BC 2007 Innovation Awards

This year started with very good news for ELT in Brazil. It may sound a bit pretentious to say that the prize awarded to our CL & ELT project is a national achievement, but to a very limited extension it is.   I still remember when Telma Gimenez came to HSS06 to talk to us about [...]

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Intercultural competence

Intercultural Competence was one of the main strands at the Hornby Summer School and now Sergio Mobilia from Argentina, and one of the HSS participants, has opened an ELTeCS discussion list on the topic. Of course, I asked him to take part in the group and it reminded me of one of my posts in [...]

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English Next – what’s next?

Thanks to the Carnival break I could finally finish reading English Next. I think we should all congratulate both The British Council on the initiative of supporting such work, and David Graddol on doing such a superb job. 
Apart from all the facts and figures, I’d like to comment on one of the last parts of [...]

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English Next – first thoughts

I started reading David Graddol’s English Next this morning. Unfortunately I could only get to the end of Part One so far, but in it David brings up again the topic of ‘the chapters in the history of English’ which I also mentioned in my previous post here and in the HSS closed forum (BC Online [...]

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Black & White…. and Grey?

The text below is the result of some reflections prompted by the Follow-up Discussion Group formed at the HSS.   I’ve decided to write my comments based on one of the questions posted in our closed forum, but instead of answering to it, I would like to question the very terms in which it was formulated.
• The decentring of English [...]

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Reflections on the HSS

This is an attempt to summarise our 10 days at the HSS. This is by no means an easy task and I started thinking how some paragraphs could give the readers at least a fair picture of what this group has experienced there at Pitangueiras. I do not aim at being inclusive – remember ‘all knowledge [...]

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HSS Last Days

This is our last day here in Sorocaba. Our work at the Hornby School is over but we are still lingering around as if we were trying to avoid the moment of departure. Saying goodbye to people with whom we shared most of our moments from early in the morning to late in the evening [...]

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My highlights so far

I thought it’d be a good idea to summer up the things that so far have really made me reconsider a number of suppositions related to the nature of English and their implications for classroom practice.
I’ll start with David Shepherd’s presentation on internet genres, not because I’m particularly interested in working with the internet , but [...]

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Report on Day 4

Hello everyone and welcome to the Hornby Summer School –Day 4!
Written by Nella (Peru) & reviewed by Chris (Brazil)
 
We started our morning sessions with a great warm-up activity Eleanor prepared and which made us all stretch our still sleepy bodies. We really thank her for that! Then we went straight on to our first academic presentation of [...]

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Welcome to My Blog

This is my first blog and I’m really excited about it. I do expect it to be a way of communicating my ideas on EFL and Literature and a way to receive feedback from other people working on these areas.
I’m currently participating in the Hornby Summer School in Sorocaba and, so far, the thing I’d [...]

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