It’s worth keeping an eye on this blog

Janet Biancini and Mike Harrison, two excellent bloggers and paedagogical tinkerers like myself, have to my delight included me in their lists of 10 blogs “worth keeping an eye on”, an initiative originating as “Vale a pena ficar de olho nesse blog“. Thank you! Now I am to continue the chain by naming 10 more […]

Pigeon: Impossible

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 […]

Crying in my coffee

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 […]

Jean-Paul Nerrier’s Globish

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 […]

Question: Inspired by a fault?

http://annehodgson.de/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/fault.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadDjango Reinhardt was born 100 years ago yesterday. He lost the use of the third and fourth finger on his left hand when the family caravan caught fire, and as a result developed his own unique style of guitar playing. Seriously inspirational, that is. Can you remember any other […]

Question: Can you learn from a robot?

http://annehodgson.de/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/chatbot.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadI had great fun last week, exploring what it is like to talk to a chatbot. It was Shelly Terrell who originally put me up to it, advising me when I was gathering ideas for a Spotlight Magazine article edited and coauthored by Jo Westcombe on ways English learners […]

Question: Do you believe in learning styles?

http://annehodgson.de/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/learning.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadIn my profession there’s a hot debate going on about “learning styles”. You know, finding out whether you are a visual learner and need to see things to understand them, or an auditory learner who prefers to hear things, or whether you are a kinethetic learner and have to […]