Sunday, 30 August 2020

graded english readers

Reading is one of the best ways to get your language going:

Jay Doubleyou: the importance of reading

But course books can be very boring, in whatever subject:

Textbooks: Boring Students to Death | by David Cutler | Medium

And following a coursebook in a class is even more boring:

Why we don’t like English classes | Antimoon

Reading a book, you can choose what to read and how fast to read - and here's a good guide:

How to be a better reader

If you're learning a language, 'readers' are an excellent starting point:

A graded reader is a book intended for learners at different levels of learning English. These books have complex and interesting stories, but are written in a way that’s comfortable for English language learners at every stage.
English readers have different grades: the higher the grade, the more difficult the ESL reading will be. These books are designed to use a specific number of difficult words (for example, one new vocabulary word every 500 or 600 words). This means you can understand and enjoy the book, but still learn from it.
Some graded readers use existing classic and popular modern books, and simply rewrite them to accommodate different levels. Other English readers write completely new and original stories. These kinds of books exist for kids, young adults and adults. They’re a great way to learn and to read some works that you wouldn’t have been able to understand otherwise.

Where to Find the Best English Readers: 7 Incredible Sources for Endless English Reading Practice | FluentU English

These are the biggest on the market:

Home - Penguin Readers

Pearson English Readers support English learning everywhere

Macmillan Readers – English Reading Resources

ELT | English Readers – Collins

Readers | Cambridge University Press

Oxford Graded Readers

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screencast: making a video of your screen

Would you like to be able to make a video of what's showing on your screen?

There are some very good tools out there to enable you to simply film what's on your screen.

This is the most famous:

Screen Recorder & Video Editor | Screencast-O-Matic

Screen-O-Matic: One-click Screen Capture Recording Tool

SCREENOMATIC - YouTube

And there are plenty of others:

11 Free Screencasting Tools | Practical Ecommerce

Top 10 Screen Recording Software for Windows

For schools and teachers, the recommendation is Screencast-O-Matic:

The Best Screencasting Tools for Classrooms | Common Sense Education

The best screencasting software for teachers | Douchy's Blog

7 Of The Best Screencasting Software Tools For Classrooms - Fractus Learning

Or for really free software, here are a couple more recommendations:

Screencasting is the video recording of a computer screen that is often accompanied by voice-over narration and serves for educational purposes. Live screencasting is, respectively, the live broadcasting of your screen.

For example, teachers may use screencasting to create e-learning tutorials and courses. Employers may screencast how-to videos and tutorials for new employees.

The Best Screencast Software In 2020: Full Comparison

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brexit and british values

Since the Brexit vote, attitudes have hardened - and culture has become a battleground:

Jay Doubleyou: brexit: and choosing between an american model and a european model

Jay Doubleyou: identity today in the uk

Jay Doubleyou: Brexit: "The majority of Leave voters were middle class. Most lived in the south of England."

Jay Doubleyou: brexit and: "tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis"

Jay Doubleyou: brexit and the culture wars: part two

Jay Doubleyou: brexit and the culture wars

Jay Doubleyou: middle england: the heart of brexit britain

Jay Doubleyou: brexit: and what the british think of themselves

Jay Doubleyou: what we think about the british empire - 70 years after the partition of india

Jay Doubleyou: in britain we use our history in order to comfort us: this sort of handling of history is dangerous as well as regrettable.

Jay Doubleyou: brexit and history

This is the latest example:

Jay Doubleyou: rule britannia?

With a piece from last December:

Brexitannia: The British Identity Crisis

James Melville
13 December 2019
Brexitannia: The British Identity Crisis

Brexit has become an identity conflict in Britain. It is Danny Boyle’s London Olympics Opening Ceremony versus the Last Night of the Proms. Where do we go from here?

The Great British public have decided to give the Tories five more years of power. To “get Brexit done”, millions of voters have stuck two fingers up at a window, without realising it’s a mirror. A vote for the Conservatives and to “get Brexit done” is an enormous act of self harm based on an insecure delusion of what Britain was, what Britain is, and what Britain should be.

There is a long-held Tory voting optical delusion of Britain parading around like something out of the encore section of the Last Night of the Proms. A place called Britain that should always rule the waves. This British identity framing is how the Britain’s conductor-in-chief, Boris Johnson, likes to orchestrate it...

Brexitannia: The British Identity Crisis – Byline Times

It depends on your politics - with very different views from this week:

The treatment of migrants crossing the Channel is plain wrong and against British values | The Independent | Independent

BBC ordered to scrap mandatory TV licence fee - 'It needs to fund itself!' | UK | News | Express.co.uk

Boris Johnson’s Britain During the Pandemic and Brexit Is Becoming America in All the Worst Ways

It's about 'values':

Brexit: Can we tell students 'British values' still exist? | Tes

Brexit has revealed a divide that's here to stay (opinion) - CNN

Brexit Is a Cultural Revolution - The Atlantic

Brexit Britain is more welcoming than feared | Financial Times

The success of Brexit Britain will depend on how well it can stick to its principles ǀ View | Euronews

Boris Johnson empowered the thugs that shamed British democracy

What does healing the Brexit divide mean? - BBC News

Here's a very interesting overview from earlier this month - and with lots of helpful graphics;

The Brexit parenthesis: Three ways the pandemic is changing UK politics | European Council on Foreign Relations

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Saturday, 29 August 2020

banter

What is 'banter'?

Here's a definition:

And another (with a warning about the banter!):

Peter Trudgill writes a regular column for the New European:

Probably all cultures employ banter, but it seems that some utilise it more than others. Banter is certainly very common in British and Irish society, and some commentators claim that it is more usual amongst men than amongst women. A difference between cultures might explain why misunderstandings can occur 
The late Geoffrey Leech, professor of English linguistics at Lancaster University, pointed out that one of the more interesting of these conversational principles is the ‘Banter Principle’; and he provided some important insights into the nature of this. Banter is essentially mock-impoliteness. You pretend to be rude to somebody as a way of stressing and reinforcing group solidarity. The Banter Principle is based on the following idea: “We are good friends so we don’t need to be polite to one another. If I insult you, you will understand that it’s a joke, 
which will prove what good friends we are.”


With a little more here - and some advice:

Here's some advice for young people:

And here's a look at the current dangers:

With a couple of helpful videos here:

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banksy as art gallery artist

Banksy started life a street artist and has become incredibly popular:

And, yes, he's very provocative:

The authorities are not sure about him:

He is fundamentally a satirist:

He has satirized Disneyland:
Jay Doubleyou: dismaland from banksy

He has satirized the monarchy:
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america and class

Race is what is supposed to divide the United States:

Whereas class is what divides the UK:

But class is also a dividing issue in the States - something which Americans would perhaps rather avoid talking about:
Jay Doubleyou: education levels and voting trump
Jay Doubleyou: brexit, trump and dumbing down

But class and racial divisions were very apparent four years ago:

Here's a look at the lazy thinking around class and race from the last presidential election:

THIS ELECTION CYCLE has been rife with punditry on the anger of the white working class, supposedly fueling Donald Trump’s rise to prominence. But like many of the overblown narratives rounding out the cable news cycle in this bizarre election, it’s not quite true.

In White Trash: The 400 Year Untold History of Class in America (2016), Nancy Isenberg attacks the myth of America as a nation without class, carefully reviving the history of America’s “waste people”—the white working poor—from the earliest period of colonization to contemporary politics... 


Here's another analysis from November 2016:

For months, the only thing that’s surprised me about Donald Trump is my friends’ astonishment at his success. What’s driving it is the class culture gap.

One little-known element of that gap is that the white working class (WWC) resents professionals but admires the rich. Class migrants (white-collar professionals born to blue-collar families) report that “professional people were generally suspect” and that managers are college kids “who don’t know shit about how to do anything but are full of ideas about how I have to do my job,” said Alfred Lubrano in Limbo. Barbara Ehrenreich recalled in 1990 that her blue-collar dad “could not say the word doctor without the virtual prefix quack. Lawyers were shysters…and professors were without exception phonies.” Annette Lareau found tremendous resentment against teachers, who were perceived as condescending and unhelpful.

Michèle Lamont, in The Dignity of Working Men, also found resentment of professionals — but not of the rich. “[I] can’t knock anyone for succeeding,” a laborer told her. “There’s a lot of people out there who are wealthy and I’m sure they worked darned hard for every cent they have,” chimed in a receiving clerk. Why the difference? For one thing, most blue-collar workers have little direct contact with the rich outside of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. But professionals order them around every day. The dream is not to become upper-middle-class, with its different food, family, and friendship patterns; the dream is to live in your own class milieu, where you feel comfortable — just with more money. “The main thing is to be independent and give your own orders and not have to take them from anybody else,” a machine operator told Lamont. Owning one’s own business — that’s the goal. That’s another part of Trump’s appeal.

Hillary Clinton, by contrast, epitomizes the dorky arrogance and smugness of the professional elite. The dorkiness: the pantsuits. The arrogance: the email server. The smugness: the basket of deplorables. Worse, her mere presence rubs it in that even women from her class can treat working-class men with disrespect. Look at how she condescends to Trump as unfit to hold the office of the presidency and dismisses his supporters as racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic.

Trump’s blunt talk taps into another blue-collar value: straight talk. “Directness is a working-class norm,” notes Lubrano. As one blue-collar guy told him, “If you have a problem with me, come talk to me. If you have a way you want something done, come talk to me. I don’t like people who play these two-faced games.” Straight talk is seen as requiring manly courage, not being “a total wuss and a wimp,” an electronics technician told Lamont. Of course Trump appeals. Clinton’s clunky admission that she talks one way in public and another in private? Further proof she’s a two-faced phony...

What So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class

Since the election of 2016, there's been a lot of commentary around class:
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Friday, 28 August 2020

is e-learning a good thing?

With lockdown, many of us have had to go online to learn

How coronavirus crisis reinvented online learning as a necessity

There are lots of offers out there:

Why is online learning so important during coronavirus? | English Live Blog

Of course, it's been around a lot longer:

The Era of Online Learning | Niema Moshiri | TEDxUCSD - YouTube

Not everyone is a fan:

Parents seeking alternative to e-learning - Evanston Now

The problem is that a lot of e-learning is simply a teacher giving a lecture in front of a board, or click-and-quiz learning: stories and scenarios are better:

Why e-learning is killing education | Aaron Barth | TEDxKitchenerED - YouTube

Why Technology Can't Fix Education | Mary Jo Madda | TEDxChicago - YouTube

Content, not technology, will save education | Sofia Fenichell | TEDxLSE - YouTube

It doesn't have to be an an LMS:

Jay Doubleyou: how to set up a learning management system

Instead, you can use very simple platforms like Zoom to create interactive sessions:

Enabling breakout rooms – Zoom Help Center

Video Breakout Rooms - YouTube

Set up #ZOOM BREAKOUT ROOMS (ideal for small groups) - YouTube

And English language schools are trying this out:

Trinity CertTESOL during Covid-19. - YouTube

Trinity College London Online CertTESOL course review by Greety Gijo, Angamaly, Kerala - YouTube

CertTESOL | Trinity College London

But you can 'blend' learning - and 'flip' the classroom:

Jay Doubleyou: blended learning and the flipped classroom

Click here-- blended learning and the future of education: Monique Markoff at TEDxIthacaCollege - YouTube

And tech can make students more independent:

Jay Doubleyou: can children teach themselves - using technology?

The Future of Learning | Sugata Mitra | TEDxNewcastle - YouTube

New experiments in self-teaching | Sugata Mitra - YouTube

Sugata Mitra: Can kids teach themselves? - YouTube

Finally, this is the future - but we can chose which technologies we want to work with:

Jay Doubleyou: digital learning solutions

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