About ten years ago an overseas student from South Korea who was about to fail a unit I was teaching left a suicide note under my office door. She described…
“Child pornography and English language learning”?! Could there be a connection?! Difficult to believe but true - I’m referring to a best selling English phrase book for Japanese high school…
The supermarkets of Germany are the site of a more sinister example of multilingual diversity marketing. The pictured chip packet leaps off the shelf with its mix of German, English…
London Dairy ad on a building in Abu Dhabi, UAE Igloo ad on truck in Abu Dhabi, UAE I’ve just come across a 2006 University of South Africa MA thesis investigating…
Not only is Korean an increasingly popular choice of study as a foreign language, now South Korea is also promoting the use of the Hangul script to write languages other…
Finally, today on Day 3 of our conference on Fostering Multiliteracies Through Education: Middle Eastern Perspectives someone asked “Where is the Arabic?” “How come a conference devoted to multilingualism and…
Our two plenary speakers It’s easy to have a good time at a conference on the spectacular campus of the American University of Sharjah and with such a great group of…
Exciting first day at the conference on “Fostering multiliteracies through education: Middle Eastern Perspectives” at the American University of Sharjah. Suresh Canagarajah, who blogs on academic writing and publishing in…
If you could choose to learn a foreign language, which one would it be? And why? Such choices are usually constrained by what is on offer. However, someone must choose…
Terms of address in intercultural communication can be a tricky business as Kimiesan pointed out recently. One would think that airlines with their international customer base and tons of market…
Ridiculous English signs English speakers sometimes like to amuse themselves with ridiculous English signage from around the world. www.engrish.com is a typical example and I have to admit that there…
Some people just can’t win it seems. Second language speakers are in that category. I can’t even begin to count how many people who have read a fraction of the…
The Blackwell Compass series is organizing an interesting-looking virtual interdisciplinary conference for the second half of October at http://www.blackwell-compass.com/home_conference. It's free and there's still time to sign up. Sneak previews…
Seeing that Kraft’s idea to brand their new Vegemite cheese spread as iSnack 2.0 has just backfired badly on them, I’m not so sure about the wisdom of talking about…