Blog
Life & Works Free
What can we learn about works of literature by studying the author’s life? This issue has been raised for me by a discussion of a student’s proposed Extended Essay, dealing with the relation between Sylvia...
Activities
Sentence templates
It is good to have a sense of the common - and commonly useful - forms that sentences can take. This is not to suggest that there are rigid rules or 'correct' forms for sentences, which have to be obeyed...
Building a programme
Purpose
. What do we mean by the 'purpose' of language? It is evident that we choose to speak in order to achieve something - even if what we achieve is simply to let off steam, or to avoid an embarrassing silence!...
Blog
Rigid versus flexible Free
The words ‘rigid versus flexible’ have been scrawled in my untidy list of blog ideas for quite a while. Suddenly, to my huge surprise, I find that objective psychological research seems to provide some...
Blog
On stupidity Free
There seems to have been an awful lot of Stupidity around lately. I try to keep calm, intoning mantras ("DoooooooooooH"), and doing my best to avoid the dangerous pages of the newspaper ... which unfortunately...
Blog
The Shape of Water Free
To Sant Pere, the little town next door, to see the Oscar-winning The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro. That such a small town should have a cinema with good films is due to the brave project of a...
Building a programme
Dinner supper tea Free
It is a commonplace factoid that English has more varieties than any other language - so do teachers of English B have to try to cover this enormous range under the conceptual understanding of 'Variation'?...
Literature
Literary Reading Skills Free
Or, more to the point, what happens when we read well ? The structure of this part of the site crystalised itself out of following the process of reading. Any reader follows the thread of printed words...
Building a programme
Meaning
. That language has 'meaning' we can all agree easily, so why is this a 'conceptual understanding' that we should concentrate on? The key issues are that (i) language can have multiple meanings, or perhaps...
Building a programme
Context
. That communication happens in a context would seem to be a truism - language, like all human behaviour, happens within an environment. The issue is to be more precise about what we mean by 'context'....