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What do you do at Christmas?
Christmas is a family occasion where we gather around Christmas trees after a Christmas dinner of roast turkey and stuffing to open up presents after listening to the Queen’s Speech. True or False?...
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Cringing at Cheese this Christmas?
Christmas is naturally a mushy time…considering the fact that it combines all the ideals of love, giving, family reunions, and bonding. Like weddings, it is one of those occasions where you really...
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My IATEFL Glasgow Diary Part 2
Monday, the 19th March 2012, Glasgow Conference Centre. The IATEFL BESIG PCE This was apparently the first year that saw all the different SIGs each having their own PCE, thus accounting for the very...
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ELF 5 Part 6 – Jagdish Kaur on Reconceptualising Competence
I came to this session partly because I had read papers by the speaker Jagdish Kaur for my dissertation and found them relevant and interesting, and was curious to see her in person, and to hear more....
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Devil’s Advocate vs Hugh Dellar on Intercultural Communication
This series is inspired by a conversation between Mike Hogan and myself about examining the controversies in ELT. We wanted to consider the different positions taken by different members of the...
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The BESIG Paris Summer Symposium 2012
The BESIG Paris Summer Symposium (in association with TESOL France) might have only been a day long, but it was certainly one of the best conferences I had ever attended. It was well-organised. – From...
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‘Where are you from?’ and the issue of diaspora
Yesterday was the American Independence Day…which to me meant only one thing, it’s my London anniversary! 12 years ago, I came into this city by Eurostar from Paris and was struck by how at home the...
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The CELTA Trainer’s Diary Part 9 – Functions and Spoken Discourse
Among the four language systems – Lexis, Grammar, Pronunciation, and Discourse, Discourse is often the one that is most neglected on the CELTA. Some tutors might do an input session on functional...
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Understanding Discourse – Grice and Implicatures Part 2
In my last post, I looked at Grice’s Co-operative Principle (CP) and how the observance or flouting of the maxims creates meaning and implicatures in interaction. In this post, I will look at the...
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Understanding Discourse – Grice and Implicatures Part 3
This is the last of three parts on Grice and Implicatures. . 4. Implications for the Classroom In Bouton’s experiment (1999), a total of 6 hours of explicit instruction was given over a 6-week...
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