Tag: education
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Language testing for no reason
What happened when the school administrators decided to introduce a new exam without asking anyone if it was needed…
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Rethinking Language, Diversity and Education
For additional content on language, diversity and education, you may also want to read about the volume I am editing, Challenging Boundaries in Language Education. The Rethinking Language, Diversity and Education conference will take place on 28-31 May 2015 in Rhodes, Greece. The conference, which is co-organised by the University of Toronto and the University of the Aegean, aims to…
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Call for chapters: Demystifying Critical Thinking in Multilingual and Intercultural Education
Proposals are invited for an edited volume, entitled Critical Thinking in multilingual and intercultural education, to be published in 2016, by Info Age Publishing as part of their Contemporary Language Education series. According to the book editors, Fred Dervin and Julie Byrd Clark: One of the most basic definitions of CT could be: “The ability to…
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Cutting Edges 2014 [Call for papers]
Update This is a post advertising an academic event that took place in Canterbury in 2014. The content is no longer current and it is retained here for archival purposes only. If you are interested in receiving timely updates on academic events about language teaching and learning, you may want to consider following this blog.
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Oppressive language education
In recent years, Modern Foreign Languages in Greece have been taught in accordance with the ‘mother language+two’ policy, which has held that learners should receive instruction in two modern foreign languages, namely English plus one of the following: French, German, Italian or Spanish. I have, in the past, expressed reservations regarding the selection of these…
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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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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.