Much has been written about AI and its potentially adverse effects. Some people have even begun to draw parallels with science fiction films in which humanity fights for survival in a future world dominated by machines. But if I can divert your attention away from the Terminator franchise for a few moments, I'd like to present you with some research on artificial intelligence in the world of ELT. In a recent survey conducted by the British Council, teachers were asked if they agreed with the statement “AI and automated translation will eventually make learning languages unnecessary.” Reassuri ..read more

'To those who care about punctuation,' writes Lynne Truss in her bestselling book “Eats, Shoots & Leaves”, 'a sentence such as “Thank God its Friday” (without the apostrophe) rouses feelings not only of despair but of violence.' The book is heavy on hyperbole and seeks to entertain as well as educate its reader, but it also highlights a growing concern among some people about a perceived decline in standards of written English. Facebook is littered with poorly punctuated comments left by folks who show scant regard for apostrophes, commas and capital letters. How many times have you seen ..read more

A train threads its way through the darkening suburbs of Liverpool as bright orange flames leap up from people's gardens. It's Bonfire Night, and my fellow drama students and I are on our way to see “Macbeth” at the Royal Court Theatre. I don't remember the details of our conversation exactly, but there was some excited chatter about the prospect of seeing Pete Postlethwaite in the lead role. The memories I have of that evening are blurry at best, hardly surprising when you consider that it was more than twenty-five years ago. For anyone not familiar with English customs, Bonfire Night takes ..read more

There's something a little bizarre about someone peddling cosmetics at 30,000 feet above sea level. Smiling to myself, I watched a heavily made-up flight attendant push her trolley full of wares up the aisle of the plane to London. Things were about to get a lot stranger. I'm not really a fan of big cities. Frankly speaking, I don't think the word 'big' does London justice; it's home to more than 9 million people, which is greater than the population of some countries, and it's estimated that 300 languages are heard among its many residents. I didn't hear anywhere near that number at Stansted ..read more

This headline from a popular British newspaper doesn't surprise me: “UK voted worst country in Europe at learning other languages.” That was in 2016, the year in which 17 million people voted to leave the European Union in the Brexit referendum, triggering a political earthquake that continues to be felt today. Politics aside, though, why are Britons notoriously bad at learning another language? It's not an easy question to answer, but in this post I will attempt to do just that. Anyone who has watched the first episode of the Netflix series “Red Rose” will have seen a group of sixteen-year-o ..read more

Aberto. That's Portuguese for 'open'. It's also a spell used to unlock doors in the magical world of Harry Potter, brought to us by J. K. Rowling. The hugely successful author at one time taught English in Portugal, so it's understandable that she drew some inspiration from the language spoken there. Latin and Greek also influenced the language of spells in the Harry Potter series. Where does the word 'spell' come from? According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, it has its roots in Old English and is similar to the Old Norse 'spjall'. However, the other meaning of 'spell', to form words by ..read more

I was born on the 3rd of June, 1977. It was a Friday, although I was obviously unaware of that at the time. There were many things I would not have been aware of, like Queen Elizabeth’s Silver Jubilee, the first democratic election in Spain after years of dictatorship, and the untimely death of Elvis Presley. The first Star Wars film was released that year, and NASA launched its Voyager spacecraft, which would help us to learn more about our solar system. I would spend the next two decades learning about more earthly pursuits, however. I played computer games and watched MTV, fairly typical o ..read more