Category: Miscellaneous news etc

Here is another interesting article – this time about decreasing proficiency in English among the French. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/11/world/europe/english-proficiency-falters-among-french.html?ref=education&_r=0 English has become a major factor in determining economic competitiveness of people and countries, and is essential for academic and professional success in the globalised world. However, there are some stirrings of a backlash against teaching it too “aggressively”. For instance, Qatar has […]

BBC, 8 Nov 2013: PhD students set kebab challenge  I have found this rather interesting: apparently, postgraduate students at Kashmir University have to pass a kebab-based test before receiving their final grades. It got me thinking, “What shall I bring to my viva? Bigos*? Pierogi? Herring and vodka?” 🙂 http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-24866275 * For the uninitiated, “bigos” is considered to be the […]

I want to share links to three different articles related to teaching I’ve come across recently (though one of them is not exactly a recent article :)). The first one is from the Chronicle of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/article/We-Must-Prepare-PhD-Students/142893/. The main point of this piece is that post-graduate (or graduate in American edu-speak) programmes in the US pay little attention to […]

Q-TESOL proposal accepted My proposal for the 2014 Qatar TESOL Conference (21-22 Feb) has been accepted. The conference is focused on the theme of Promoting a Culture of Reading and will take place at the College of the North Atlantic-Qatar, Doha, Qatar. Title: It’s long, it’s hard, it’s boring: Student Voices on Reading As English teachers, we constantly bemoan our […]

By Betsy R Rymes This new book offers a timely and lively appraisal of the concept of communicative repertoires, resources we use to express who we are when in dialogue with others. Each chapter describes and illustrates the communicative resources humans deploy daily, but rarely think about – not only the multiple languages we use, but how we dress or gesture, […]

Issues is NATECLA’s part peer reviewed journal for language teaching professionals.  It explores the area between academic research and classroom practice, discussing teaching, training, management and research into ESOL and community languages.  Language Issues looks at broad issues and big ideas as well as particular learning and teaching contexts and is an invaluable resource for teachers, students, researchers and policy […]

Written by an experienced and interdisciplinary team of contributors from the renowned department of applied linguistics at Birkbeck College, University of London, this brand new textbook is a comprehensive survey of the theories, methods, and key findings within applied linguistics. Through a problem-solving approach, it aims to enable students to identify every-day language and communication issues, and to draw on […]

Wednesday 19 Feb, 14:00 – 16:00, Martin Harris, John Casken Theatre Much of the public debate in the period since the appearance of the Finch Report in July 2012 has concerned issues that relate to publishing in journals. However, in disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences, anything from one to two thirds of the published output appears in the […]

This stimulating volume brings together classic strands of critical sociolinguistic work on how immigrants are disadvantaged in social gatekeeping institutions and the contemporary sociolinguistics of globalization. Taking a broad view of ‘migrants’ as sociolinguistically mobile citizens, the authors mobilize an impressive array of ideological, political and economic frameworks to explore the continuing power of institutions to confer and withhold status […]

Here is the link to the powerpoint that Adrian Holliday used in his talk last week. Adrian Holliday’s powerpoint 14/11/13 I was very much looking forward to this, but somehow got the week wrong. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it if you went along. It looks as if I missed a good one!

This might be of interest to some. English proficiency falters among French      

The LSE Public Policy group have produced a handbook that focuses on understanding and maximising impact, and have made it free for download in .pdf format. Some topics include: What shapes the citing of academic publications? Tracking citations, including new-internet based tracking systems Key measures of academic influence Strategies for getting better cited External (i.e., non-academic) research impacts You can […]

A quick post to say that, after a presentation and panel interview yesterday, I’ve been offered a Lecturer in TESOL post at University of Leeds. I’m reeling somewhat from the shock of making my first academic application and actually getting the job, but looking forward to it all the same – it’s a strong research community and they seem to […]

 Academia.edu allows you to upload and view scholarly papers for free.  You can join through Facebook or a Google+ account and then choose your academic research interests. This enables you to follow people with similar interests to you and to access a lot of free papers. It might be worth signing up for. Here is the link to a new […]

As some of you might be aware, November is Academic Writing Month, so I thought that it might be useful to share some articles I’ve stumbled upon over time on the topic of scholarly writing. The basics Starting with the most mundane of topics, here’s some advice on improving typing skills. While on the topic of typing, the University of […]