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Coming up: A Business English/ ESP blog carnival

Posted by Anne on August 5th, 2010

As announced by Larry Ferlazzo, coming up on 1 November, there’ll be a blog carnival – that is, a round-up of posts submitted by bloggers for the purpose – dedicated to the teaching of Business English and English for Special Purposes, here on this blog.  If you’re a blogger, please use this form to submit [...]

Janelle Monae: Tightrope

Posted by Anne on July 1st, 2010

My exciting news this week is that we’re moving to Berlin. Helmut has a new job. He told me a few years ago that he didn’t want to climb the social ladder (Karriere machen), but here he is, with new challenges. So babe, this song is dedicated to you, with all of my love. Keep [...]

They’re similar, but different: * meeting  * appointment  * date

Can you schedule a/an _________________ for the project team?
ɯɐǝʇ ɐ ɥʇıʍ ƃuıʇǝǝɯ ɐ ǝlnpǝɥɔs
I want to make a/an ___________________ with Mr Hoss to discuss the CERT project.
ǝuoǝɯos ɥʇıʍ ʇuǝɯʇuıoddɐ uɐ ǝʞɐɯ
Can we fix a/an ______________________ for the next meeting?
ʇuǝʌǝ ʎuɐ ɹoɟ ǝʇɐp ɐ xıɟ
I think Hossy [...]

The challenge of compacts

Posted by Anne on May 1st, 2010

My last two-day compact for PAs didn’t go quite as well as they usually do, leaving me pondering what went wrong. As I’m teaching quite a number of similar ones in the upcoming weeks, I need to pause and think things through in depth, because I want the next ones to go better.
The conditions are [...]

Pigeon: Impossible

Posted by Anne on February 22nd, 2010

Pigeon Impossible, the silent animated film by Lucas Martell released on 9 November that took 4 years to make, passed the 1 million views mark on YouTube after less than 2 weeks online. The film is set in the neighborhood of the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., where two of my nieces and I [...]

Goodbye to “one best way” solutions

Posted by Anne on January 22nd, 2010

Marvin Minsky of the MIT Media Lab and MIT AI Lab has a very pragmatic approach to robotic engineering and artificial intelligence based on systematic redundancy. “I’ve never seen any mechanical device that actually shows any thought about reliability,” he says (4:40) and goes on to explain his approach (from 4:45):

“My theory is that there [...]

F is for first

Posted by Anne on December 6th, 2009

First come, first served.
First things first.
One German translation would be “eins nach dem anderen” — one thing after another; break it down. The other would be “das Wichtigste zuerst” — the most important thing first; prioritize. I don’t think there is an equivalent phrase with both meanings in German. Wow: yet another example of [...]