Afghanistan again

I've been reading about Afghanistan again, another book by a young Brit. Rory Stewart this time - officer, Oxford graduate, diplomat, deputy governor in Iraq, Harvard fellow, founder of charity, walker, OBE, writer and now candidate for the Conservative party in Penrith and Border - and he is only 36. The book is about his walk across Afghanistan in 2002, which was part of a longer walk, from Iran through Pakistan, India, Afghanistan and Nepal. He just up and walked. Alone, most of the time, through difficult terrain, hostile tribal areas and often without any connection back to the "civilised" world." I am just so impressed with this guy. And he seems like a nice person too, neither arrogant nor superior, though you have to have a rich supply of self-confidence to accomplish what he has done.

One of his objections to the western military intervention in Afghanistan is that the west tries to fit a western idea of government, state and democracy on to a region that is just too diverse. In an article in the Daily Telegraph this summer, he explains: "It is impossible for Britain and its allies to build an Afghan state. They have no clear picture of this promised "state", and such a thing could come only from an Afghan national movement, not as a gift from foreigners. Is a centralised state, in any case, an appropriate model for a mountainous country, with strong traditions of local self-government and autonomy, significant ethnic differences, but strong shared moral values? And even were stronger central institutions to emerge, would they assist Western national security objectives?" I think he has a point, and the full article is well worth reading, as is his book.

Let the students do the work!

One of the classes I teach consists of a group of electricians-going-to-be-electronics-engineers - viz. very technically knowledgeable people (unlike me). Our English coursebook is not exactly the best I've come across (I'm being diplomatic here, it is really quite extremely dull, thankfully we've found a new one for next year), so I have struggled to come up with good texts as additions to the ones in the coursebook. Not being particularly interested in technical issues, I found it difficult to pick out which texts could be interesting and on a suitable level of complexity for the students. Then, lazy as I am, the idea struck me to let the students do the searching, so over the past couple of months, this is how we've worked: once a week, one student is responsible for 1) finding an article he (I'm not discriminating here, it's an all male class)thinks is interesting, on a naval or technical subject, 2)copy it and bring it to class where everyone reads it (so it can't be too long, a page or two), then 3) he goes through vocabulary, focusing on the naval/technical words of the text, and 4) tries to get a discussion going in class about the topic of the text.
I must say the students have done a good job on this, we have read about global warming and the opening of the Northwest Passage; electron beam freeform fabrication; the expanding Chinese Navy; the surveillance capacity of air force drones; and advice on how to save energy at home, among other topics. We usually spend a 40-minute lesson on this, and it gives the student in charge of the article practice in both chairing a discussion, and selecting and explaining complex vocabulary. The rest of the class get to read an interesting text, chosen by a peer, learn new words, and discuss. Nice work indeed.

The Junior Officers' Reading Club

I just finished reading young ex-officer Patrick Hennessey's bestseller The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars, with a view to using it as a set text for our first-year cadets. Unfortunately, I don't think it is well suited to our needs; the language is quite complex, and it presupposes quite extensive knowledge of the British military organisation and culture, so I guess we'll stick with the old memoirs from the Falklands War, One Hundred Days and Four Weeks in May.
(Aside: what we definitely could use is a new little naval war involving at least one of the English-speaking states of the world, and someone writing a whopping great book about it, complete with a lot of mesmerising navy and ship facts. That would both modernise and fancify (is that a word?) our curriculum.)
I don't think this book was quite as impressive as the reviews suggest, although it is interesting that a very young officer writes about his very recent experiences in a conflict that concerns us deeply. The title of the book is rather misleading, the Reading Club plays a very small part, and he writes mostly about training at Sandhurst, boredom in Iraq, and exhausting operations in Helmand.
What I found quite interesting is that his descriptions of his thoughts and feelings about being a soldier, like the yearning to see action, to prove himself, the intense feeling of being alive (the adrenalin-kick) during combat, and the feeling of being out of place when he is back home in London on leave for a few weeks, correspond very closely to observations made by historian Joanna Bourke in a 2001 Guardian article.
Comradeship, the craving for real action, the joy of destroying the enemy - these are ingredients in the life and experiences of soldiers that set them apart from "normal" civilian life, as Patrick Hennessey confirms in this interview:

Civilised places: Salisbury

This summer we spent a day and a half in Salisbury, Wiltshire, on our way from Devon to Gatwick. It was quite a coincidence that we ended up there; we were looking for somewhere to spend the last night not too far from the airport, and our first choice, Winchester, didn't have a single available room anywhere ("it's the wedding season", one B&B hostess explained). So Old Sarum it was, and we found rooms at a very respectable B&B, the Victoria Lodge, with a cheery, formidable and serviceminded landlady.
This was located a ten-minute walk from the city's market square, and we could walk along an idyllic riverside path, watching ducks, swans and other birdlife with their offspring on the way.
Salisbury turned out to be just the sort of English city I like; not very large so that you can walk rather than drive around; good restaurants (we had fantastic Italian food at Strada, and "the world's best hamburger", according to my son, at the Best Western Red Lion Hotel Lounge & Bar - it looked distinctly unpromising at first, but we were hungry and it was late, and it turned out to be a very good choice), very decent shopping facilities (this was where I finally found my "Keep calm"-mug) and a cathedral of really outstanding beauty. There was a Sunday service on when we went to see it, so we even got to hear the choir sing.
Civilised, extremely civilised.

Gone to meet its Maker!

Just testing to see if I still remember how to embed videos. The Parrot sketch is always worth reviewing.

Keep Calm and Grow a Mustache

Keep Calm and Grow a Mustache
Originally uploaded by 3LambsStudio

More keep calm variations

Keep Calm Parody - Blue
Originally uploaded by 3LambsStudio

Keep calm variations

CARRY ON!

This is the image on my new and stylish mug, one of my many purchases made in England this summer (Whittard in Salisbury). It was originally a poster published by the Ministry of Information (or Propaganda?) during the outbreak of WWII in 1939. The crown of King George and the reassuring message was intended to convey to the public that everything possible was being done to defend the country.
I have brought the mug to use at work, since I think the slogan is very appropriate here as well. In my department we have another motto which we quote to each other when the powers that be organise and make decisions we don't necessarily agree with: "Nicht ärgern, nur wunderen", but anglophile as I am, I like this one better.

More interesting phrases

World history is of course shaped by wars. After reading the rest of this year's exam papers, I have gained new insight into some lesser known aspects of various 20th century conflicts. In the Second World War, for instance, "the German Luftwaffe tried to crimple the UK by fighting the RAF", and "in 1941, their proud battleship Bismarck was intercepted in the Denmark Straight (sic!) by HMS Prince of Whales" (Charles, obviously).
In the Yom Kippur War "the Egyptians attacked across the Sinai with armoured colons", which was probably even more efficient than the "Viet Cong soldiers who were small and lightly armoured". They were of course assisted by "the North Vietnamese Army, a small potato compared to the US", according to one agriculturally minded candidate.

This year's interesting exam phrases

I'm DONE marking the exam papers, and have as usual collected a - shall we say "bouquet" - of interesting phrases from these papers, mostly from the translation assignment, a text about the ill-fated cargo ship Alrita that sank in March.
Apparently, one of the reasons she sank was because "there was discovered a leek in the hull" (dangerous stuff, vegetables), but also because "the cargo had removed itself" (to where, one might wonder - "lasten forskjøv seg" was the Norwegian version), or "because the baggage moved". Two of the crewmembers had to jump into the sea to save themselves from the sinking ship, and "they didn't have emergencydress on" - this is obviously the kind of dress you wear when your best ballgown is at the cleaner's.
In an essay about the US President and his tasks, I learnt that "A leader's general job is development, security of his undertakers and people, justice and results". I was not aware that the undertaking business in the US was so important to the federal government. Must have watched too little "Six feet under".
I could also go on at length about 1) the various ways one can spell which, 2) write a date the wrong way, or 3) the sheer impossibility (it seems) of distinguishing between damage and damages. But I won't, even though I am Grammar Nazi.

I don't know how they do it

I have been very busy lately. At least to my standards. Teaching, exams, meetings, application deadlines, babysitting, house guests, giving parties and going to parties, plus the usual taking-care-of-the-family things (cooking, laundry, hoovering, tidying, shopping) - so I've been very tired. And this starts me wondering how all those other people out there (who actually have really busy lives) manage. I read in the papers about people my age (and, yes, even in their THIRTIES) who have wildly successful careers (editors, lawyers, business managers, scientists, doctors) and who probably have 10-hour working days, but still have three or four kids, participate in politics or do voluntary work, coach their kid's football team, go to the gym three times a week, manage the upkeep of both their house, garden and cabin in the mountains, and of course take their kids on bracing all-day hikes in the mountains, with campfires and rappeling down cliffsides every Sunday.
Ok, I realise that they:
1) probably have a cleaner to do their house.
2) don't spend an hour or two in front of the telly in the evenings, watching Fawlty Towers or Spooks on dvd.
3) have developed unique efficiency in everything they do (everything I do has a tendency to fill all the time I have available, no matter if it is one or sixteen things).
4) never feel the need to do nothing at all.
5) are not innately lazy.

But still.
I'm not really busy, but still I have very very few open spaces in my schedule. I would like more time to stand and stare (or, to be perfectly honest, to laze around and do absolutely nothing for a few weeks):

What is this life if full of care
We have no time to stand and stare?
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep, or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this, if full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

William Henry Davies 1871 - 1940

End of term revels

Today was the last day of teaching before the summer, and my class and I celebrated by watching my favourite episode of Fawlty Towers, "The psychiatrist". Should have had tea and biscuits too, of course, to make it a proper occasion.
Many great phrases stem from Fawlty Towers, most notably "Pretentious, moi?", and "Don't mention the war!".
In the rather cool spring evenings we've had lately, Hubby and I have enjoyed ourselves by watching FT again, one episode per night. We've both watched them a number of times, but they're still absolutely hilarious - I don't think I know any better comedies than this.

http://

Time for Chaucer

Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages-
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunturbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for the seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.

I can't boast very extensive knowledge of Chaucer, but I do have some fond memories from the Canterbury tales in the Middle English course at "hovedfag", way back. Our lecturer, an expert on northern English dialects had until then seemed like a rather stern sort, prone to giving back intonation exercises with the scathing comment: "Middling!". Or worse. But for some reason, Chaucer brought out his great sense of humour (albeit of the dry kind), and he enthused at length about the birds in the prologue here, who slept "with open eye", i.e. one eye open and one shut (hilarious!), and the Wife of Bath, who was "ywympled wel" (line 472) - imagining her headgear brought great amusement. Well, this was 1992, we weren't used to much.

Another fond personal Chaucerian memory is of course the first page of my favourite author David Lodge's novel Small World (1984), where he starts off with a modern language version of the lines above. The novel is about the great migration of academics in the summer season, like pilgrims they fly hither and tither on conferences all over the globe. This was obviously when university travel budgets were considerably more generous than now.

Aprille is of course also exam season - tomorrow we have orals. My listening tests are ready, I wonder if my cadets are.

There's a lizard in my gizzard

There's a lizard in my gizzard
Originally uploaded by Rock and Racehorses

Flickr is full of interesting stuff. I just had to post this.

Keeping my head above water

Exams are looming. This means making ingenious, feasible, creative tasks that will make my best students shine and my poorest students see hope. The written exam includes translation (naval English!) and an essay, the oral exam a listening test (new this year! I am a keen customer of BBC newspods at the moment) and conversation on topics from the curriculum.

Luckily I have two colleagues to share this with - cooperation is a Good Thing. What I struggle with now is to come up with an essay question that ideally involves a new angle on a book we read; One Hundred Days (written by Adm. Woodward, the UK task force commander in the Falklands War). Not very easily done, as we have used this book for a number of years, and pretty much exhausted all possibilities. Tweaking an old exam question should be possible, but what to choose? Leadership? Tactics? Politics?

Apart from exam ponderings, I try to juggle all events on the home front. Not easily done either, as it suddenly dawned on me that we are to look after the neighbours' two kids three days next week. This was agreed a long time ago, but I omitted to fill it in on our "booking calendar" (aka b.k.), where all activities are displayed, and then promptly forgot the whole thing. In the meantime, we have of course filled the b.k. with other activities: a house guest, extra teaching early in the morning, hubby will speak at an evening seminar (which means yours truly is in charge of four kids, evening meal, and bed that evening, I'm exhausted already), and a gentlemen's wine&dine evening. Great.
What worries me a bit is this complete dependency on writing things down (preferably on the b.k.) in order to remember them. One of my colleagues claims never to have written down any appointments or activities in his life. How does he do that (he is a mathematician and obviously equipped with a different sort of brain from mine) - I suspect that he lets his wife remember things and relies on her to remind him. Hah!
Anyway - too much to do, and too good weather outside. Birds chirping, trees sprouting tender green leaves, nice temperature, no rain. What am I doing inside. Oh, that's right. Making exam questions.

Mrs Belly-ache

I feel Grumpy Today
Originally uploaded by ! . angie_real © Angela Lobefaro . !

I see that there is a risk that this blog will be used to let off steam about all sorts of difficulties and grievances related to the teaching of English to occasionally not-so-receptive (or not-particularly-hard-working) learners. That is not my intention, and I shall endeavour to keep to a philosophical and questioning attitude.

Bad grammar makes me [sic]!

I intend to write more than once about grammar, teaching grammar, learning grammar, etc, etc, as this is a subject that mars my professional life. I mean, I've been repeating the (very simple, this is not rocket science!) rules for concord ad nauseam for 13 years at this academy - and still the cadets don't get it? Of course they are new cadets every year, but still?!

On a more serious note, I often wonder why it is that grammar is so hard to grasp for the cadets. We try to give them a "toolbox", a handful of rules targeting frequent mistakes areas, like concord, it/there, genitive, adverbs/adjectives, who/which etc, so that they should be able to monitor and correct their own language, but I must confess that I am not convinced of the effectiveness of this strategy. (Just managing to write with instead of whit seems to be beyond some learners).

When I was writing my dissertation, I read a lot about Stephen Krashen's theories of language acquisition, and was utterly convinced of his input + 1 thesis (if you are exposed to slightly more complex language than your present level of competence, your brain will "make up the difference", and your competence will develop automatically), and we also have a "monitor", an innate ability to check our own output (parole) against the language system (langue) that will, with exposure to enough language help us speak and write with increasing skill and correctness.

Krashen was criticised by many for being too vague and too optimistic. I still think there is a lot of truth in his theories, even if they have not been sufficiently substantiated. However, most young Norwegians have since childhood been exposed to enormous amounts of English language, in tv, films, music, internet and so on - so the input side of things should be taken care of. Still their performance/parole in many cases has ample room for improvement, and my humble opinion here is that they have never, or at least very infrequently, focussed on language as a system, with rules and conventions, but primarlily on language as meaning. Of course the main point of language is to convey information of various kinds, to be understood, to give out meaning, but for second language learners it must be essential to keep an eye on the standard of their language so that they do not just avoid being misunderstood, but are actually understood. This concludes my musings today. More later.

(pictures courtesy of www.onehorseshy.com and Flickr)

What did I read today? And technical hiccups.

I'm rather pleased with the new assignment type I've come up with - initially as a crisis saving device (what on earth should we do in class today?), but it really seems to work quite well. The idea is that the students go to the school library, which is well stocked with magazines and newspapers of all kinds, each of them selects an article (sometimes I give a broad subject they must choose within, e.g. American politics, navy issues, technology) in an English-language magazine which they read, and then write a short report and post it to me either on it'sl or email. This way all of them are active, everyone reads something they have chosen (but worthy stuff!), and everyone writes something, which I try to give very swift feedback to. I plan to do more of this.

Then a little griping about technical limitations: our precious language lab was of course only half functional this week (what else is new? It never ceases to amaze me that we can put people on the moon, launch intelligent missiles, and I'll never really understand how a radio works, but getting that dratted language lab to cooperate for more than one hour without technical problems is just not possible), so I decided to do the listening exercise (very ordinary stuff, Economist audio article, listen & fill in missing phrases) in a classroom, just play the file from the class pc. This works a dream on my office pc, but not so in the classroom, as it turned out. A flashing message that a sound codec (who's that when he's at home?) was missing. Thus, my class got rather more time to do the "What did I read today"-exercise mentioned above than I had planned for - hope (springs eternal) it made them read more closely and spend slightly more time on their writing afterwards.

Jane Austen quiz

Take the Quiz here!

Canberra returns from the Falklands War

Canberra returns from the Falklands War
Originally uploaded by solentchris

Learning by doing is one of the purposes of this blog, hence the photos and videos in these entries - I'm trying to get familiar with using Flickr and YouTube and so on. Today's ambition is understanding what the delicious-tagging is all about.
But first: a triumphant picture of the Canberra (STUFT) returning home to the UK after the Falklands War. A lot can and has been said about this "conflict", one thing I'll say is that it makes a darn good subject for my English classes, as it includes both ships, war, English language and relatively recent time. Most other significant naval warfare happened when Nelson still had both of his arms and eyes.

Devon Coastline

Devon Coastline
Originally uploaded by Barry McGrath

This is what I hope to see a lot of this summer.

Dead parrot - one of Monty Python's best.

http://

Procrastination...

...is one of the things I do well. Today my little tootlepops (4) was unwell, and we stayed home. She was quite happy to lie on the sofa and watch telly, so this was an excellent opportunity to 1) start marking the pile of essays I brought home, 2) clean the house (at least partly), 3) prepare the listening material for my classes on Friday, etc, etc, etc. But how have I spent the day? Not doing any of the above, but rather - nothing. A lot of time fiddling with facebook to see if anyone had written anything interesting (not), about 50 (give or take a few) "edderkoppkabal" ( a good thing we're not yet into real computer games, I'd never get out of the house), several cups of tea, a lot of cuddling with tootlepops (that, I argue, is not time wasted, but well spent), and so on. Consequently, at the end of the day, the pile is just as tall, the house still messy and I still have a lot of teaching to prepare, in addition to bad conscience for being so lazy and not seizing the day, as it were. Oh well. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, and I hope to gather some tomorrow.

A first time for everything

Well then, I've taken my first belated and shaky step into the world of blogging. After reading Hubby's blog - and a few others - for some time, and especially after attending the It's Learning conference here in Bergen last week I feel a strong compulsion to join in the blogging mass.
I haven't really decided on the overall topic of the blog yet, it will probably be a concoction of this, that and the other. The title Nice Work is of course borrowed from David Lodge's excellent novel, and is supposed to hint that this will have something to do with my job as English teacher (I realised that I hardly write anything but messages, instructions and essay questions in English, so blogging should fill a void here), but also other aspects of my extremely interesting life (ha ha). I plan to use the It'sL blog for teaching purposes, and this one for - whatever else.
Hubby writes about politics, economy, books and wine - he's always got both insight and opinions on an enormous variety of subjects. Glamourbibliotekaren writes about music, perfume, fashion and feel-good stuff - not really for me either. Well, we'll see what happens.