25th January 2024

As a freelance writer most of my worktime is spent in isolation. This week was a bit different because I’ve had more professional social interaction than usual. It started last Friday when I took part in a panel discussion for IATEFL’s YLTSIG, as part of their web conference. The topic was inclusivity and specifically, whose job is it? The hour flew by and I enjoyed listening to my fellow panelists and considering my own responses. I attended a few other talks and really enjoyed a debate on Saturday about whether or not mobile phones should be banned in primary classrooms. All four speakers Emma Heyderman , Jen Dobson , Rachael Harris and Ayat Altawel gave convincing arguments in favour and against. Where do you stand? Other online meetings included a webinar organised by the ELT Publishing Professionals group about AI, with speaker Paulo Dantas . There was a record number of attendees. Wherever you stand on AI, it’s clearly a matter of interest. I had to leave before the end but will catch up with the recording shortly. The best part for me were suggestions of how we can use AI as writers and editors. What do YOU use AI for?

Keeping a record

I don’t normally keep records of things, apart from the really important stuff like invoices and payments ready for my tax returns. But at the end of 2023 when I saw a few colleagues summarising their own achievements or giving an end-of-year account of talks they’d given or books they’d read, etc. I thought I’d do something similar. I haven’t really worked out what I want to record so for now, it’s all going into my diary until I make my mind up. I recently advised a friend to do this and realised (not for the first time) that I wasn’t ‘practising what I was preaching’. Do you keep records of things? Books read? Books written? Webinars attended? Steps walked?

Graded Readers

I’ve been continuing work on the series of graded readers. Yesterday I sent in Draft 2 of Book 6. I’m now trying to pin down the ideas for the two remaining stories in the series so I ca get to work on both of them next week. I’m thoroughly enjoying this work and think readers might be one of my favourite things to write. I mentioned writing graded readers to John and he suggested I write a ‘G is for Graded Readers’ post for our ‘A to Z’ series. So I did. It should be up soon. Keep an eye on the bog here.

More pronunciation stuff

This week I discovered the youglish app. Do you know it? It’s great for language learners (not only English). Basically, you type a word into the search box and it gives you a list of hundreds of short video clips where the word is spoken. You can filter for different types of English (UK, US or AUS). I tried it for Spanish too and you get a choice of Spain or Latin America. I was wondering whether this was an app that I could incorporate into my work as a materials writer. I haven’t come up with anything yet. Let me know if something occurs to you.

What we hear vs what is actually being said

As an aside, while we’re on the topic of pronunciation (and Spanish), who among you have heard of C. Tangana? He’s a Spanish musician, a rapper, a composer … a bit of a whizz kid with a flair for writing lyrics and with a few Latin grammies under his belt. I have to admit I wasn’t that familiar with his work but he’s very much in the public eye and I’ve heard his name mentioned about a million times. Except not quite. It wasn’t until I read that he was going to be giving a TV interview this week that I realised that he wasn’t ‘Setan Gana’. This is quite fun but it got me to thinking about the importance of reading. Not just when you learn a new language but in any language. Have you ever had this happen?

Writing is seldom a linear process

This week an advert for a creative writing course popped up in my feed on a social media platform. It was being run by Harlan Coben, the highly successful mystery writer from the USA. I clicked to read more (These algorithms are scarily accurate) and learnt that when Harlan starts a new book, he always starts right in the middle. I find that fascinating. But thinking about it, it’s often what we do as materials writers when we start with some ‘content’ such as a text or a video, an audio or an image. When we write ELT materials it’s never a linear process. We move forwards and backwards and sometimes go round in circles. I often start at the end, with my objectives, and then go backwards, pausing and repeating as necessary. In terms of creative writing, I think it might be interesting to write a story using the ‘start in the middle’ approach. I’ll do that when I have a chance.

Bits and bobs

I’ve been mostly focusing on something non-work related this week, swimming. Some of you already know that I’m having one to one sessions with a swimming coach to perfect my technique and correct the bad habits I’ve picked up ever since I first started swimming as a child. Each time I have a session, I’m surprised to see how many similarities there are with learning to speak a new language. I’m currently at that stage where I can see the progess I’ve made but am fully aware of all that I have yet to learn (or acquire perhaps).

Have a great week everyone and, as always, thanks for reading.

Kath

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