Issues Book 2010

Well, the dust has barely settled on the 2009 English Exam (more posts about that particular 3 hourexperience later) and we’re already thinking of next year.
This week we saw the brand-new, pre-release, freshly minted and entirely rewritten Issues Book, which we’ve been working on for a while. It’s great to see it ready to go [...]

Exam stress? No worries!

The most recent issue of Teacher magzine (yes, there is such a thing) had some exam preparation advice from Su Dorland (author of Exam Stress: No Worries). A summary of that advice is here:

Understand the signs of stress,and recognise that they are likely to occur: irritability, procrastinating, sleepiness, ‘butterflies’ in the stomach etc.
Set reachable goals; [...]

Media Diversity?

We hear a lot about the diversity of our press, especially in comparison with other countries such as China, but it wasn’t really in evidence in the sports pages in Melbourne this week. Maybe some good advice would be to ‘think of the most obvious headline, and then think again!’.
‘Dream team’ 28/7/2009

Jumping Jack Flash 27/7/2009

Headline Watch

Students doing language analysis may like to know that the start of the footy season is often the silly season for headline writers, but cycling was the inspiration for my silly headline of the week.  This was from the Herald-Sun today on the news that cyclist Lance Armstrong had broken his collarbone:
‘Not So Arm Strong’
The things [...]

UL2P

Hmmm … got some “issues”? You bet – mainly around finance (bet you’re all really fascinated by all that!); and fires, at the moment.
You’ll be looking for a focus for your Persuasive Oral Presentation, and a pretty good one was covered by Mediawatch on Monday, Feb 16th. You can see the report (for now) on [...]

Context: conflicting reports!

You may well be asking, “How can my little (relatively) conflict-free existence posssibly offer anything that might generate something of worth (academic or anyotherwise) by comparison with the experiences of Arch Flanagan? Or of people in Vietnam? Or Bali? Or of those people who shopped in Omagh’s main street in 1998?”
Good question! The “short answer” [...]

Reading for context

As if you didn’t have enough on your plates! I have a suggestion that IS extra work, but which could be a bit of time-out, as well as adding something to your understanding of “The Kite Runner” AND which you might be able to use in the Encountering Conflict context study (or some of the [...]