Writing: Getting started

A business English student of mine is getting into writing on his Ning and blog (yeah!), and I sent him these exercises to get him started. Freewriting This is an exercise in overcoming writers block and allows you to brainstorm. It’s also a great way to avoid translating or focussing too narrowly on issues of […]

Girl games

Today I’m very honored to be a visiting blogger on Chris Adam’s Bits ‘n Bob’s Show ‘n Tell, as part of his Mirror Posts/ Through the Looking Glass series. A post in his great San Francisco blog about a very surrealistic art show, “Altered Barbie”, leading to an equally surrealistic day, set my imagination off. […]

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 […]

Question: When does remixing become second-hand living?

http://annehodgson.de/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/remix.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadGermany 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 […]

Question: What new services do we need?

http://annehodgson.de/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/services.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadLast week I was getting a class ready to go to “Seven Days in the Life of Simon Labrosse”, a play being presented by the BeMe Theatre. It’s about a guy who has been unemployed and is trying to break back into the market (and into life, really) by […]

Asimov deconstructed

What Is Intelligence, Anyway? by Isaac Asimov What is intelligence, anyway? When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a […]

Question: What risks do you like, and what’s your survival kit?

I’ve been called a control freak by people who actually call themselves my friends. So what do my enemies call me? I think it’s a teacher thing, wanting to be prepared for all eventualities. Yet I’m fascinated by teachers who “teach barefoot”, taking nothing but a smile and a good night’s sleep. I know that will get you far, and I do it too, quite a lot, actually. But I only do it when I know the terrain, when I figure that I have enough tricks up my sleeve to handle pretty much anything that can happen. So while I hate taking blind risks, I love taking calculated ones.