This year, 2024, Earth Overshoot Day has been calculated for August 1.
Earth Overshoot Day is the day on which we humans have used up all ‘the sustainable amount of biological resources generated on earth’ (wikipedia):
Continue reading(Sequel to the Gapminder post)
Triggered by the gapminder question tile ‘Plastics in Oceans’, I created a lesson around the topic of plastics based on the text below.
History and Future of Plastics | Science History Institute
Continue readingUpdate 2025
Anna Rosling Rönnlund: See how the rest of the world lives, organized by income | TED Talk
Some years ago, I watched a TED talk given by the Swedish statistician and physician Hans Rosling and his son. Hans and Ola Rosling: How not to be ignorant about the world | TED Talk.
I also started reading his book ‘Factfulness’.
Continue readingThe Case of Soccer and Football
The European Championchip is in its last week, the English team is still playing and it is high time that I write my football/soccer related post before the tournament is over and football talk will rest for two years before it resumes with the World Cup 2026. Taking place in North America and Mexico, there will probably then be more soccer talk than football talk, at least among the hosts.
Why DO Americans call what (almost) everyone else calls football ‘soccer’? And why do they call a game pretty obviously hardly played with any feet ‘football’. American football comes across as a (rougher) version of rugby, so why wasn’t it called American Rugby?
Continue readingMuch of what I believe about learning – through experience and studies – I have already written about elsewhere (for instance in my post: ‘The Best Curriculum in the World’). But the topic regularly pops up in classes, often in connection with questions concerning memory – memorizing and forgetting – or when talking about ‘grammar’, where I still hear things like: “I hate grammar, I’m bad at grammar etc.”. Even from course members whose English is on an advanced level.
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The topic of schools, schooling, and education is one that frequently comes up. The reason is simple: education is of the utmost importance and many agree that our school systems do not always provide the best environment for learning. The whole structure is unnatural (large same age groups with one adult) and forces kids and adults (the teachers) into a strait jacket that might fit some, but many it doesn’t.
There have been educators who try to fight for better educational concepts, better schools, for approaches to education that consider the psychological and cognitive nature of humans. For concepts that cater better to our minds: our brain’s fascinating capability to figure things out, to recognize patterns, to be curious about our surroundings – and enjoy the whole process.
Continue readingThis topic has become a traditional choice at the beginning of the year. Last year’s post provides a little background to the topic.
Continue readingIn the podcast below from National Public Radio, Gregory Warner describes how he went from being obsessed with New Year’s resolutions to letting go of them. ‘Goal disengagement’ is the term; liberating yourself from old and repeatedly newly set goals, especially when, year after year, they remain unfulfilled.
Continue readingA great website I first found in 2014. And rediscovered in 2023. It has short podcasts you can listen to repeatedly for great learning effect.
Some I’ve listened to lately (updated May 12, 2024)
Related to Béyonce’s new album ‘Cowboy Carter’, there are several great podcasts. For instance: What her cover of ‘Blackbird’ means to a member of the Little Rock Nine.
(October 2023 update)
It seems, we will have to live with Covid 19 as an additional health threat here to stay. 2023 was very quiet in relation to the virus, and things feel almost ‘like before’. Every once in a while you hear of new infections, but the virus doesn’t seem to be as contagious as it was. Some changes in workplaces seem to have become more permanent. Office employees have returned to their offices at least for a few days a week, hybrid models and more flexibility seem to have become more common and Working from Home also seems to be here to stay. Since my class members are among those enjoying the flexibility of a hybrid working system, I am still mostly teaching online; and beginning to think whether I could become a digital nomad and work from a cottage at the coast or a tree house in the woods, or something like that – good internet connection provided.
Continue readingWhen explaining the differences between MUCH and MANY, the first observation is:
1. We use MUCH with countable nouns
2. MANY with uncountable nouns
Continue readingOr: There is no way around quantity: loads of exposure and practice if you want to develop skills or knowledge.
Continue readingPages from Netflix: The No Rules Rule, Section One, chapter 2
HIGH PERFORMANCE + SELFLESS CANDOR = EXTREMELY HIGH PERFORMANCE
Continue readingPages from Netflix: The No Rules Rule, Section One, chapter 2
SAY WHAT YOU REALLY THINK (WITH POSITIVE INTENT)
Continue readingBeing nice and treating each other with respect does not mean only saying what others want to hear. Harmony and cooperation is created by honest communication.
This post is about constructive feedback, and how important honest exchange is in every aspect of our lives. Avoiding open disagreement, hiding things away or pretending to be on the same emotional and intellectual plane when you are not, causes tensions and hurtful feelings; the opposite of what we actually intend.
In the short video below, the speaker, Bo Seo, argues that openly disagreeing with each other instead of pretending to be on the same level leads to richer human relationships.
This topic can be supplemented by pages from the chapter on candor in the book about Netflix’s company culture: No Rules Rules (summary of the book’s main points under link).
Continue readingThe word(s) of the year, sometimes capitalized as “Word(s) of the Year” and abbreviated “WOTY” (or “WotY“), refers to any of various assessments as to the most important word(s) or expression(s) in the public sphere during a specific year from: Wikipedia)
Another one of my favorite and recurring topics. Different dictionaries like Cambridge, Oxford, Merriam Webster, Collins, dictionary.com come up with WOTY lists every year. The ways they choose differ slightly and a brief summary of how they decide can be interesting for an introduction to the topic. Most dictionaries, though, choose the words that were looked up most frequently on their websites. The Wikipedia entry (above) describes some of them.
Continue readingThe pages below are from Louise Penny’s Gamache series book 16. It plays in Paris, France. The exerpt is an exchange between the wife of the main protagonist Chief Inspector Gamache from the Canadian Sureté, herself a retired librarian who worked in top position at Québec’s Bibliothèque et Archives nationales, and the Chief Archivist of the Archives Nationales in Paris.
Continue readingThe page below is from a very recently published novel. The author has written a large number of highly successful stories, many of which have been adapted to movies. He likes experimenting with different genres from science fiction, magic realism, fantasy, crime and suspense, to name just a few. His books often relate to current topics of social or political relevance, and frequently, though not always, include supernatural elements or twists. All stories evolve around human relations and conflicts. His strength lies in creating atmoshere and drawing the reader into the story – you feel you are there. He creates complex characters and a vivid sense and atmosphere of the locations or places where events unfold.
Continue readingThe English verb system in its basic structure is very regular and fairly free of inflection. It does not consist of 12 to 17 tenses as some sources claim. It is a combinatorial system whose building blocks are: two simple forms (traditionally called ‘simple present’ and ‘simple past’), two auxiliaries (BE and HAVE) and two participles (verb + ing, commonly called ‘present participle, and ‘past participle’). Together they can be combined to form various structures of different semantic complexity. This I demonstrate with the Verb Structure Circle.
Continue readingIn one of my classes, a participant showed us one of these traditional, never going to go away lists of verb structure combinations sold to students of English as ‘all the tenses of English’. Daunting. I have written about this in more detail on my page ‘The English Verb Structure Circle’.
The internet is full of pages that list these structures. (Some) English course books and grammar reference books present these kinds of lists too. I find them little helpful as they lack insight into the regularity of the English verb structure system. Besides the two ‘simple’ forms, they are lists of all possible combinations of the auxiliaries BE and HAVE plus participles, and modal auxiliaries plus participles. The two modes (factuality and modality) are not clearly differentiated from each other. Instead, constructions with WILL, for instance, are singled out and named as future tense of English.
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