3 October 2023: my latest blog is A linguistic landscape of Portobello, the seaside area of Edinburgh where I live; a linguistic landscape is the collection of different languages on display in a public space; it tells us which languages are in actual use in a particular community; my blog concludes that the linguistic landscape of Portobello reveals the overwhelming dominance of English; there is very little evidence that Gaelic and Scots are indigenous languages of Scotland; read the blog here
29 August 2023: the second blog being posted today is Comparing texts using systemic functional grammar; it is an attempt to introduce the little-known approach of systemic functional grammar and illustrate the insights it can provide in analysing and comparing superficially similar texts; read the blog here
29 August 2023: today I am posting my first blogs since March; they are both based on assignments for my Masters in Applied Linguistics (at Birmingham University) which I have been doing for the last three years; the first blog is The role of motivation in second language acquisition; in it I consider two interrelated issues which have long fascinated me as an English language teacher, namely the key factors that motivate someone to learn a foreign language and the ways in which teachers can improve students’ levels of motivation; read the blog here
3 March 2023: my latest blog is Permissible word combinations in English; it is a study of the type of fixed expressions we use such as ‘come to light’ (to mean something becoming discovered or known) and the difficult task of explaining why some word combinations are permitted but others are not; read the blog here
29 September 2022: my Life in Scotland resumed today; I’m looking forward to discussing a fresh set of topics over the coming months
22 July 2022: my latest blog is A corpus study of whether and how language use varies by social class; I conclude that, while there is little strong evidence, there is a lot of weaker evidence that middle class and working class speakers use language differently in terms of the range of their vocabulary and the complexity, formality and authority of their linguistic constructions; read the full blog here
19 July 2022: although my Life in Scotland class has finished for the summer, I intend to add new topics every so often; today I have published a Text on Walter Scott and the invention of Scottishness; if you think of the Highlands, kilts, tartans and clans when you think of Scottishness, you have Walter Scott to thank, or blame, for that
14 July 2022: tonight I had my last Life in Scotland class before a break for the summer; we have covered 21 topics and the course has been a huge success - at least I think so!
26 June 2022: today I’ve published my latest blog, Using a corpus to investigate grammar mistakes; this is a companion blog to two earlier ones in which I tested how well Grammarly picked up on supposedly common grammar mistakes; my rather humbling conclusion is ‘that at face value my hunches as to which mistakes are made by British English speakers do not perform any better!’; you can read the blog in full here
26 June 2022: my first News entry for three months but I have been busy, primarily in building up my Life in Scotland course; there are now 19 Texts and supporting Study materials
17 March 2022: today I have completed a full revision of my Grammar course
3 March 2022: my course on Life in Scotland is going well; there are now six Texts uploaded and in addition I have started uploading supporting Study materials
20 January 2022: my new course on the theme of Life in Scotland starts today; each class will be centred round a short text on some aspect of Scottish life; today I have uploaded the first, introductory Text on Scotland today
10 January 2022: today I resumed my Level 5 (also known as Upper Intermediate or B2 level) class for Edinburgh Council after the winter break; I am delighted that we are able to meet face-to-face - it is so much better than meeting on Teams as we were doing during lockdown!
6 January 2022: I have just published my latest blog, Is Scots a language or a dialect?; I conclude that Scots is still ‘a separate language albeit one which, because of the fall in the number of users and uses to which the language is put, is slowly dying’; you can read the blog in full here
5 January 2022: I’m continue to revise my Grammar Course; today I have uploaded revised versions of units 8-15 inclusive
3 January 2022: I’m looking forward to 2022. Amongst other plans I have, I am starting a new course for Upper Intermediate or Advanced learners of English on the theme of Life in Scotland. At first, this course will only be open to my existing students but I hope in the future to be able to offer it more widely