Summer is well and truly upon us. With thermometers registering 44 degrees here in the Hérault department, that is something of an understatement. In the still-cool morning, thinking about colour. A kitchen window left ajar. Between fly-splattered panes, a burnt green and pink geranium on the exterior window-sill. High above mushroom-coloured rendered façades topped with…
I, like every other (language) teacher the world over, am always thinking about the best way to assess. What do I mean by ‘best’? The most cost-effective, the most useful, the fairest…? And ‘best’ for who? Students, teachers, employers, educational institutions…? As I’ve explained in previous posts, in an attempt to find a practical answer…
Glug glug glug. Blog May 2018. The following post is sent from out of the dark and lonely, endless depths of evaluating and examining, that are seemingly synonymous with the month of May (and June?) in the French university system and into which I have sunk and am muckily enmired in. Coming up for air.…
The second-year undergraduate on-line course for Paul-Valéry is drawing to a close over the next couple of weeks and I would like to share the links for the blogs that the students have created and are in the process of working on. Some of them really are fabulous and all of them are proof…
Obituary writing, a very particular form of creative writing, whilst based on facts, is as far from a straightforward biography, even a potted one, as Perrier is from Dom Pérignon. There is no pretence of comprehensiveness. Rather, facts and dates, rumours and stories are cunningly chosen and woven together to create a portrait of the…