checking in at the airport

What's the problem here:

How to Check In at an airport. Learn English with MovaMedova. Free - YouTube

What are the typical phrases?

Everyday English for ESL 4 — Airport Check-in - YouTube

What's the problem here?

Black Mirror S03E01 Airport scene - YouTube

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reading really is the best way to improve (your own and a second) language

There is reading... and there is reading:

We have developed a PowerPoint state of mind. As audiences, we increasingly assume that whatever we read – a PowerPoint slide or a novel – should be short, straightforward, and only worth reading once.

...

When reading on a digital platform, we do incredibly more multitasking and are far less able to concentrate than when reading printed works.

The Fate of Reading in a Digital World: Conversation with Naomi S. Baron

Prof Baron weighs the value of reading physical print versus online text:

Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World by Naomi S. Baron | U-M Library

She has a new book out looking at the general importance of reading:

How We Read Now: Strategic Choices for Print, Screen, and Audio: Baron, Naomi S.: 9780190084097: Amazon.com: Books

Here's a review, with a few key points:

The decline in pleasure reading among young people...

Students not only read less, but also comprehend and retain less of what they read...

A digital mindset includes an openness to the advantages of digital reading, including the ease of skimming, scanning, and accessing an abundance of information.

How We Read Now: Strategic Choices for Print, Screen, & Audio | Washington Independent Review of Books

Here is Prof Baron writing last year:

During the pandemic, many college professors abandoned assignments from printed textbooks and turned instead to digital texts or multimedia coursework.
As a professor of linguistics, I have been studying how electronic communication compares to traditional print when it comes to learning. Is comprehension the same whether a person reads a text onscreen or on paper? And are listening and viewing content as effective as reading the written word when covering the same material?
The answers to both questions are often “no,” as I discuss in my book “How We Read Now,” released in March 2021. The reasons relate to a variety of factors, including diminished concentration, an entertainment mindset and a tendency to multitask while consuming digital content...

Why we remember more by reading – especially print – than from audio or video

And here she is talking about how we can't read complex texts any more:

The Death of Nuance - Twisting My Words - BBC Sounds

Finally, some posts on the importance of reading:

Jay Doubleyou: the importance of reading

Jay Doubleyou: do you enjoy reading?

Jay Doubleyou: krashen and second language learning

Jay Doubleyou: using difficult texts in the esl classroom

Jay Doubleyou: ambiguous newspaper headlines

Jay Doubleyou: pause and think: or, how to improve your language skills

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questions about cars

Cars are always a good subject to talk about:

ESL Conversation Questions - Cars and Driving (I-TESL-J)

What should a good commercial for cars do?

Audi in the 1980s advertised in English using a German slogan:

Audi UK Commercial compilation - YouTube

What is the slogan for Porsche?

Porsche commercial - It's A Magical Life / Engineered for Magic. Everyday - YouTube

Yes, car adverts can be funny:

Witty Porsche Commercials - YouTube

And here's another:

Audi Provokes Porsche. Porsche Replies 3 Years Later - YouTube

What does the car of the future look like?

And what were our attitudes to cars back in the 1950s?

Tex Avery - Car of Tomorrow (1951) - YouTube

Jay Doubleyou: our love affair with the car... and what it does to us

What do we think about cars today?

What are the issues?

The Biggest Problem With Modern Cars - YouTube (and again at 4:20)

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how many meanings are there to 'love'?

What do you mean when you say you love your brother/mother/husband/friends, or you love chocolate/the Beatles/flying/this blog?

Words have lots of meanings - for example the word 'love' - as explored by Dr Tim Lomas BBC Radio 4:

The Death of Nuance - Twisting My Words - BBC Sounds

He has a book out looking at the problem:

Have you ever had a feeling that you couldn't quite describe, because no English word exists for it?

The Happiness Dictionary: Words from Around the World to Help Us Lead a Richer Life eBook : Lomas, Tim: Amazon.co.uk: Books

Here he is giving a TED Talk on so-called 'untranslatable words':

Tim Lomas: Expanding our experiential horizons through untranslatable words | TED Talk

Expanding our experiential horizons through untranslatable words | Tim Lomas | TEDxZurich - YouTube

He has a 'positive lexicography' where he looks at this in detail:

Welcome to the positive lexicography, an evolving index of 'untranslatable' words related to wellbeing from across the world's languages. For an introduction to the project, please check out my new TEDx presentation.

drtimlomas/lexicography

Click on the example of 'love' in the top-left hand corner to see a wealth of language:

Lexicography

And here he has an article where he explores

... love is far more complex. Indeed, arguably no word covers a wider range of feelings and experiences than love.
So how can we ever define what love really is? In my new study, published in the Journal for the Theory of Social Analysis, I’ve made a start by searching the world’s languages for words relating to love that don’t exist in English...

How I discovered there are (at least) 14 different kinds of love by analysing the world's languages

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questioning hierarchies in language teaching

Hierarchies in the classroom can make sense.

For example, the first things we learn or teach:

Hierarchy of Questions - Language Acquisition and Family Literacy

It can get very academic:

How hierarchical is language use? | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

However, we do need to question a lot of the 'given' hierarchies of how we understand our (learning) needs.

There are all sorts of systems which see things as a 'hierarchy' - including Maslow:

INCIDENTAL COMICS: The Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow's hierarchy of needs - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Problem With Maslow’s Pyramid | by Anthony Fieldman | Curious | Medium

Why Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Is Wrong — The House Journal

There are alternatives:

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Robot Needs

There's also Bloom:

Challenging Bloom's Taxonomy – David Didau

Bloom's taxonomy - Wikipedia

College Quarterly - Articles - Blooming Idiots: Educational Objectives, Learning Taxonomies and the Pedagogy of Benjamin Bloom

Bloom’s Taxonomy: The rubbish running education - World leading higher education information and services

Jay Doubleyou: a critique of learning objectives

Perhaps we need this alternative hierarchy:

INCIDENTAL COMICS: The Hierarchy of Humor (from 2016)

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good teaching strategies: using prior knowledge and retrieval practice

A very practical piece of research highlighted in the EL Gazette looks at common teaching strategies and procedures:

The importance of prior knowledge
BY Carol Lethaby
Educational research shows us how essential prior knowledge is to learning new things. The average correlation between background knowledge and achievement is meaning that students who have a lot of background knowledge on a topic will learn new information on that topic better and more easily than students who do not have good previous knowledge of the topic.

...

Retrieval practice
By Russell Mayne
One of the most robust findings in educational research is that retrieval practice is important for learning. That is, asking students to try to recall items previously studied will help them to retain the information.

...

elgazette.com/exploring-the-evidence

With a bit more here:

PRIOR KNOWLEDGE:

New learning is constructed on prior knowledge. The more we understand about what students already think, and the more we help them engage their prior understandings, the more likely they are to learn well – and the less likely they are to misinterpret the material in our courses.

hampshire.edu/ctl/2017/09/14/the-importance-of-engaging-prior-knowledge

Videos:

strategiesforspecialinterventions.weebly.com/activating-prior-knowledge

If we don't ignite the prior knowledge of our students when we teach, we may fall prey to what the late Brazilian educational theorist Paulo Freire referred to as "the banking concept" in pedagogy -- treating students as if they are empty vessels waiting to be filled with the knowledge of the teacher. Basically, taking on a view that the kids have very little to offer to the classroom learning and discussions.

edutopia.org/blog/prior-knowledge-tapping-into-often-classroom-rebecca-alber

Assessment:

teaching.cornell.edu/spring-teaching-resources/assessment-evaluation/assessing-prior-knowledge

We do not always consciously make use of what we already know when we try to learn new information. But evidence is piling up that suggests this is a smart thing to do. So how can you make the most of your prior knowledge to prepare for acquiring – and retaining – new knowledge?

theguardian.com/education/2016/jan/09/what-you-already-know-is-the-key-to-learning-new-things

RETRIEVAL PRACTICE:

Let's focus on getting information "out" of students' heads.
Retrieval practice boosts learning by pulling information out of students’ heads, rather than cramming information into students’ heads.

www.retrievalpractice.org/why-it-works

Podcast:

cultofpedagogy.com/retrieval-practice

(see diagram)

Video:

academicaffairs.arizona.edu/l2l-strategy-retrieval-practice

More techniques:

teacherhead.com/2019/03/03/10-techniques-for-retrieval-practice

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bouba/kiki

 An interesting piece in today's EL Gazette:

What shape are the words ‘bouba’ and  ‘kiki’, pointy or round? 

The shape of words | elgazette.com

The first research was carried out in 1929 - and repeated in 2001:

This picture is used as a test to demonstrate that people may not attach sounds to shapes arbitrarily: American college undergraduates and Tamil speakers in India called the shape on the left "kiki" and the one on the right "bouba".

Ramachandran and Hubbard suggest that the kiki/bouba effect has implications for the evolution of language, because it suggests that the naming of objects is not completely arbitrary.7  The rounded shape may most commonly be named "bouba" because the mouth makes a more rounded shape to produce that sound while a more taut, angular mouth shape is needed to make the sounds in "kiki".

Bouba/kiki effect | en.wikipedia.org

The EL Gazette shows the most recent research:

Co-author Dr Marcus Perlman, Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Birmingham, commented: “Our findings suggest that most people around the world exhibit the bouba/kiki effect, including people who speak various languages and regardless of the writing system they use. “Our ancestors could have used links between speech sounds and visual properties to create some of the first spoken words and today, many thousands of years later, the perceived roundness of the English word ‘balloon’ may not be just a coincidence after all.”

And there are some great videos which show how it works:

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