working with dyslexic students in the esl classroom

Some analysis and tips for working with dyslexic students in the ESL classroom:

TRAITS	SOLUTIONS
difficulties with reading and writing texts – incl spelling errors and reversing letters/words	Building text-based skills through oral/aural skills   1: using text-to-speech and speech-to-text software ·         voice recognition and pronunciation apps 2: watching videos with English subtitles 3: doing fun dictations ·         dictogloss, loop/gapped/collocation/running dictation
slow reading and writing	Enabling and simplifying   1: using different fonts/colours/spacing on laptops 2: using texts on coloured paper 3: seeing language in chunks 4: not reading out loud!
difficulties with processing texts	Going beyond the text   1: multi-sensory ways of using language (Gardner’s multiple intelligences) ·         visual timetables, mind maps, storyboards, flashcards ·         movement-based games, acting out scenarios ·         images, mnemonics, personalization 2: both reading and listening to the text ·         songs, shadowing
difficulties with organizing thoughts	Helping to put things in order   1: working through a lesson by scaffolding; learning step-by-step 2: having clear instructions; getting manageable chunks of info 3: focussing on one single grammatical/spelling feature at a time 4: continuing/finishing stories ·         sentence-starters; chain story-making   5: working on structures for essays/reports ·         visual paragraphing, oral note-taking ·         working on sentence structure 6: delivering oral presentations (Mark Powell: Presenting in English) and working on oracy skills 7: working on problem-solving skills   8: repeating, revising, reinforcing 9: focussing on meaning over accuracy 10: comparing L1: using bilingual capacities

See: How to teach English to students with dyslexia

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ai-assistant writing tools - what are they good for?

Should teachers be encouraging our students - and indeed ourselves as students - to use AI?

There are of course the very popular tools ChatGPT and Grammarly.

And the excellent translator has developed its DeepL Write: AI-powered writing companion, although there are plenty of other places to go for a Free AI-Powered Writing Assistant.

But beyond all these competing offers, perhaps we as teachers and students should be asking how exactly to use these tools.

The E L Gazette looks at revising with AI-assistant tools and how they can really help students develop their language skills - and Maryem Larhmaid gives a good example of what we can do

What role does Grammarly play in editing Moroccan EFL university students’ writing?

In recent years, digital tools have become increasingly used in language classrooms, offering learners of various levels new possibilities beyond the limits of conventional instruction.

Among these tools, AI-assisted writing tools such as Grammarly have attracted particular interest for their ability to improve students’ writing style, vocabulary usage, and sentence structure.

In Moroccan higher education, where English is taught as a Foreign Language (EFL), students are required to develop academic writing skills despite challenges such as large class sizes and little individualised feedback.

Context and rationale

Even though academic writing is essential to university studies, Moroccan EFL students still find it to be one of the most complex skills. Many students struggle to establish coherent sentence patterns, convey their thoughts clearly, and choosing correct words. These problems are not just linguistic; they are linked to general difficulties, including insufficient time for writing instruction, few practice opportunities, and the challenge of giving each student thorough feedback. In many universities, writing instructors may oversee dozens of essays per week, making it practically impossible to provide complete, detailed comments to every student.

This gap opens the door for AI-assisted writing tools. Unlike basic grammar checkers, platforms like Grammarly provide students with more sophisticated suggestions for word choice, sentence clarity, cohesion, and even tone. However, while these tools are increasingly discussed in teaching/learning contexts, there is still limited empirical evidence assessing their influence on EFL academic writing in Morocco. My research, therefore, sought to answer the following question: How can AI-generated feedback influence students’ lexical variety and sentence complexity in academic writing?

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it's national storytelling week!

Next week is National Storytelling Week 2026!

In 2026, we will be celebrating National Storytelling Week from Monday 2 February to Sunday 8 February with FREE online events running on Tuesday 3 and Wednesday 4 February 2026. The events will be live-captioned Created by Society for Storytelling, this fantastic annual event is a joyful celebration of the power of sharing stories. Stories teach us about the world; they allow us to step into someone else’s shoes and feel empathy; they help us to relax and escape and they can help develop essential literacy skills.

And this year, they're making it musical:

Our research highlights that exploring stories through lyrics can be an effective way to re-engage young people with reading for enjoyment and writing for pleasure. Slightly more than 3 in 5 (60.7%) children and young people age 8-18 regularly read song lyrics digitally.

All of which can be adapted to the ESL/ESOL/TEFL classroom.

There are lots of things to discuss around storytelling...

Should we allow AI to make up stories for us [see: trurl's electronic bard vs chatgpt]

When it comes to new people among us, especially in our schools, should immigrants be encouraged to use their mother tongue?

When it comes to storytelling, it's often difficult to see what's next...; there are often specific themes, such as creating narratives around money and debt; some stories, such as blockbusters, don't have to be stupid; and look out for the political narratives...

Finally, beyond the UK and the school system, there are lots of writing activities for the ESL class and beyond...

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what makes a good detective story - it's not the plot

By reading detective stories from the 1930s, 40s and 50s, we enter perhaps the defining world of this genre.

RAYMOND CHANDLER

And the master of the genre was Raymond Chandler, who wrote about the underworld of Los Angeles, but who went to school near London:

It also helps to actually appreciate the richness of the writing style of Raymond Chandler language, in that "the master of hard-boiled detective fiction, is renowned for his distinctive literary style that reshaped the genre".

And the fact that he was educated in England before moving back to the States, means that Chandler’s slang is carefully crafted. And as an 'outsider' in Los Angeles, he challenged the way these stories were traditionally written: "My theory was that the readers just thought they cared about nothing but the action; that really, although they didn’t know it, the thing they cared about, and that I cared about, was the creation of emotion through dialogue and description."

Or, as others say on Raymond Chandler and Philip Marlowe, this is what we like about the stories:

It's not the detective plot, [but] the noirish palette to everything, the enviably snappy dialogue, or terse brilliance of Chandler's prose...

This is why his books are so acclaimed - in that Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe is in search of dignity:

One of the important aspects spoken about Raymond Chandler’s books is the style of the author. Chandler’s language was tough, he could throw one liners the same way Mike Tyson could throw a knockout punch, the dialog was witty and hard, the characters colorful and the plot convoluted. You did not read Chandler for the plot. (Indeed his plots sometime have holes which even Chandler himself couldn’t fill. When asked as to who killed the driver in ‘The Big Sleep’, Chandler is supposed to have remarked that he had no clue. Or something to that effect.) 

You read Chandler for his style the first time but when you keep returning back to his books, the realization dawns that beyond the style lies Chandler’s moral compass, which ensures the story moves in the right direction. It is this moral center which according to me has given immortality to Chandler’s best books. If there is one theme which seem to hold together the best novels of Chandler: ‘The Big Sleep’, ‘The Long Goodbye’, ‘Farewell My Lovely’ and ‘The High Window’, it is the search for dignity. In all these novels, Marlowe is trying his best to restore the sense of dignity of his client, even if this process hurts him personally sometimes.

BRITISH CRIME FICTION

Shockingly (!) Raymond Chandler took down Sherlock Holmes - that is, "the eccentric sleuths" modeled after Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, Dorothy L. Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey and Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe.

Their stories go something like this: 

In the traditional Golden Age plot, a murder occurs — but not for any apparent reason beyond puzzle solving. After the discovery of the body (which is almost never found rotting), the private detective arrives on the scene, which is usually somewhere sensational, like a Georgian mansion or a yacht traveling the Nile. From here, suspects are questioned and clues examined. It’s an impersonal affair, almost like moving chess pieces or trying the Sunday crossword. By the end, the detective will assemble all of the concerned parties and explain to them how he or she solved the case with superhuman intelligence and the supernatural power of never being wrong. The criminal is then dramatically outed.

Not that Chandler had anything against chess and problem-solving - as his detective Marlowe enjoyed replaying classic chess games - but he did dislike the escapist lack of realism in classic British detective stories:

“The Simple Art of Murder,” which was first published in The Atlantic in December 1944, is essentially Chandler laying bare the ethos behind hard-boiled detective fiction... For Chandler, the detective novel should be a “realist in murder,” meaning it should inhabit “a world in which gangsters can rule nations and almost rule cities.” ... Chandler expounds upon how detective novels should represent the unsafe world of precarious civilization, not the idealized and contained world of the country house.

Raymond Chandler’s grudge against British mysteries has been reconsidered over the years - a recurring point being that Chandler slammed English detective novels and their authors time and again, but he didn't hate the literature, just the class snobbery.

Perhaps his criticism has been over-interpreted:

“Chandler despised the English school of crime writing,” pronounces the late modern English Crime Queen P. D. James in her short genre survey, Talking about Detective Fiction (2009). Similar pearls of conventional wisdom have been placed before us by authorities who similarly have overgeneralized Chandler’s hostility toward the puzzle-oriented English detective novel. In The Life of Raymond Chandler, for example, Frank MacShane sweepingly refers to “Chandler’s dislike of deductive detective stories,” while in Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories, the academic scholar Leonard Cassuto categorically declares that “Chandler rejects the puzzle-whodunit.”

It seems that Chandler was a little less brutal:

In analyzing “The Simple Art of Murder” writers tend to focus on Chandler’s criticism of artificiality within the mystery genre, yet in his essay Chandler in fact spends much of his time blasting the classical English detective novel on what clearly are class-related grounds...

Throughout his “Simple Art” essay, Chandler repeatedly sounds cutting class notes. When praising his hard-boiled predecessor Dashiell Hammett for bringing something fundamentally new and bracingly authentic to the detective fiction genre, Chandler tellingly complains of English mystery novelists larding their tales with “dukes and Venetian vases.” In a famous statement, Chandler declares that “Hammett took murder out of the Venetian vase and dropped it into the alley; it doesn’t have to stay there forever, but it was a good idea to begin by getting as far as possible from Emily Post’s idea of how a well-bred debutante gnaws a chicken wing.” Later he lauds Hammett (and by implication himself) for giving “murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with the means at hand, not with hand-wrought dueling pistols, curare and tropical fish.” Elsewhere Chandler sneers at English “detectives of exquisite and impossible gentility.”

FRIEDRICH GLAUSER:

The Swiss-German writer Friedrich Glauser is not well-known in the English-speaking world, but the Friedrich-Glauser-Preis has become the most prestigious award for crime fiction in the German-speaking world.

Indeed, much crime fiction in German has been marginalised:

Until relatively recently, German academia had largely ignored their home-grown talent and focused their scholarly efforts instead on the canonical English-language authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. As influential as these writers have been, Hall argues that this is a mistake, as “German-language crime fiction has also been shaped by its own crime writing heritage, for in the case of the early detective story, it was German-speaking crime writers who led the way”.

His English-language publisher says that Friedrich Glauser is "often referred to as the Swiss Simenon":

In 1939, a year after Glauser's death, the film of 'Thumbprint', the first Sergeant Studer mystery, was greeted with critical acclaim and commercial success. Studer became more famous than his creator, the mark of true success for a fictional detective. Glauser's elegant prose and acute observation conjure up a world of those at the margins of society. His Sergeant Studer novels have ensured his place as a cult figure in Europe.

An online blog on Friedrich Glauser looks at what makes him so special, even today:

Glauser wrote six detective stories, five of them featuring Sergeant Jacob Studer of Bern police. The novels are modelled on the Commissaire Maigret stories by Georges Simenon, as the author freely admitted. Not the criminal case as such is the main issue but the people and the atmosphere in which they move. Both Maigret and Studer are petit-bourgeois, in both cases the whole personality does the investigation, not just the intellect and both are very different from their authors .

He wrote 'anti-detective fiction' - creating a sort of Atmosphere of Malaise:

Friedrich Glauser's Motto regiert (1936) tells a story with parabolic qualities: Sergeant Studer must investigate a murder that has taken place in a Swiss psychiatric clinic. The social and political issues that are roiling Europe in the years leading up to World War Two find condensed expression in this microcosm. The essay focuses on the literary devices the text employs to create atmosphere and asks how atmosphere functions both to support the construction of a classic murder mystery, while also subverting some of its generic conventions. The figure of the detective is of central importance, as he is portrayed as uncommonly sensitive to the atmosphere of his surroundings. At the same time, however, the clinic's atmosphere ultimately proves to some extent unreadable. Hence, Glauser's text can be viewed as a precursor of the what in post-war literature will come to be known as anti-detective fiction.

His English translator tells more about Glauser's sensitivity:

What particularly attracts me about Glauser’s crime novels is the way his detective — Sergeant Studer — understands and sympathises with the disadvantaged, even if his job means he has to continue to investigate them. There is a profound sense of humanity permeating Glauser’s writing, which at the same time throws a keen light on social conditions in Switzerland in the 1930s, but coming across as a concern for individuals rather than as a political message.

Here's a taste from his English translator: "From "Fever"" by Friedrich Glauser at Words Without Borders

So, yes, there's more to detective fiction than the plot...

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code-switching: jumping between different registers, different voices and different languages

REGISTER:

We can communicate using different registers and different types of language, depending on the context - for example:

For formal and informal register; 'Would you mind passing the salt?' is appropriate for a formal situation with strangers, whereas 'Pass me the salt' would be used for a situation where friends are talking, or possibly when being rude.

Register | TeachingEnglish | British Council

Here's a good introduction:

Register: Language Formality in Creative Writing–#AuthorToolboxBlogHop – Words like trees

We need to be teaching and learning about it:

MultiBrief: Language register: What is it and why does it matter in education?

How Did That Register? Five Levels of Formality in Language | ALTA Language Services

Here are some of those different contexts:

Jay Doubleyou: writing about your holiday in different registers

Jay Doubleyou: register: populism, culture wars and woke

Jay Doubleyou: learning to use the appropriate register @ fawlty towers

Jay Doubleyou: writing with register: a lesson in using different levels of 'politeness'

Jay Doubleyou: high culture > popular culture --- high register > low register

It becomes much more difficult to change register or 'voice' in the middle of speaking or writing

Do native English speakers face difficulty in switching between registers?

CODE-SWITCHING:

We can call this 'code-switching':

Register and style: code-switching

Code-switching isn't just for bilingual people: Code-switching is switching between multiple different languages, dialects, and registers depending on the social situation the speaker is in.

Although we usually talk about code-switching in terms of switching languages, utilising different registers in communication is also considered code-switching. A teenager at school may talk to their friends and classmates using a casual register, then code-switch to a formal or consultative register when talking to their teacher.

Register and Style: Definition, Meaning & Examples | StudySmarter

It's quite a hot topic:

Code-Switching in Language | Definition, Types & Examples | Study.com

For example:

In popular usage and in sociolinguistic study, the term code-switching is frequently used to refer to switching among dialects, styles or registers.[9] This form of switching is practiced, for example, by speakers of African American Vernacular English as they move from less formal to more formal settings.[10] Such shifts, when performed by public figures such as politicians, are sometimes criticized as signaling inauthenticity or insincerity.[11]

Code-switching - Wikipedia

HETEROGLOSSIA:

Mixing up register/voice/language can go beyond the sociology and politics of language.

Here's an interesting idea: 'heteroglossia':

In literature it refers to different voices used within a text, so that might be the differentiation between characters and an omniscient narrator, or it could be different sociolects (class/regional etc dialects) represented by characters. Any time the speech of someone in the text tells you about who they are and how they're different to others in the text is an example of heteroglossia. In non fiction, the same applies, only the heteroglossia arises out of people's real differences rather than having to be invented by an author. Linguistic code in this context is deliberately vague, but does entail that the characters should be using mutually intelligible language. So, it might be two male characters that both speak English but one is poor and black and uses ebonics and one is rich and white and speaks a more formal, standardised way, or it could be two middle class people but the male uses more assertive language and the female is more passive.

Confused about 'heteroglossia' meaning : r/linguistics

With more from Wikipedia:

Heteroglossia is the presence in language of a variety of "points of view on the world, forms for conceptualizing the world in words, specific world views, each characterized by its own objects, meanings and values."[1] For Bakhtin, this diversity of "languages" within a single language brings into question the basic assumptions of system-based linguistics. Every word uttered, in any specific time or place, is a function of a complex convergence of forces and conditions that are unique to that time and place...

The hybrid utterance, as defined by Bakhtin, is a passage that employs only a single speaker—the author, for example— but uses different kinds of speech. The juxtaposition of the different speeches brings with it a contradiction and conflict in belief systems.

In examination of the English comic novel, particularly the works of Charles Dickens, Bakhtin identifies examples of his argument. Dickens parodies both the 'common tongue' and the language of Parliament or high-class banquets, using concealed languages to create humor. In one passage, Dickens shifts from his authorial narrative voice into a formalized, almost epic tone while describing the work of an unremarkable bureaucrat; his intent is to parody the self-importance and vainglory of the bureaucrat's position. The use of concealed speech, without formal markers of a speaker change, is what allows the parody to work. It is, in Bakhtin's parlance, a hybrid utterance. In this instance the conflict is between the factual narrative and the biting hyperbole of the new, epic/formalistic tone.

Bakhtin goes on to discuss the interconnectedness of conversation. Even a simple dialogue, in his view, is full of quotations and references, often to a general "everyone says" or "I heard that.." Opinion and information are transmitted by way of reference to an indefinite, general source. By way of these references, humans selectively assimilate the discourse of others and make it their own.

Heteroglossia - Wikipedia

Let's draw back to give a bit more context.

Here's a very readable look at all of this by Jena Barchas of the Everyday linguistic anthropology blog:

Words have flavors: indexicality, heteroglossia, intertextuality

Let me start with an obvious point: we all have boatloads of resources at our disposal for making meaning. Not just our words — we’ve also got our clothing, our posture, the way we walk — but for now, I’m mostly going to talk about words.

All these resources communicate through indexicality. Basically, they point to other meanings. Classically, smoke indexes fire: it doesn’t look like fire, but it points to it by means of long association. Of course, smoke could mean that there’s a smoke machine rather than a fire. But most of the time, it doesn’t.

When we talk about indexicality and language, we’re generally talking about different ways of saying the same thing, which carry different meanings.

For example:

Using a higher pitch indexes femininity. It doesn’t resemble a woman in any way, but it’s connected by regular proximity. When men want to make it clear that they’re imitating women, the first thing they do is raise the pitch of their voices.
If I stop someone on the street and ask them for the time, do I say, “Yo” or “Excuse me, sir”? In fact, both are correct — but they tell you different things about me, that person, and our relationship.
Speaking a particular language or dialect often indexes group affiliation.
Accents index a particular region.
Slang indexes a particular age, among many other personal characteristics.

In short, words have flavors.

Consider the word “dude.” These days, it indexes a sort of laid-back Californian vibe, in addition to heterosexual masculinity. It’s not a quotation from a specific original source, but it’s connected to a way of talking, a voice in the broadest sense.

Or consider the words “beget” and “Sabbath.” They’ve both got Judeo-Christian Bible flavor. “Wack,” “talk to the hand,” and “the bomb” have ’90s flavor. “Actionable” and “productize” have corporate flavor. “Occupy” indexes leftist politics and inequality — and it’s only done so for about five years.

As you can see, a single language — in this case, English — always contains multiple voices and varieties. And it doesn’t matter how self-contained and original a single stretch of language is; it contains elements that index various contexts, norms, and voices.

When we talk about this sense that language always contains multiple voices, we’re talking about heteroglossia (lit. “different voices”). (The term was coined by Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin and promptly appropriated by linguistic anthropologists.)

We also often talk about a special case of heteroglossia, which we call intertextuality: the borrowing, quoting, or reworking of a recognizable (oral or written) text.

The movie Clueless is a reworking of Jane Austen’s Emma.
If I say “Accio pencil,” what am I referring to? What will you do? (I once heard a student say this in class, and another student picked up the pencil she’d just dropped.)
Internet memes often blend multiple texts, as do parodies.

So what? Why is this interesting?

Here’s why: both heteroglossia and intertextuality only work as devices if we can assume that some voices and texts are shared. “Accio pencil” is only meaningful if you’re also familiar with Harry Potter; this faux-mercial is only funny if you’ve seen this (real) commercial; a man raising the pitch of his voice to imitate his mother-in-law only makes sense if you share the knowledge that women have high voices.

Language isn’t homogeneous within a group of people, and language is never neutral. Heteroglossia makes visible our knowledge and assumptions of just how that diversity is organized.

Words have flavors: indexicality, heteroglossia, intertextuality | Everyday linguistic anthropology

Let's finish with a challenge to teachers in the classroom:

Dialogic education is a teaching method which is in stark contrast with monologic teaching methods. Nowadays, the educational systems all around the world characterize monologic education in which the ideas and voices of the teachers are the first and last ones uttered in the classrooms, textbooks are aimed so that students learn how to speak and write “correctly” and the time extent of the class is so short that teachers are struggling to cover all the “important” points mandated in the textbooks and by educational authorities. 

In contrast in dialogic education, the teacher shares his or her authority with the students; the voices of the students are heard and their opinions are valuable. In a dialogic class, the students are divided into groups to practice “exploratory talk” and “think reasonably”. The aim in discussing different opinions is just that; discussing different opinions not winning or losing. The role of the teacher is to facilitate the process; he or she is not a judge or referee, he or she is simply a guide. A dialogic environment is like a carnival; to borrow from Bakhtin. There are no omnipresent powers. 

The current study shows that different components of Bakhtin’s dialogism concept can be a very good starting point for a modern and effective theoretical framework for learning and teaching processes.

Dialogism versus Monologism: A Bakhtinian Approach to Teaching

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mind-mapping for creative writing

Mindmaps are a great way to generate ideas - especially for a writing task:

How to Use a Mind Map for Writing: A Step-by-Step Guide

Use the Mind Mapping Method for Your Book Ideas | Elite Authors

The E L Gazette looks at how this can be sharpened:

Brainstorming techniques improve creativity in writing tasks, especially with additional structured guidance, according to a study by Hyun-Ju Kim, Stewart Gray and Christopher Lange

Mapping SCAMPERing - E L Gazette

With some practical guidance here:

.SCAMPER Technique – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle... or Reinvent-EN - Netmind

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writing about your holiday in different registers

REGISTER: THE BASICS:

It's important to be able to handle different registers:

the way a speaker uses language differently in different circumstances. Think about the words you choose, your tone of voice, even your body language. You probably behave very differently chatting with a friend than you would at a formal dinner party or during a job interview.

What Is Register in Linguistics?

a variety of language used for a particular purpose or particular communicative situation. For example, when speaking officially or in a public setting, an English speaker may be more likely to follow prescriptive norms for formal usage than in a casual setting, for example, by pronouncing words ending in -ing with a velar nasal instead of an alveolar nasal (e.g., walking rather than walkin'), choosing words that are considered more "formal" (such as father vs. dad or child vs. kid), and refraining from using words considered nonstandard, such as ain't and y'all.

Register (sociolinguistics) - Wikipedia

With a little more here:

Jay Doubleyou: register

Jay Doubleyou: register: populism, culture wars and woke

Jay Doubleyou: learning to use the appropriate register @ fawlty towers

REGISTER: TRYING TO WRITE IN DIFFERENT VARIETIES OF ENGLISH

Here are some ideas about making writing more nuanced:

Jay Doubleyou: writing with register: a lesson in using different levels of 'politeness'

Here are some more ideas around the theme of writing about your holiday:

1: Write a postcard to a friend

2: Write the same but to a great-aunt

3: Write a report to a local town council which is asking for input from tourists - in its consultation on its local tourism policy. Make use of the specific holiday experiences as outlined in your postcards, but put it in the language and format of an official report, giving your opinions and any recommendations.

4: Write an academic piece analysing the different aspects of holidaying in this part of the world. Again, make use of the examples referred to in the above pieces, but in an impersonal style with no personal opinions, with reference to statistical data and other academic studies.

5: Write in a highly subjective manner, following the stream of consciousness style of Virginia Wolfe's "To the Lighthouse", a story of a family on holiday, recounting in the same type of language the feelings and impressions when on holiday as it happens: To the Lighthouse - Wikipedia and To-the-Lighthouse-Etext-Edited.pdf

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poetry in the esol/efl classroom

To what extent can poetry be used in the English-as-a-Second/Foreign-Language classroom?

There are practical and engaging ways to do this:

Jay Doubleyou: spell check poem

Jay Doubleyou: short texts for fun dication

Here is more fun:

Jay Doubleyou: poetry as diagram

Jay Doubleyou: football and poetry

Jay Doubleyou: tree poetry

Jay Doubleyou: the bfg: malapropisms, spoonerisms and nonsense words

About the British:

Jay Doubleyou: the british - a poem

Jay Doubleyou: grayson perry and philip larkin on the british

Here are a couple of backwards poems:

Jay Doubleyou: refugees: a poem

Jay Doubleyou: backwards poems

But we have to be very sensitive:

Jay Doubleyou: "poetry in the classroom: some kids i taught and what they taught me": three years on

How to make a poem:

Jay Doubleyou: rhyme in english

Jay Doubleyou: limericks

The EL Gazette looked at the subject recently:

On Poetry: Benefits for students and implementation ideas for educators

Creativity in the classroom can come in a variety of ways. Teacher, Matthew Kloosterman, gives his best practice on how to incorporate poetry into teaching.

Connecting poetry, as a genre, to other texts being studied invites intertextuality and deeper reading for students. Poetry is also highly personable and offers an avenue for student agency. When students select their own poems for poetry study, it encourages even more personal connections to texts.

In this article I would like to share several ideas on how poetry can be implemented and why poetry is beneficial for students:

On Poetry: Benefits for students and implementation ideas for educators - E L Gazette

To finish: WOW!

Jay Doubleyou: kate tempest poet

Jay Doubleyou: performing poetry

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backwards poems

Here's a poem which you can read from the beginning ... or the end:

Jay Doubleyou: refugees: a poem

Here's another:

Dear Humanity, It's Time To Give Up (Reverse Poem) - YouTube

And there are lots more:

5 Reverse Poems That Will Blow Your Mind - Heart

Here's how to do it:

How to Write a Reverse Poem. A poem that can be read in both… | by Cameron Bradley | Writers’ Blokke | Medium

9 Reverse Poems Your Middle Schoolers Will Love - Hey Natayle

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controlling ai - part two: how chatgpt is ruining the internet

There are many issues around AI - including how we are allowing chat bots to do all the work for us:

Jay Doubleyou: controlling ai - part one: the dangers of chatgpt

It's leading to very bad quality stuff:

GPT-4 is getting worse and worse every single update - ChatGPT - OpenAI Developer Forum

Why is ChatGPT getting from bad to worst? - ChatGPT - OpenAI Developer Forum

And not only the open-source people are saying this:

Researchers Find That OpenAI ChatGPT Quality Has Worsened

In particular, there are growing concerns for the quality of what's being produced online:

ChatGPT vs Google Search: Why Google is not in trouble…yet! | by David Bartram - Shaw | Medium

Although it's been pointed out that things weren't great before:

Chat GPT is the birth of the real Web 3.0, and it's not going to be fun | Hacker News

But it looks as though it's going to get worse:

The danger of incorrect, but plausible looking content is that it can easily be mistaken for the truth. This is particularly concerning in our time, the age of the internet, where information is easily accessible and can be shared with a large audience in an extremely short amount of time. If incorrect information is shared and believed to be true, it can have serious consequences.

ChatGPT Could Destroy The Internet As We Know It | by Rubén Romero | Predict | Medium

Let's look at recipies - and the ending to an excellent article by James Ball in the New European:

The issue, discovered by the writer Zoah Hedges-Stocks, is that a lot of recipe content on the internet is now written by low-quality bots that churn out any old regurgitated crap. What she had noticed was that alongside posts comparing the process of making fudge to making toffee, there were also posts comparing the process of fudge making to making “scrimgeour”, another apparent Scottish treat of which she had never heard.

What had happened was that AI had confused the use of the word “fudge” in different contexts – “Cornelius Fudge” is the name of the minister of magic in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series, until he is replaced by the more malign “Rufus Scrimgeour”. There is no candy product called “scrimgeour”, but shoddy AIs collapsed the context gap and generated nonsense – now replicated across numerous sites (and referenced here, too). Other examples abound – X user Will Rayner noted that when looking up the weather recently he had seen errant sentences referring to characters from The Hunger Games and the video game Baldur’s Gate 3, both called “Gale”.

By far the most entertaining to date came from Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, who had to apologise to a US court after citing non-existent cases that had been found for him (and not checked at all) by an AI assistant. It is generally bad form to do that in court.

Current generations of AI are already “trained”, and they were trained on internet content that is pre-AI. But keeping future generations of AI products current – and updating their features – will rely on scraping the internet as it is now.

The problem is that a growing share of the internet is either polluted by the lowest-quality AI content, and then in turn further confused by articles like this one (of which I predict there will be many more in years to come) trying to explain the mess, but strengthening the associations between the misleading words as we do.

That has the potential for a very dangerous cycle, in which ever-degrading inputs mean that AI’s outputs degrade even as the technology gets more clever, leading to a spiral of ever-worse content on the internet (a process dubbed “enshittification” by Cory Doctorow) and eventually the joy and creativity of the internet reduced to an algorithmic grey goo – information reduced to a mulch of wasted words.

Today it’s fudge and Harry Potter. It will be affecting news content in the very near future, if it isn’t already.

No one’s quite sure how significant a risk the grey goo outcome is, and there are no certain plans to prevent it. Media companies need to make sure we’re looking beyond our own backyards – as if we’re not, we might miss the disaster that takes us all out.

This is how the internet ends - The New European

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what is franco arabic?

The Arabic chat alphabet, Arabizi,[1] or Arabeezi refer to the romanized alphabets for informal Arabic dialects in which Arabic script is transcribed or encoded into a combination of Latin script and Arabic numerals. These informal chat alphabets were originally used primarily by youth in the Arab world in very informal settings—especially for communicating over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones—though use is not necessarily restricted by age anymore and these chat alphabets have been used in other media such as advertising.[2][3]

Arabic chat alphabet - Wikipedia‘

Franco’ is the unofficial Arabic online language, which combines numbers and English letters to make up Arabic words. The utilization of ‘Franco’ is largely on WhatApp and Facebook Messenger. One simply spells out a word or phrase the same way it would pronounced verbally in Arabic. Considering there are letters in the Arabic language that have no equivalent letter in English, numbers are used to represent the missing letters. All in all, the purpose of ‘Franco’ is to substitute numbers for Arabic letters to transcribe the sentence as accurately as possible.

The Unofficial Arabic texting language: Franco - Arab America

Franco-Arabic, the popular language of communication for conversations and chats on social media sites, is increasingly being seen as a threat to the Arabic language, culture and identity. While the language is commonly used in Egypt and several other Arab countries, it faces resistance from lovers of Arab identity and culture with campaigns such as "Write Arabic" and ‘Enough Franco." A heady cocktail of Arabic and English written in the Latin script, Franco-Arabic or Franco has gained huge popularity among the youth who relate to it because of its symbols which they can adopt to Arabic. So for example, the symbol ‘3’ is used to represent the Arabic letter ‘Ayn,’ 5 for the letter ‘kha,’ 7 for ‘Ha’ and 8 for ‘Ghain’.

Purists alarmed at increasing popularity of Franco-Arabic | Arab News

Have you heard about a special form of writing Arabic, called the Arabic Chat Alphabet? It's used mostly by young people across the Arabic world, and I used it myself to learn to speak Egyptian Arabic. The Arabic chat alphabet (alternatively the Franco-Arabic alphabet, or ‘Arabizi' عربيزي), it's an alternative to the standard written Arabic that uses the Latin script. It's an interesting product of the online generation. The reason for its evolution, was that when computers and mobile phones first began to spread, it was only possible to write in the Latin script. People started to look for ways to communicate in Arabic using the Latin script, and the Arabic chat alphabet was born.

Arabic Chat Alphabet - A Cool Alternative to Written Arabic

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spell check poem

(Reportedly nominated for a Pullet Surprise)  
 
Eye halve a spelling chequer 
It came with my pea sea, 
It plainly marques four my revue 
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea. 
Eye strike a key and type a word 
And weight for it two say, 
Weather eye and wring oar write 
It shows me strait a weigh. 
As soon as a mist ache is maid 
It nose bee fore two long, 
And eye can put the error rite 
Its rare lea ever wrong. 
To rite with care is quite a feet 
Of witch won should bee proud, 
And wee mussed dew the best wee can, 
Sew flaw's are knot aloud. 
Eye have run this poem threw it 
Your sure reel glad two no, 
Its letter perfect awl the weigh 
My chequer tolled me sew. 
 
--Sauce unknown 

'Spell Checker Blues' - Anon

And also:

ZarOde.pdf

And:

Spell Checker Poem by Mark Eckman and Jerrold H. Zar

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writing in a more respectful and sensitive way

We need to be sensitive when we talk or write to people:

Jay Doubleyou: ouch: disability talk from bbc

A lot of the discussion around respect and sensitivity has got mixed up with ideas around 'political correctness' - which is not helpful or accurate.

Jay Doubleyou: what is 'woke'? part two

Here's a very helpful guide to writing in a respectful and sensitive way:

How to Make Your Writing More Sensitive - and Why It Matters

Here's the very clear conclusion:

What about Political Correctness?

If you Google “political correctness,” this is the definition you’ll get: “conformity to prevailing liberal or radical opinion, in particular by carefully avoiding forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against.”

But this definition doesn’t cover its negative connotations. Many people interpret political correctness as the idea of having to carefully consider every word they say – or write – for fear of being criticized if they make a mistake. This is a complex discussion that we won’t get into here, but suffice it to say that trying to write in a sensitive way is not quite the same thing as promoting political correctness – at least in the second sense.

When we talk about sensitivity, our goal is not to establish strict rules for writers to follow or punish anyone for nonconformity; it’s to help us all think critically about our own writing and its effects on the people who read it. What we’re promoting is respect for our audience, and the recognition that their perspectives may be different from our own.

Empathy + Flexibility = Sensitivity

In this article we’ve provided some basic guidelines for how to write about various topics in a sensitive way. But we recognize that they aren’t all hard-and-fast rules, and the “right” way to write something often depends on the context of each situation. This is why it’s so important to evaluate everything on a case-by-case basis.

If you’re ever in doubt about how you should represent a certain individual or group, the best thing to do is seek out their perspective. How do they prefer to be portrayed? What words and ideas do they find offensive? Not all members of a given group will agree on these things, but you can always try to find a consensus or a recommendation from a trustworthy source.

It’s true that this level of consideration and critical thinking requires extra work, but it’s worth it. And the truth is that there isn’t actually any other option. Every choice we make in our content will reflect a certain position; there’s no such thing as truly neutral language.

This is why we have to choose our words carefully, and make sure that we’re communicating positive ideas and values rather than potentially harmful ones. Ultimately, prioritizing sensitivity, respect, and empathy is in everyone’s best interest – no matter the context.

Sources & Additional Resources

The Diversity Style Guide
NASAA’s Inclusive Language Guide
The APA’s Inclusive Language Guidelines
The APA’s guide to writing about sexual orientation
Council of Europe’s guide to sex and gender
Stanford’s Disability Language Guide
Buffer’s guide to inclusive language in tech
APA Style – Racial and Ethnic Identity
Debuk – Default: male
Hamilton College – Writing about Gender and Sexuality

How to Make Your Writing More Sensitive - and Why It Matters

To finish, here's one of their pictograms:

How to Make Your Writing More Sensitive - and Why It Matters

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writing as a language learning tool

At the end of the week or at the end of a course, writing can be a very good way to revise, deepen and clarify any language.

Here are a few activities which can be done either alone or with classmates.

1: Take vocab from the week and look them up in a good dictionary: suggestion - Translation from English into German | PONS Then simply copy a sentence that makes sense for you and which will help you to remember how to use it.

And work on the pronunciation with voice recogntion apps! Google Translate

2: Take a text that you wrote during the week and add connectors to make it flow better: Connectives and Linking Phrases - Online Exercises - English Grammar and Connectors and linking words - exercises

3: Take a text that you wrote and that you know needs improving: ideally work in pairs or groups to correct it and give feedback. 

Here's a good place to go to help you correct a text: Grammarly: Free Online Writing Assistant

You could also create your own check-list: Edit and Improve Writing with this KS2 Checklist - Twinkl

What sort of things are you looking for? The CEF will show you what you need for A1 - C2 Common European Framework of Reference for Languages - Self-assessment grid

4: What about basic sentence structure, or syntax? The 4 Types of Sentence Structure | Grammar | EnglishClub and Sentence Structure (A Complete Guide for Students and Teachers)

But we can play a little more 11 Sentence Building Activities You Can Use with Your Students Today and Sentences Structure Games: Top 20 | Sentence Building Activities ESL

To finish, here are a few more things to do: Jay Doubleyou: writing activities for the esl class and beyond

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writing with register: a lesson in using different levels of 'politeness'

CHECKING INTO A HOTEL:

When was the last time you checked into a hotel in English?

What did you say and what did the receptionist say?

Write it down!

What are the guests and receptionist saying in each of these situations?

Write them down!

First at 6 minutes:

Then at 11:45

S1E1.A Touch of Class - video Dailymotion

Here's more: Jay Doubleyou: got a room

What are the differences in language?

What other examples can you think of?

Write them down and compare!

This is called "register"

And why do we do this?

Write an email to a hotel to book a room

What sort of register did you use? 

And could you have used a different one?

With lots of ideas and examples here: different ways to ask for a room in a hotel in english phrases - Google Search

And another situation here: S2E1.Communication Problems - video Dailymotion

ARRANGING A MEETING

Imagine you are someone of a very specific age/profession/personality]

[six-year old girl with a very strong personality]

[a young actor, still very insecure and nervous]

[a young business woman, very ambitious and very pushy]

[a middle-aged postman, always happy to chat]

[a sixty-year old man, just retired from the police force]

[a seventy-something someone who is about to be crowned king/queen]

[an eighty-five year old woman, retired from the diplomatic service]

Now write a series of emails to arrange a meeting - either a coffee for a bit of gossip or a formal business session to discuss something serious or whatever.

You decide on the purpose of your email.

But you must know before hand who you are writing to.

When you have finished, send your emails and reply!

But there are still problems about meeting up. 

Follow up your emails with a phone call 

MORE IDEAS FOR WRITING WITH REGISTER:

• Take the same story in the news and see how different newspapers use different language [The Times vs The Sun]
• On celebrities: Declan Donnelly to host Saturday Night Takeaway alone, ITV confirms | Television & radio | The Guardian and Saturday Night Takeaway: Ant McPartlin's absence addressed by Dec Donnelly | TV & Radio | Showbiz & TV | Express.co.uk and Declan Donnelly receives standing ovation after presenting Saturday Night Takeaway alone | The Independent
• How to write a good Tweet: How To Write a Tweet — Tips and Tricks | Grammarly
• Expand a Tweet into a paragraph or two - and vice versa
• Analyse some literature: 
• the most difficult section of Joyce's Ulysses where he re-enacts the development of the English language from early translations of Latin verse to contemporary Dublin slang 6. Oxen of the Sun – Telemachus

With more here: Jay Doubleyou: pragmatics: it ain't what you say it's the way that you say it

And some really interesting stuff - especially when it comes to writing styles: Jay Doubleyou: register

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writing activities for the esl class and beyond

Writing is good for you if you want to learn English (or any other language!) 

Jay Doubleyou: writing (by hand!) helps you pick up a language

There are lots of things you can do:

Journals, diaries and the commonplace book:

Jay Doubleyou: class journals from the british council

Jay Doubleyou: the commonplace book as a language-learning tool

Dictation:

Jay Doubleyou: short texts for fun dication

Jay Doubleyou: practical dictation > online texts and audio

Jay Doubleyou: dictation can be fun

Don't worry too much about getting it right:

Jay Doubleyou: how to write good

Here are some good lists for what to do in the classroom:

Writing Tweets. ...
Writing Emails. ...
Writing Ads and TV Commercials. ...
Error Correction. ...
Collaborative ESL Writing Activity. ...
Association game. ...
Structural Writing. ...
Image-Based Story Writing.

10 Creative ESL Writing Activities For Young Students - VIPKid Blog

Text lingo
Writing correction code

Guided writing: Writing a story on the OHP

Guided writing: Writing an article using the OHP

ChatA business letter

Poems for the future

Writing through 'reverse reading'

Postcards

Role-play writing

Creating a framework for writing

A perfect story

Note writing

A creative writing activity: A dark and stormy night

Eliciting vocabulary before writing narrativesImproving paragraph writing

Songs and storytelling

Freeze the writing - A way to make writing tasks a group activity

Helping students organise argument essays

Writing activities | TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC

Writing for fluency:

7 Effective Strategies to Build Writing Fluency | EnglishPost.org

Fluency in Writing—What Does It Mean?

Writing For Fluency: Classroom Activities | Cambridge English

Writing a leaflet/advert/copy:

Example of Leaflet Writing (10 Tips in Writing Your Own Business Leaflet)

Top 10 Essentials Of Effective Leaflet Advertising

How to write perfect copy for a leaflet - Printing.com Blog

Using connectors/linking devices:

English grammar - linking words in English | Learn English Today

Connectors and linking words - exercises

Connectives and Linking Phrases - Online Exercises - English Grammar

Writing Cambridge Exam-type texts:

CAE Writing Text Types – Tim's Free English Lesson Plans

https://www.fceexamtips.com/writing#:~:text=You%20have%2080%20minutes%20to,should%20be%20140%2D190%20words.

Write & Improve with Cambridge

Rewriting from Rinvolucri's Grammar Games:

gymnasium23.edu.kh.ua/Files/downloads/Grammar Games.pdf

Writing for learning:

“Short, impromptu or otherwise informal writing tasks that help students think through key
concepts or ideas presented in a course. Often, these writing tasks are limited to less than
five minutes of class...” (Definition from theWAC Clearinghouse). Writing-to-Learn
activities can be used in any situations where students could benefit from thinking deeply
about what they are doing in class, or why they’re doing it.
At the end of the class:
Purposes
 To help identify what students have learned
To assess their understanding
To help students better retain the material they learned in class 

(The National Teaching& Learning Forum)
Examples
In a few sentences, tell about the lesson from the previous day to a person who missed
the class the day before.
Imagine that you have to explain today’s lesson to a little child. How would you do it?
Imagine that you have to go home and tell your parents about today’s lesson. What
would you tell them?
Tell me about your two favorite activities from class today.
What is the top single concept that you learned in class today?
The most difficult concept/topic/principle/rule/word for me today was...because...
Tell me what the most interesting/important word that you learned today was. How
and in which situations will you use this word?

Writing-to-Learn Activities | TESOL Blog

What is Writing to Learn? - The WAC Clearinghouse

Jeremy Harmer: How to Teach Writing

Chapter 3: Writing in the language classroom (p31)
Writing for learning:
reinforcement writing (eg: grammar point just taught); preparation
writing (time to think before an activity); activity writing (eg: while listening; as part of another activity)
Writing for writing:
“our objective here is to help students to become better writers and to learn how to write in various genres using different registers.” “It is about helping student to communicate real messages in an appropriate manner.” (eg: letter writing) Also: writing purposes and creative writing.

How to Teach Writing by Jeremy Harmer - PDF Drive

Process Writing

In process writing, students have the chance to think about what they are going to write,
produce drafts, revise, edit, and give and receive feedback on their work before coming up
with the final version of the text. A process approach to writing contrasts with a product
approach, where the main idea is to reproduce a model text.

https://sites.tufts.edu/tuftsliteracycorps/files/2020/10/Process-Writing-Article-with-Teaching-Notes-Added.pdf

Scaffolding

Scaffolding is the process of breaking down a larger writing assignment into smaller
assignments that focus on the skills or types of knowledge students require to successfully
complete the larger assignment

Writing Center | University of Colorado Denver

8 Ways to Scaffold Writing for English Learners – Seidlitz Education

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