Writing can be a lonely and frustrating business. Writing for online learners of English as I do is particularly tricky: I don’t get much feedback from my readers. As my employers are very busy, asking them to review and edit my work is not always possible. But that means that any errors I make and [...]
Germany has been rocked by scandal this past week, as Helene Hegemann, the 17-year old writer of an astonishing novel called Axolotl Roadkill, has been shown up by Munich blogger Deef Pirmasens (Gefühlskonserve) to have lifted whole passages of her book from the writings of one Airen, a blogger in Berlin. Her publisher had asked [...]
Google has a series of charming ads on YouTube called “Search stories” that are just perfect for English lessons. This one was broadcast on Sunday during the Superbowl. I’m going to play a few of the series in my classes tomorrow and have groups develop the profiles and tell the stories of the people doing [...]
I’ve just learned from Stan Carey what a snowclone is. Geoffrey Pullum developed the concept on Language Log back in 2004, for a clichéd phrasal template that gets repeated in innumerable variants.
Geoffrey Pullum:
“I was looking at things like “In space, no one can hear you X”, where the customizability is that you get to choose [...]
Why do you write or blog? If you don’t write or blog, why not?
I finally called off my blog project yesterday after reading the Pew’s Report on teens not blogging and twittering. (Summary in Mashable) The reasons given for the lack of interest which I, too, have experienced in the group of people I approached [...]
This is a comment on a great post by The Tesla Coil on the Graddolization of EFL. David Graddol honored MELTA with a visit last summer. Thanks, Tony Watt for the Globish link:
Only 4% of the people communicating with each other today in English are both/ all native speakers. Jean-Paul Nerrier wants to “make it more [...]
This is how I teach. Aiming too high can cause negative stress. I’ve learned to break learning down into small, productive, rewarding steps.
I was thrilled and very priviledged to be sponsored by Cornelsen to present this at BESIG, the Business English Special Interest Group, in Poznan last weekend. It was a great event. This presentation [...]
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