http://annehodgson.de Learning English Online with Anne Hodgson Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:02:21 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en In her great analysis of famous speeches, Nancy Duarte, the presentation guru (www.duarte.com), says that the most effective talks, the ones that make people change the way they think, move back and forth between what is and what could be. She analyzes Steve Job's introduction of the iPhone speech and ... http://annehodgson.de/2012/02/06/nancy-duarte-the-secret-structure-of-great-talks/ I'm still struggling to teach scientific writing to a diverse group of PhD candidates that I only see occasionally. My latest attempt is to give them a set of online tools to analyze their genre of target texts (published works and their own work in progress), and to tell me ... http://annehodgson.de/2012/02/01/online-tools-and-resources-for-scientific-writing/ Last Saturday Evan Frendo gave us at ELTABB an absolutely excellent presentation on the latest research in Business English, focusing on four key areas: English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), Communities of Practice, Intercultural Communication and Lexis and Genre/ Corpus Linguistics. His presentation and handout are here: scroll down to ... http://annehodgson.de/2012/01/26/focusing-on-communication-strategies-instead-of-language-per-se/ I enjoyed yesterday's communication skills class with the Master of Public Management class at the University of Potsdam. We did discussion and debate, and I used a few resources I can recommend: After showing the students my communication triangle above (connect at the human, the community, and the (competitive, self-)marketing levels), ... http://annehodgson.de/2012/01/24/debate-and-discussion/ We've had such bizarre trouble with our landline for weeks now, with virtual repairmen who didn't show up and left messages with the helpline hours later. My work was piling up, and my blood pressure was rising. And then the MacBook Pro had trouble with the software on the Vodafone ... http://annehodgson.de/2012/01/15/sys-admin/ We're happily installed in our new nest in Berlin-Charlottenburg (thank you to Michael and Christof) and are ready to take it nice and slow for a few days. Happy holidays to all! Here is my favorite jazzification of a venerable Christmas carol, Kommet Ihr Hirten by David Gazarov. Please excuse my ... http://annehodgson.de/2011/12/24/merry-christmas/ Wow, what a complete idiot. But hey, the whole world is laughing. Barack, good times ahead. The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cRick Perry's Pro-Christmas Adwww.colbertnation.comColbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical Humor & Satire BlogVideo Archive http://annehodgson.de/2011/12/12/rick-perry/