Bits & Pieces
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Conversations with a purpose: Reflecting on interviewing in EFL research
If you are interested in following the more recent activities of IATEFL and the Research Special interest group, the following links might be more useful: The IATEFL website The ReSIG website IATEFL ReSIG Pre-Conference Event The IATEFL conference in Birmingham is coming up, and those of you who have an interest in classroom-based research may want…
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Punctuation..?
I was delighted to receive, a few days ago, a copy of Punctuation..?, a short reference book published by User Design. Unlike more cumbersome style guides, Punctuation..? is quite concise: it spans 35 A5-size pages. These contain 21 sections, focusing on different punctuation marks, such as ‘square brackets’ or ‘semi colon’. Each section describes the…
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Language research, performance and the creative arts
If you happen to be in or around Leeds next month, you might be interested in a one-day seminar organised jointly by the University of Leeds Centre for Language Education Research (CLER) and members of the AHRC-funded Researching Multilingually at the Borders of Language, the Body, Law and the State project. The seminar, which will take place on Friday…
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On Grexit and Solidarity
There are two reasons for writing this post: One is to express my sincere gratitude to colleagues and friends who have come forward with generous offers of help, at what has been a challenging time for people in Greece; and the other is to pass along a very kind offer that may be of interest…
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This year’s ELT Journal debate
ELT Journal are holding their annual debate at IATEFL in Manchester on Monday 13 April 2015. This year’s motion is Language testing does more harm than good. In the latest issue of ELT J (unfortunately behind a paywall!), the rationale of the debate is described as follows: A remarkable amount of time is devoted to testing and…
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Job advertised at the ELF project in Vienna
As I was going over my email after the holiday break, I came across the following job advertisement which may be of interest to some readers of this blog. Apparently, Barbara Seidlhofer’s research group are looking for a research assistant, who will help out with their English as a Lingua Franca research. This job is addressed…
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Measuring Linguistic Complexity: A Multidisciplinary Perspective
Announcing a multidisciplinary workshop on linguistic complexity.
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ELF and World Englishes: Dispelling some of the confusion
Update: This is a post advertising a talk that took place in 2014. The content is no longer current, and it is retained here for archival purposes. If you have found yourself here looking for information on World Englishes or ELF, you may find the following links more helpful: “Are you ELF?” (Reading Notes) English…
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Elephants, self-promotion, and academic self-presentation
For today, I had originally planned to post some thoughts on Teaching English to Very Young learners, drawing on a small scale inquiry I ran online over the last 10 days. However, that post has been de-prioritised, and in its place I’d like to engage in some rather shameless self-promotion, which I will then use as a springboard in…