Getting real in teaching listening
Book review: Richard Cauldwell: Phonology for Listening. Teaching the Stream of Speech. Speech in Action. Birmingham, UK 2013. ISBN 0954344723, ISBN-13: 978-0954344726. Printed on demand by Amazon. €25.68 http://www.speechinaction.com Richard Cauldwell makes a key point: Listening acquisition lags behind the acquisition of other skills, he says, because we treat listening skills as something learners will […]
Eddie Izzard is a Force Majeure
Eddie Izzard is unbelievable. 8 years of French and 2 years of German in school. And after witnessing people of many nations splashing about peacefully together in Santorini and believing that languages will unite us, he’s decided to do his show in various countries and languages. Standup comedy in foreign tongues, not just in French, […]
State of the art: Machine translation
In a word: Aaaaargh! The German machine translation below is complete nonsense. Lexis is far more complicated than you’d think. A word like ‘searing’ can be a verb, an adjective or a noun. Consider how differently ‘even’ can translate –’even heating’ has been translated here as ‘sogar Heizung’ rather than ‘gleichmäßige Erwärmung’. And ‘seasoning’ is […]
Onkel-Braesig-Strasse
Scratch off the wallpaper in the front room upstairs, and out comes Taut’s blue. Fantastic. I’d love to just leave it as is, but I’m worried it will be too busy. Many of the walls in this room and in others are all patched up from new wiring. So I’ll make a window of sorts […]
Hitting the books again
Having finished Basis for Business C1, and soon to hand over ELTABB events coordination, my workload is relatively light. Next to my compact teaching sessions I’m writing teaching files: downloads to go with the Cornelsen series/ the C1 book a new course on International Competences and Communication Skills for Management Circle But overall I now […]
Bella ciao, blogroll
I’ve deleted my old blogroll, which hailed from the heyday of teachers blogging (about 2009-2011). More than half of the blogs linked to were no longer being updated, and many new ones have emerged over the past year or two, some of whom have also in part given up in the meantime. I’ve found it […]
Tag: 11 facts, questions, answers among ELT bloggers
I’ve been tagged in a Twitter-cum-teacher-blog game, and am happy to play by the rules: Acknowledge the nominating blogger. Share 11 random facts about yourself. Answer the 11 questions the nominating blogger has created for you. List 11 bloggers. Post 11 questions for the bloggers you nominate to answer, and let all the bloggers know […]
