singapore, it would seem, according to this article from The Straits Times, Panel with AI experts to review appeal of NTU student penalised for academic misconduct https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/panel-with-ai-experts-to-review-appeal-of-ntu-student-penalised-for-academic-misconduct

5. And, finally, a piece from The Spectator by Sam Leith which tells the true story behind a worldwide non-fiction (sic) best-seller, There’s one thing readers enjoy more than a story like ‘The Salt Path’ https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/theres-one-thing-readers-enjoy-more-than-a-story-like-the-salt-path/ (Let me know if you can’t access it, please.)

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Thursday, 3rd July (Cambridge)

Posted on July 3, 2025 by roycross

A bit later than usual today as I’ve just got home from a splendid 30th birthday party for NILE in Norwich!

1. A recent post by Geoff Mulgan on his blog, Geoff’s Stack, In praise of plumbing: why British politics’ lack of interest in how things work explains why many things don’t https://geoffmulgan.substack.com/p/in-praise-of-plumbing

Governments need to be good at three very different things. One is poetry – the big narratives, concepts, and phrases that give them definition and help answer why they are there. The second is the prose: the policies, laws and programmes that are what they do. And the third is the plumbing: the tools and methods that turn promises into results and are how government actually works in practice.

I’m not sure our current government here in the UK scores very highly on any of Geoff’s three ps at present.

2. Generative Artificial Intelligence and Language Teaching by Benjamin Luke Moorhouse  & Kevin M. Wong is the latest free-to-download (until 10th July) in the Cambridge Elements series https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/generative-artificial-intelligence-and-language-teaching/DD0BFB0E89E500723D033B1EEB025F01

The development of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) has led to intense wonder, surprise, excitement, and concern within the language teaching profession. These tools offer the potential to assist language teachers in helping their learners achieve their language learning goals, and at the same time, risk disrupting language teaching and learning processes, the teaching profession, and possibly the instrumental needs to learn foreign languages. This Element provides an accessible introduction and guide to the use of GenAI for language teaching. It aims to facilitate language teachers’ development of the professional knowledge and skills they need to use GenAI responsibly, ethically and effectively. The Element It is a valuable resource for pre-service and in-service language teachers of all experience levels. Each section includes helpful tips and questions for reflection to get teachers started with GenAI while ensuring they engage critically and responsibly with these tools. Evidence-informed approaches are promoted throughout the Element.

I’ve not attached a PDF, as publishers like to know who’s downloading their stuff for free, but let me know if you have any difficulty accessing a copy.

Well worth keeping an eye on this page https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/subject/Language%20and%20Linguistics/140D314098408C26BDF3009F7FF858E9

and on this one https://www.cambridge.org/core/publications/elements

3. I hope this one from The New Yorker by Hua Hsu can be accessed without a subscription; let me know if not, please. What Happens After A.I. Destroys College Writing? https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/07/07/the-end-of-the-english-paper

The demise of the English paper will end a long intellectual tradition, but it’s also an opportunity to reëxamine the purpose of higher education.

That umlaut on the second ‘e’ in reëxamine is a New Yorker specialty – or speciality, if you prefer.

4. Do we need to rethink how we train teachers and leaders in schools? Is an edition of the Inside Your Ed podcast that discusses the report, A System that Empowers: the Future of Professional Development, that I mentioned back on 29th April with one of its authors, Loic Menzies, and Avnee Morjaria https://insideyoured.buzzsprout.com/1874905/episodes/17274780-do-we-need-to-rethink-how-we-train-teachers-and-leaders-in-schools

I think most people would agree, says Tom Richmond, the host of ‘Inside Your Ed’, that England’s rise up the international education league tables over the past decade or so has been a welcome sign of progress. But when government funding is now in such short supply and is likely to remain so for some time yet, sustaining this recent progress may become increasingly challenging. A new report from IPPR and Ambition Institute, written by Loic Menzies and Marie Hamer, argues that the way in which we support and invest in the teaching workforce through continuing professional development, or CPD, may be the key to unlocking higher education standards in future. So, what does this new report want to change in terms of how we invest in teachers and leaders? How easy would it be to convince teachers, leaders and schools to spend more time and money on CPD? And could improving the quality and quantity of training go some way to convincing more people to stay in the teaching profession?

5. And, finally, a Barry Cryer joke:

A man goes into a pub and says to the landlord: ‘If you give me free drinks all night, I will entertain your customers so much they will stay all night and buy lots and lots of drinks.’ ‘Oh yes,’ says the landlord. ‘How are you going to do that?’ The man gets a hamster out of his pocket and puts it on the piano. The hamster runs up and down the keyboard playing the greatest piano music anyone had ever heard. ‘That’s incredible!’ says the landlord. ‘Have you got anything else?’ The man gets a parrot out of his other pocket and puts it on the bar. The hamster begins to play the piano again and the parrot sings along – sounding just like Pavarotti. Everyone in the bar is amazed and they stay all night drinking and listening to the hamster and parrot. The landlord is delighted. ‘I must have these animals. Will you sell them to me?’ he asks. The man shakes his head: no. ‘Will you sell just one then?’ asks the bartender. ‘OK, I’ll sell you the parrot for £100,’ the man says. The landlord is delighted and hands over the money. Another man standing next to the man who owned the hamster says: ‘You’re a bit stupid selling that clever parrot for only £100.’ ‘No I’m not,’ the man replies. ‘The hamster is a ventriloquist’.

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Tuesday, 1st July (Richmond)

Posted on July 1, 2025 by roycross

1. This one from Anthropic will take some time to explore thoroughly, Claude’s language learning tutor, which offers “customized language tutoring based on your goals and proficiency” https://claude.ai/artifacts/inspiration/2af221b6-367f-4b4f-9fe9-25710f5f8feb

A number of the languages I once (sort of) spoke are now on life support and I wonder if this might help?

2. A piece for Himal by Jason Stanley, who, to give you a bit of background so you know where he’s coming from politically, was until recently the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University but has now accepted an appointment at the University of Toronto based on what he describes as ‘the deteriorating political situation in the United States’, How fascism works in India https://www.himalmag.com/politics/india-modi-fascism-hindu-nationalism-muslims

India’s fascist turn under Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist rule, says Stanley, has multiple parallels with global fascist tactics and history, including in Nazi Germany and Trump’s United States.

Not sure it would have been too difficult to work out Stanley’s politics, mind you!

3. Two pieces from Literary Hub

Against AI: An Open Letter From Writers to Publishers https://lithub.com/against-ai-an-open-letter-from-writers-to-publishers/

We want our publishers to stand with us. To make a pledge that they will never release books that were created by machines.

What Would Happen If the Chatbots Broke Free of Their Masters? by Paul Bradley Carr on “the danger—for Tech Bros—of empathetic, knowledgeable Artificial Intelligence” https://lithub.com/what-would-happen-if-the-chatbots-broke-free-of-their-masters/

The tech industry I first wrote about as a young, eager technology journalist circa 1999 felt like it was filled with heroes. A brave new world in which plucky upstarts like Amazon (“The World’s Biggest Bookstore,” run out of a Bellevue garage) would bring hard-to-find books to the masses, or at least to my small town that lacked its own bookshop.

4. Nautilus, which describes itself as “a different kind of science magazine (whose) stories take you into the depths of science and spotlight its ripples in our lives and cultures”, offers two free articles a month – slightly frustrating as there’s lots of good stuff there! Here’s my own two freebies for this month (and it’s only the 1st):

Finding Peter Putnam: The forgotten janitor who discovered the logic of the mind by Amanda Gefter https://nautil.us/finding-peter-putnam-1218035/

Chasing Lost Languages by Laura Spinney, https://nautil.us/chasing-lost-languages-1221167/

If humans have been talking for 200,000 years—for most of our species’ existence, that is—then an estimated half a million languages might have been spoken in all.

5. And, finally, the strange story of Burj Al Babas https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/turkey-castle-ghost-town

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Thursday, 26th June (Cambridge)

Posted on June 26, 2025 by roycross

Three on politics to start with today.

1. An engaging series for BBC Radio 4 from David Runciman, Postwar, in which he tells the story of the 1945 UK general election which rejected Winston Churchill and the dawn of a new age. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00249zx/episodes/player?page=2

2. A piece for The Conversation by John Curtice, How Britain’s new political divide delivers voters to Reform and the Greens, in which he suggests that Britain’s political tectonic plates may recently have moved irreversibly https://theconversation.com/how-britains-new-political-divide-delivers-voters-to-reform-and-the-greens-259613

This, of course, is not the first time that Britain’s two-party system has been under challenge. In the early 1980s the Liberal/SDP Alliance threatened to “break the mould of British politics”. In spring 2019, at the height of the Brexit impasse, the Brexit Party and the Liberal Democrats appeared poised to upset the traditional order. This time, however, the challenge to the Conservative/Labour duopoly seems more profound.

3. And a piece from Ipsos, Reform with Ipsos record 9-point lead over Labour, as public satisfaction with government nears lowest point recorded under a modern Labour administration, telling a very similar story https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/reform-ipsos-record-9-point-lead-over-labour-public-satisfaction-government-nears-lowest-point

Ipsos’ newly relaunched Political Monitor shows Reform UK on a 34% vote share, the highest Ipsos has ever recorded for them, and nine points ahead of the Labour Party. Just under a year since the 2024 general election, Ipsos in the UK’s new findings show how dramatically the political landscape has changed:

Labour’s 25% voting intention is the lowest share Ipsos has recorded for Labour since October 2019.

The Conservatives’ 15% is the lowest share Ipsos has ever recorded.

Keir Starmer and the government’s satisfaction ratings have fallen significantly since last year, with around three in four (73% and 76% respectively) now dissatisfied.

4. A new (non-political) position paper from Oxford ELT, The Impact of Assessment on Teaching and Learning: Creating positive washback https://elt.oup.com/feature/global/expert/positive-washback?cc=gb&selLanguage=en PDF below, in case that’s easier for you.

  • Explore research on how testing and assessment shape classroom practices
  • Find practical guidance on how teachers can prepare their students for exams while also addressing their broader language learning needs
  • Explore recommendations to help schools and policymakers foster positive washback
  • Discover how emerging technologies are reshaping the way educational institutions approach testing and assessment
positive-washbackDownload

5. And, finally, if you live in Andorra, Belarus, Bolivia, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Guatemala, Ivory Coast, Kyrgyzstan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Mali, the Marshall Islands, Monaco, Mongolia, Paraguay, Sao Tome and Principe, Sweden, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, or Vatican City, this one’s for you, Map of the Week: Every Country Britain HAS NOT Invaded https://blog.richmond.edu/livesofmaps/2023/10/13/map-of-the-week-every-country-britain-has-not-invaded/

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Tuesday, 24th June (Cambridge)

Posted on June 24, 2025 by roycross

1. Compare and contrast, if you will, the latest edition of Ethan Mollick’s Guide to AI … https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/using-ai-right-now-a-quick-guide

Interesting that Mollick very confidently declares:

For most people who want to use AI seriously, you should pick one of three systems: Claude from Anthropic, Google’s Gemini, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. With all of the options, you get access to both advanced and fast models, a voice mode, the ability to see images and documents, the ability to execute code, good mobile apps, the ability to create images and video (Claude lacks here, however), and the ability to do Deep Research.

2. … with the UK Government’s guidance on Generative artificial intelligence (AI) in education https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/generative-artificial-intelligence-in-education/generative-artificial-intelligence-ai-in-education

The Department for Education (DfE) is committed to supporting the AI Opportunities Action Plan. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) presents exciting opportunities to improve people’s lives, including by making our public services better. AI will support with the delivery of the Plan for Change and our opportunity mission. If used safely, effectively and with the right infrastructure in place, AI can support every child and young person, regardless of their background, to achieve at school and college and develop the knowledge and skills they need for life. 

No mention of Claude from the UK Government, who plump for – or at least mention in dispatches – ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini.

3. Episode 1092 of Mignon Fogarty’s ‘Grammar Girl’ podcast was What your accent is saying about you (and your identity), with Rob Drummond from Manchester Metropolitan University talking about the role the ‘Accent Van’ played in the Manchester Voices project https://youtu.be/puEjb98nDpI

Your accent may be saying more than your words. Sociolinguist Rob Drummond explains how accents shape our identities, how they differ across social classes, and why changing your accent can affect how you’re perceived.

4. How to teach English to refugees and displaced learners? Find out here! https://www.youtube.com/live/5ePE_b1hzr8

5. And, finally, But the Flowers Remain, a film by Joscha Kotlan & Maximilian Ihlenburg whichdocuments the rhythms of daily life for one family in a secluded mountain village in Romania https://aeon.co/videos/life-moves-slowly-in-a-romanian-mountain-village-shaped-by-care-and-the-seasons Also available here on YouTube https://youtu.be/euAP-zVMx7Y

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Thursday, 19th June (Cambridge)

Posted on June 19, 2025 by roycross

1. Here’s a piece by Johanna Alonso from Inside Higher Ed (IHE), The Handwriting Revolution https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/curriculum/2025/06/17/amid-ai-plagiarism-more-professors-turn-handwritten-work

Five semesters after ChatGPT changed education forever, some professors are taking their classes back to the pre-internet era.

A free account with IHE allows you five free articles a month. I’ve got a nervous twitch in my right hand just at the thought of having to write an examination paper ….

2. You can sign up now for two TeachingEnglish courses that start on 1st July:

Helping teachers to learn, which is a course for teacher trainers and educators https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/training/teachingenglish-helping-teachers-learn

Teaching English through literature, which is a course for teachers of English at all levels https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/training/teaching-english-through-literature

I’ve attached the handbook for each course to give you a better idea of what they’re about.

Helping_teachers_to_learn_workbook_2025Download
Teaching_English_through_literature_workbook_2025Download

3. Not everyone’s into testing and assessment, I realise, but if you are, here’s a real treasure trove, the full archive of the Cambridge journal, Studies in Language Testing (SiLT) https://www.cambridgeenglish.org/english-research-group/published-research/silt/

Volume 38 is one of the more accessible volumes for the general reader and traces the history of Cambridge’s own exams back to 1858

Examiners in those days travelled in academic dress, carrying a locked box containing the question papers. They were paid about one pound four shillings, the equivalent of about £50 at today’s (2013) prices. The records show that the exam markers were paid, per pound, 9 shillings and sixpence for Arithmetic (about £20 now), 12 shillings and 6 pence (about £26 now) for History and 18 shillings (£37 now) for Classics papers – per pound in weight of papers, that is!

4. Also from Cambridge, a webinar with Rosemary Bradley & Jiří Horak on Developing oracy in the primary classroom. Two sessions: one at 10:00 UK time next Tuesday, 24th June, and a second at 16:00 UK time a week today, Thursday 26th June https://www.cambridgeenglish.org/teaching-english/resources-for-teachers/webinars/developing-oracy-in-the-primary-classroom/

Teaching oracy skills helps children become effective collaborators and communicators. In this webinar, we’ll explore the Oracy Skills Framework and how you can apply it to your primary classroom. We’ll look at a range of practical ways oracy can be incorporated to help young learners interact confidently, develop ideas together and build essential communication skills for life.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary – and in the interests of Oxbridge balance – oracy is the ability to express oneself fluently and grammatically in speech.

5. And, finally and (possibly, if the word exists) staminally, Mark Kermode has been posting a weekly review of a classic film for very nearly ten years. They’re all collected here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXvkgGofjDzhx-h7eexfVbH3WslWrBXE9

Remind yourself what Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon https://youtu.be/KOjrn3trcuI

or Aguirre, Wrath of God was about https://youtu.be/D36Zy9fXRg4

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Tuesday, 17th June (Richmond)

Posted on June 17, 2025 by roycross

1. This Thursday, 19th June, at 15:30 UK time there’s the last NATESOL event of this academic year, an interestingly different ‘special panel discussion’ with Robert Merrell from Manchester Adult Education Services and two adult ESOL learners, Rabia and Lul, Revisiting ESOL Entry learners’ needs & our teaching approaches. More information and free registration via NATESOL’s website here: https://www.natesol.org/

Robert and his two Pre-Entry learners are going to share what Entry ESOL learners need nowadays. Practical teaching techniques and useful suggestions will be exchanged. The discussion will be of interest to all teachers of English as a foreign or second language.

‘Pre-Entry’ is the ESOL equivalent of ‘absolute beginner’, just in case that’s not obvious, and my assumption is that Rabia and Lul are no longer Pre-Entry level learners!

2. BBC Radio 4 have just done a very good two-part adaptation of King Lear with the oldest ever Lear, the appropriately aged eighty-nine-year-old Richard Wilson, still best known here in the UK for his role as the curmudgeonly Victor Meldrew in the One Foot in the Grave sitcom (the humour of which may not have travelled very well?), supported by a stellar cast.

Here’s Part 1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002d887

here’s Part 2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002dkzx

and here’s The Daily Telegraph review https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/9113b0d51c87753a

3. The Beautiful Betrayal: How AI Reveals the Unravelling of Real Learning is a thought-provoking piece by Carlo Iacono on his Hybrid Horizons blog, which ‘explores human-AI collaboration’ https://hybridhorizons.substack.com/p/the-beautiful-betrayal

I’ve been (…) watching people grapple with generative AI, and what I’ve observed runs counter to every dire prediction about shortcuts and intellectual laziness. When a user crafts what they believe is a perfectly reasonable prompt and receives an AI response that’s technically correct but somehow fundamentally off, something remarkable happens. The tool’s interpretation becomes a mirror, reflecting back not just what they asked, but the poverty of how they asked it. “But that’s not what I meant,” they protest, staring at the screen. And in that protest lies the beginning of wisdom. The AI, in its peculiar combination of sophistication and obtuseness, forces a reckoning. Unlike a human teacher who might intuit meaning from context, who might bridge the gaps in a poorly formed question with experience and empathy, the AI responds only to what’s actually there. Every assumption left unspoken, every piece of context taken for granted, every logical leap glossed over – all of it becomes suddenly, painfully visible.

4. Have you ever heard of Ocracoke Island in North Carolina? Nor had I till Maja Mandekić brought it to my attention. It’s The US island that speaks Elizabethan English according to the BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/travel/article/20190623-the-us-island-that-speaks-elizabethan-english

I’d never been called a “dingbatter” until I went to Ocracoke, North Carolina for the first time. I’ve spent a good part of my life in the state, but I’m still learning how to speak the Hoi Toider brogue. The people here just have their own way of speaking: it’s like someone took Elizabethan English, sprinkled in some Irish tones and 1700s Scottish accents, then mixed it all up with pirate slang. But the Hoi Toider dialect is more than a dialect. It’s also a culture, one that’s slowly fading away. With each generation, fewer people play meehonkey, cook the traditional foods or know what it is to be “mommucked”.

5. And, finally, confirmation of my memory of that Silent Way class with Mario Rinvolucri that I mentioned last Thursday from Rod Bolitho’s tribute-letter (nice idea) to Mario in the April issue of HLT:

But let me (Rod) talk to you (Mario) for a moment about how we first got together in Cambridge in 1977. I was fresh back from 3 years in Germany and the people at Bell pitched me head first into the role of Director of the RSA Dip TEFL programme, run on behalf of the recognised language schools in the city. You offered to teach a couple of slots on the course and I was advised to agree to your offer but also warned that you could rub people up the wrong way. The first session you led was on Gattegno’s Silent Way and it was a very intense experience for everyone present, myself included. When I talked to you about it, you said the intensity was deliberate as you wanted people to concentrate and to remember the session.

Well, Mario achieved his intention: I can remember that session with him nearly fifty years ago like it was yesterday!

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