Dialects
I grew up mainly in Yorkshire, in the north of England. Yorkshire is an area with a strong local identity. My father was a Yorkshireman, and proud of it … and of course I absorbed the feeling. One part...
SL versus HL
How do we define the difference between SL and HL for Language B? This is important because we wish to make sure that each student is placed in a course of an appropriate level; and also because teachers...
To B or Not to B?
The IBDP is notoriously tough, and for good reason. Perhaps understandably, students (and their parents) will look to game the system if they can when it comes to course selection. After all, they want...
Prejudices
A teacher recently posted a Comment expressing concern about how certain students expressed homophobic/transphobic views in their written texts and also sexist/racially inappropriate /offensive comments...
Handwriting
How do we write? Or, to be more precise, how do we expect, or require, our students to write? I have recently read an article in El Pais on the issue of how handwriting is gradually being side-lined by...
Colson Whitehead
I have been ill recently, which gave me plenty of time to read a couple of novels by Colson Whitehead, who is a much-admired black American novelist with a couple of Pulitzer Prizes to his name. The novels...
About ChatGPT
The AI system ChatGPT is making waves. Launched just in November 2022, it has prompted all sorts of reactions in the world of education, some hostile and some favourable. InThinking authors have been...
News report? Article?
There has been some discussion in the Comments section of the site recently about what distinctions might be made between a ‘news report’ and a ‘news article’. So, people ask, what instructions should...
Shakespeare's memorable phrases
While fielding questions about a student’s proposed Extended Essay dealing with the presence of Shakespearian language in 21C English (you can find the thread at the bottom of the page EE tips & comments ),...
Listening exam,considered
Now that the Listening component has finally arrived after the delays caused by the pandemic, I decided that I should try doing the M22 HL exam, in order to explore how it worked and the level of the...