Category: Comments & Discussion Points
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Just how effective are the University Entrance Exams?
Every year tens of thousands of students in Greece sit the University Entrance Exams. They deserve to be assessed with fairness. There’s much we can can do better in this regard.
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The Great Greek Vowel Controversy
As far as scientific disciplines go, linguistics is probably not the most contentious that springs to mind. And yet, in 2012, Greek linguistics became the centre of a seemingly ludicrous controversy over a school textbook. This article describes what has come to be known as the Great Greek Vowel Controversy, or the Φωνηεντιάδα. What happened?…
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On the University Entrance Exams
The University Entrance Exams in Greece are often criticised about being too hard. This post explains why such criticism is misguided and unfair.
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Understanding the dynamics of a language classroom
This post outlines the physical, institutional, methodological and human aspects of an ELT context.
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“The successful candidate will be a native speaker of American English”
I recently blogged about an assistant professorship being advertised by the Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Readers may have noted that the advert is very specifically targeted at suitably qualified candidates who are “native speaker[s] of American English, or have near-native command of American English”. This is a noteworthy requirement for several reasons: Pragmatically, it is interesting to…
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On obtaining consent: can information manipulation be morally justified?
The latest issue of Research Ethics featured an article on the moral implications of manipulating information to obtain consent, which I thought was thought-provoking enough to warrant a blog entry. To clarify, manipulation should not be construed as deliberate falsification: rather, it refers to issues such as presentation and framing that can influence the potential…
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German and French as Foreign Languages in Greece
The Greek school system places a premium on teaching modern foreign languages. Not all modern foreign languages, though. Just the ‘right’ ones.