Short & Scary

This was the title of the BritLit event I attended in London last Thursday. I’m really thankful to the BC for having sponsored my participation because it was really worth going to London for that. Basically Fitch presented about the BritLit project but he also had Louise Cooper and Romesh Gunesekera reading for us. It [...]

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Intertextuality

We are having a really fascinating discussion at the LMCS Group about Intertextuality. Robert Hill is our fielded this time and he’s been doing a superb job. Actually, he’s going in a quite different direction of what I expected because instead of tackling the topic from a sort of Kristevian point of view he is [...]

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Trainee teachers e-reading group

I still don’t know how successful this project will be in the months to come but the beginning is really promising. When Sanghita and I had this idea last year and piloted it, we could not foresee that so many teachers would like to join the project in a second phase. Now we are starting the [...]

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Discussing Graded Readers

For the last couple of months I have been giving a very humble contibution to a working group we opened in the Extensive Reading Foundation to review the principles and procedures of the Annual Award. Unfortunately, being a newcomer to the ERF. I fear I did not have much to contribute; I mean, comparing to [...]

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Novel Week

We have just finished the Novel Week at the IATEFL Literature, Media and Cultural Studies Discussion List. It was the first time we had an online event without a fielder and, in my point of view, it was an interesting experience.
Certainly, having someone with some in-depth knowledge in some field and a reputation in ELT [...]

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Books, books, books

I’m more and more convinced that literature must definitely come back into the language classroom, but to get its way there it is fundamental that teachers themselves rediscover books and the pleasure of discussing about them.
Today we are starting our first Novel Week at the IATEFL Literature, Media and Cultural Studies SIG discussion group. It [...]

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‘Read in order to live’

The sentence above is not mine. It ’s Gustave Flaubert’s and I have also included it in some material I am reviewing for the Critical Literacy project and which proposes a critical approach to the teaching of literature in ELT.
More and more Literature and ELT are walking together for me. The more I read other people’s articles [...]

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What’s in a name?

Indeed, this week this famous Shakespearean question should be asked about the man himself. What’s in his name that still attracts so many of us? People are in favour or against using Shakespeare in ELT; they are in favour or against using simplified versions; they are in favour or against modernising his language; in favour [...]

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‘Don’t let him rest in peace’

This is going to be a busy week indeed. Besides the e-tutor course and all the other online stuff, I am also moderating the LMCS fielded discussion on Shakespeare which started this Sunday 1st June and goes on for a week.
Shakespeare in ELT is our third fielded discussion in the SIG and Alan Pulverness kindly [...]

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What is new in the New Year?

Although I really don’t think many things change just because we turn over a page of the calendar, we have to reckon that since times immemorial we have let the rhythm of the seasons control our lives. And so it must be and the days around the winter solstice are also the days that bring the [...]

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