Imagine a child reading the story of a refugee girl who crosses the sea to flee a war. By the end of the book, that child has not only learned new words: they have felt fear, hope, anger, relief… This is one of the powers of literature: its ability to make us experience other people’s […] … learn more→
Blog Archives

This is how reading helps us put ourselves in the shoes of others.

Digital writing: a challenge for teaching?
Acquiring written language is a complex process that spans an entire school year. And the omnipresence of digital tools requires rethinking how we learn, as screens require a different way of processing information. From notebooks to computers or smartphones, the logic is no longer the same. Here are some ideas for reflection. “Writing is not […] … learn more→

Less syntax, more impulses… The challenges of writing in the digital age
The digital environment is profoundly changing the way we write. Fewer rules, more reflexes: writing is becoming fast, spontaneous, often dictated by voice or copied and pasted. A new chapter in a story that began over 5,000 years ago. Writing was born under the sign of economy and memory (pastoral accounting, recording of debts). Around […] … learn more→

What is pedagogical translingualism and how does it promote language learning?
Do you use words or phrases from other languages in informal get-togethers with friends or when sending text messages? In what language do you discuss a movie you’ve seen in the original English version with someone else? Has a second or foreign language teacher told you that you can’t use your first language in class? […] … learn more→

Trump’s English language order upends America’s long multilingual history
Across its nearly 250-year history, the United States has never had an official language. On March 1, U.S. President Donald Trump changed that when he signed an executive order designating English as the country’s sole official language. The order marks a fundamental rupture from the American goverment’s long-standing approach to languages. “From the founding of our […] … learn more→

Most ‘words of the year’ don’t actually tell us about the state of the world – here’s what I’d pick instead
It seems to come earlier every year: publishers and dictionaries choosing their “word of the year”. Initially intended to sum up a meaningful trend or feeling that represents the past year, the exercise is now becoming a competition to identify and highlight fashionable slang. Collins went with brat, the Charli XCX album phenomenon as applied to […] … learn more→

Polarization, brain rot and brat – the 2024 words of the year point to the power, perils and ephemeral nature of digital life
Ever since the American Dialect Society selected a Word of the Year at its conference in 1990, over half a dozen English dictionaries have anointed an annual word or phrase that’s meant to encapsulate the zeitgeist of the prior year. In 2003, the publisher of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary began bestowing a crown. On Dec. 9, 2024, it selected […] … learn more→

Before teaching how to read, we should teach how to speak.
Do you know what you spend 75% of your time doing? Communicating orally . Specifically, we spend 30% of our time talking and 45% of our time listening. Spoken communication is so intrinsic to being human that it seems natural and instinctive to us, something we don’t need to specifically learn. But that’s a mistake. When we […] … learn more→

Could we ever decipher an alien language? Uncovering how AI communicates may be the key
In the 2016 science fiction movie Arrival, a linguist is faced with the daunting task of deciphering an alien language consisting of palindromic phrases, which read the same backwards as they do forwards, written with circular symbols. As she discovers various clues, different nations around the world interpret the messages differently – with some assuming […] … learn more→

Beyond vocabulary and grammar: learning biology or history in English
Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is a teaching model that uses an additional language (often a foreign language) as a tool in the learning of other subjects, such as Biology or History. Through this methodology, students learn both the content of the subject and the language in which it is taught . This method is used differently […] … learn more→