All through lockdown, second-year, distance-learning EFL students at Paul Valéry University have been persevering with their blogging course and finally (10 weeks into the 12-week course) have set up their blogs and begun posting. This is only the second year that this course has existed and it still feels fresh, exciting and worthwhile. In addition,…
Online chatting or ‘real-time writing’: a question of rhythm? Since the closure of the university campus, our LANSAD teaching team has been thinking about how best to ensure ‘pedagogical continuity and creativity’ and keep on working with our students. I would like to share with you this week how our online chat sessions with third…
On a confined afternoon our writer sits at the kitchen table with a flower placed strategically in front of her. She has decided that today’s task is to describe the flower in a manner that will enable her readers to see the flower through her eyes. To visualise it. Maybe even catch a hint of…
In the context of the recent conference ‘Short Fiction as Humble Fiction’, organised by the Paul Valéry research centre EMMA and the European Network for Short Fiction Research, a short story writing competition in English, An opportunity for new voices, was organised for foreign language students. Invited to be one of the jury members I…
In a sorry week that heard the German president of the EU quoting George Eliot to the departing British and a prominent German politician reassuring them with the French words au revoir not adieu, it seemed apt to have French EFL creative writing students reflect upon how they sound in the foreign language. This semester’s…