I started thinking about writing this post back in the dog days of summer. But it was too hot. Now those days have passed and clouds roil in grey skies. I wear a jumper on my back for the first time in what seems like a long while. Next Tuesday kids are back at school. …
It is the summer after the great lockdown and hot down here in the south of France. As usual at this time of year I am assailed by mental and physical torpor. But maybe even more so than usual. Lockdown or getting older, I wonder. Something oily wavers at the distant edges of my mind.…
Pleasure and learning and teaching. What better antidote to current unsettled times than to reflect a moment upon the relationship between this trinity. A week or so ago, during an email exchange, a second-year EFL distance learning student (a recently retired polyglot pensioner named Jean) explained to me the following: ‘meeting a new language is…
The electricity was rewired in my study. Okay. You rewired the electricity in my study. Credit where credit is due. You rewired the electricity in my study whilst I was out. My first proper out since lockdown began. Why is that significant? Just so that people know clearly where their sympathies should lie. This out…
Online real-time written conversations in English. A facet of digital literacy. As explained in the previous post on this subject, we have been using online chats with our third-year undergraduates as a means of replacing classroom conversation workshops during lockdown. In the last week of online chatting, I took the opportunity of informally asking students…