Thai alphabet Learning Thai has its many challenges but one of the great joys for me has been encountering the Thai script. At the start I felt like a five-year-old-child,…
Sheila PhamFebruary 11, 2011
I love public libraries. Here in Sydney, our family regularly spends time in our local public library and in the Persian library in Parramatta. We treat public libraries a bit…
Ingrid PillerNovember 24, 2010
Joe Hill front cover Today 105 years ago, on November 19, 1905, Joe Hill was executed in Utah. Although his name is rather forgotten today, Joe Hill was arguably one…
Ingrid PillerNovember 19, 2010
Working women on the move The International Gender and Language Association conference at Tsuda College, Tokyo, kicked off yesterday with a panel about Working Women on the Move organized by…
Ingrid PillerSeptember 19, 2010
In the past couple of years, I have been a passenger in Sydney taxis driven, inter alia, by an agricultural engineer from India, a civil engineer from Somalia, a surgeon…
Ingrid PillerAugust 27, 2010
Yesterday, the New York Times carried a heart-breaking story about an exceptional school principal forced from her position under No-Child-Left-Behind legislation in order for the school district to obtain federal…
Ingrid PillerJuly 21, 2010
English-Only at Bon Secours From what I read, there is a nursing shortage in the Global North. From North America to Japan and from Europe to the Gulf countries, rich…
Ingrid PillerJuly 19, 2010
This is the story of a young Pakistani man, let’s call him Reza. Reza spent his early years in what was then East-Pakistan and what is today a different country,…
Muhammad Ali KhanJune 10, 2010
If you are a student or a guest researcher (like me) in Berlin and you need to get or renew a visa or need to change your visa status, you…
Emily FarrellJune 4, 2010
Installment #7 in the mini-series on multilingual signage When I lived in Basel in Switzerland, my then-preschool child was just learning to make sense of the alphabet and to sound…
Ingrid PillerMay 22, 2010
Installment #4 in the mini-series on multilingual signage Toilets as an object of sociolinguistic research?! Not likely?! Think again! Today, I am going to discuss toilet signage as an indicator…
Ingrid PillerMay 7, 2010
I am one of Ingrid and Kimie’s PhD students. My research deals with second language learning and African resettlement in Australia. For my first guest blog, I would like to…
Vera Williams TettehApril 16, 2010
Non-English speakers’ access to emergency services in Australia is in the news again as a Melbourne man has been convicted of the murder of his wife. What makes the case…
Ingrid PillerApril 12, 2010
Japan’s aging population and the growing number of young Japanese shunning ‘3D’ jobs (dirty, dangerous and demanding) has resulted in an increasing demand for foreign nurses and eldercare workers. In…
Kimie Takahashi 高橋君江February 17, 2010
National holidays are there to celebrate the nation and the opinion pages tend to be full of self-congratulation on such occasions. Australia is no exception and one of the more…
Ingrid PillerFebruary 3, 2010
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