Firing the Canon
On a recent trip to Adelaide, Australia, I visited a second-hand bookstore. Predictably, it was up a small side street, hardly perceptible from the main street, and located down in the basement of a malodorous,...
Teaching Writing
To the extent I can write at all, I learned most of it by osmosis. Maybe that’s not the whole story, but it’s most of it. I’ve always been a reader and, at least as an adult, a mostly critical editor...
Virtual Girlfriends
At Kastrup Airport in Copenhagen, I was reading John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany whilst waiting for a connecting flight. This would be in the early 1990s, a winter’s night, and I was suffering...
To Tweet or Not to Tweet
A few years ago, I had some odd habits. One of these involved getting out of bed at 5am. After rising, I’d have a hurried breakfast, cycle to work, shower, and by 6am I was at my desk, in the cozy company...
The Lesson
As Language and Literature students approach exams in the northern hemisphere, it can be useful for their teachers to reflect on all the valuable things they have taught their students. So, let's do...
Orwell Matters
Something happened to me a long time ago. It was a seminal moment in my life. It was simple as seminal moments go – I hope your own were more ‘memorable’. I read George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier....
Granny's Last Letter
In January 2001, I received a letter. It was from my grandmother, and it was the last letter she ever sent me. She died a few weeks later, in February. I remember taking news of her death on a cold,...
Conflict, Literature, and Advertising
The IB, in its mission statement, aims to create a better and more peaceful world. Who would argue with that? At the same time, some schools – IB schools – offer, as part of their co-curricular activities,...
Switcheroo and the power of clothes
Hanna Pesut, an artist from Canada, recently conducted a photo project in which she took pictures of heterosexual couples wearing each other’s clothes. Discussion about Hana Pesut's project has recently...
A torture of terms
Questions I have heard asked at Language A teacher training workshops frequently concern the use of specialist terminology. “Do students need to use specialist literary or linguistic vocabulary?” “How...