I’ve been thinking about this for some time.
Remember when I made poached pears? Well, I reduced the pot liquor (not to be confused with alcoholic liquor) and then froze it to use later. So I
Interactive: European Stereotypes
As part of the Europa project, newspapers from six European countries (Britain, France, Germany, Poland, Spain, and Italy) were asked to stereotype each other, and then asked cultural commentators in each country to assess
Reuters Video: Google at your own risk
Google's revised privacy policy is raising new concerns about consumers rights to their information on the internet and other connected products. Bobbi Rebell reports.
TRANSCRIPT REPORTER: A new warning for consumers: Google at your own risk.
Cartoon: EU Red Tape
This cartoon by Andy Davey from The Sun relates to UK Prime Mininster David Cameron's attack on the "madness" of European regulations and taxes in a speech to global business leader at the World
Words in the News: Diddle
Tradesmen paid in cash are diddling the economy, The Daily Telegraph quotes the country's most senior taxman as saying. Full story >>
VOCABULARYIf someone diddles you, they take money from you dishonestly or unfairly. • They
OMG moments induced by allegro forms in Pekingese
This afternoon I passed by a group of high school kids from China going down the street outside of Williams Hall, the office building in which I work. One of the girls said merrily, “Bur’ao”,
Write new speeches, don’t borrow from Hollywood
The Australian minister of transport, Anthony Albanese, recently plunged himself into an embarrassing situation that will probably stain his reputation permanently (see the Daily Mail’s coverage here). His mistake was to deliver a speech
The "dance of the p’s and b’s": truth or noise?
Stanley Fish asks (“Mind Your P’s and B’s: The Digital Humanities and Interpretation”, NYT 1/23/2011):
[H]ow do the technologies wielded by digital humanities practitioners either facilitate the work of the humanities, as it has been traditionally
More on ELF & BELF
Alex Case of the wonderful Tefltastic blog wrote to me a little while ago with some questions about teaching functional language and English as a lingua Franca. Oooooo, two irresistable topics that were bound to
Focusing on communication strategies instead of language per se
Last Saturday Evan Frendo gave us at ELTABB an absolutely excellent presentation on the latest research in Business English, focusing on four key areas: English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), Communities of Practice, Intercultural Communication
Cultural training worksheets page tidied up
My EFL cultural training worksheets section much easier to navigate now it has pages for: Taboo topics worksheets (classic speaking activities with just enough spice!) Body language and gestures worksheets (teaching them foreign gestures while
This week’s top TEFL blog posts
This is the first edition of a weekly post about the best blog posts I’ve read this week.
The first one is a blog about teaching in Zimbabwe by James on Teaching Traveling. It’s an inspiration post by
Prophylactic over-negation
Almost the end of January, and not a single Language Log reader hasn’t failed to complain about the lack of over-negation in any of this year’s posts. But here’s some naughtily nutty negation anyway:
“It’s not that
Cartoon: Flatlining
This cartoon by Dave Brown from The Independent relates to news that Britain appears to be heading towards a double-dip recession.
Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne is portrayed as a doctor attending to the skeleton
Reuters Video: Aesop’s fable brought to life by clever crows
In a series of experiments, the New Caledonian crow has demonstrated an unexpected understanding of how tools work to make their lives easier. The tests by scientists in the UK and New Zealand, revealed that
Words in the News: Halve
The Daily Mail reports on a study which suggests UK deaths from heart attacks have halved in less than a decade. Full story >>
VOCABULARYWhen you halve something or when it halves, it is reduced to
Filtering out the TEFL riff-raff
Was just looking at the IATEFL jobseekers page (via the great BESIG yahoo group). There are no jobs on there yet, but advertising with IATEFL sounds like a great way of avoiding the kind who
This Week’s Round-Up Of Good School Reform Posts & Articles
Here are some recent good school reform-related posts and articles:
The Latest Wrinkle About Merit Pay for Teachers is by Walt Gardner at Education Week. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning Why Teacher
Nice Review Of My Book
Paul Cancellieri, a National Board Certified Science teacher in North Carolina, was kind enough to write a very positive review of my last book, Helping Students Motivate Themselves. Thanks, Paul.
Now that my next book, The
Northern Lights Videos
Here are some videos I’m adding to The Best Sites For Learning About The Northern Lights: