Jolly Hunter

Just playing with SoundCloud to see what can be done.  The following clip is a reading of "Jolly Hunter" by Charles Causely.

Slightly Foxed

I have previously mentioned my habit of subscribing to journals and magazines for a year to see if they are interesting enough to sustain my attention, and the fact that most of the time I end up wondering why I bothered.

There are various things that turn up in my mail box (my actual mail box) which produce a reaction much like this:

"Oh!  I have mail!  Oh.  It's only that."

Slightly Foxed is different. The fourth issue of my subscription turned up in my mail box a couple of weeks ago, and I felt happy for the rest of the day.

Have you ever had something arrive in the mail that actually made you clap your hands and say "Oh, good!"? Well that's what Slightly Foxed does for me.

I discovered this wonderful magazine by dint of a piece of paper that fell out of a copy of Literature Review, which I bought when I was trying to find Good Reading in a news agency that didn't have it.

I often find reading about books is much more achievable than reading the books themselves. Good Reading is a nice bit of fluff that's great for finding out what books are out there. Literature Review is like the book reviews you find in the "boffin" section of the Weekend papers - can be good, but can be a bit like hard work.

Slightly Foxed is just a nice read. It's a collection of essays about reading. The contributors talk about a book or an author or a movement that touched them in some way. Any given topic about books seems to be fair game. How Wind in the Willows shaped someone's childhood; What it was like running a subscription library out of a department store; what one particular series of out-of-print mountaineering books has to offer a reader lucky enough to find them...

The contributors are novelists, magazine editors, reporters, librarians... People from all over the place, and they are all writing about something they find quite interesting. This makes for a wonderfully eclectic collection of articles.  While I must admit that I don't read all of the articles immediately, I find I've usually read the entire issue by the time the next one arrives in my mail box.

The journal is run out of a bookshop in London - one that has taken to reprinting out of print books as well as their own quarterly collection of essays.  I expect I'll probably have to visit that shop if I ever go to London...

Oh, and the magazine is just lovely, physically. They use a buff coloured paper stock that feels wonderfully smooth to touch - and my first issue came tied up in a ribbon (seriously). You feel like these people really love books - not only the content, but also the form.

Slightly Foxed has become one of the few journals I have subscribed to for a second year - and, in a real first, I've actually bought a book as a result of reading one of the reviews.  A real book.  Brand new.  In hardcover.  It cost money.  This is not something I usually do.

I would happily recommend this publication to anyone who likes reading - especially if they like discovering works they've never heard of before.  It's a bit like sitting down with a group of bookish friends and asking the question "have you read any good books recently?"

A Fantastic Language

I’ve been looking more closely at Esperanto lately, and I must admit it is a fascinating thing to look at.

When you look at what it was meant to be and the concept behind it, you realise the language is absolutely fantastic, in almost every sense of the word.

The idea – or, rather, ideal – of the language was that everyone in the world would learn it as a second language.  Everyone would, therefore, have at least two languages to use:  their own, and Esperanto.  You could know other languages if you wanted to, but you would be able to communicate with everyone in the world through the shared medium of Esperanto.

Esperanto – a planned language that is intentionally simple, making it more accessible to everyone.  Esperanto – a neutral language that belongs to no one country, so it doesn’t carry any political or cultural baggage.  Esperanto – a language that subtly teaches you how languages work, so that learning further languages becomes easier.  Esperanto – a language that is always and forever a Second Language, so that everyone is in the same boat of having acquired it as a language learner, and no one has the advantage of knowing it as their first language.

Esperanto – which is really fun to say.  I enjoy putting it into random conversations, just because the word feels good rolling off the tongue.  Try it – you’ll feel almost smarter and just a little bit exotic.

Esperanto – a constructed language acting as a free and accessible communication tool, to enable us all to talk as equals and discuss things like rational human beings, rather than going to war or something equally silly.  An idea so powerful that the Nazis felt the need to ban it.

It’s fantastic, in that it is both a wonderful idea and a complete fantasy.

There are a few problems with Esperanto, which get in the way of reaching the ideal.

For one thing, far from everyone learning the language, very few people actually do learn it.  As second languages go, it is mildly more useful than Welsh… but not much.

Then there’s the matter of neutrality.  While it may be politically free of baggage, it isn’t culturally so.  It is a European language – and, significantly, an educated one.  Almost all Esperantists have, or can probably get, a higher education.  If you tried telling a farmer in rural China that a language spoken by European scientists was free of cultural baggage, he would probably tell you that you were wrong.

And while the language might be intentionally simple and useful as a language learning tool (studies have shown that learners in Taiwan find Esperanto easier to learn than English, and English easier to learn after learning Esperanto), it really is a gateway drug to Indo-European languages.  Learning Esperanto won’t really help you with Korean to the same extent that it would help with English or German.

And as for the part where it’s always and forever a Second Language?  Well, that’s not strictly true.  There are actually people who speak it as a first language.

For a planned language that has been around for less than 150 years and failed to take off as a form of diplomatic communication, Esperanto has been surprisingly successful as a family language.  Members of the Esperanto community meet, marry and use the language around the house – which results in their children growing up bilingual or trilingual, with Esperanto as one of their “native” languages. 

The really interesting thing about this phenomenon is that it gives the language more “cred” with the average man on the street.  I’ve had conversations with people who sneered at the very thought of an artificially constructed language until I mentioned the native speakers – and suddenly they took it a little more seriously.  Most people (myself included, until recently) completely miss the point of a constructed language, thinking it’s somehow in competition with “real” languages, or a game rather than a tool.

I’ve just read a very interesting article by Sabine Fiedler (doi: 10.1075/lplp.36.1.04fie) in which she points out that native speakers are confusing the issue when it comes to the role Esperanto is meant to play and it’s worth as a language in general.  In it, she also asks whether the rise of English as an International Language (EIL) means we should stop letting native English speakers decide what is and isn’t right for English.  It’s the first time I’ve ever really stopped to question the way we assume the native speakers are the be-all and end-all of a language. 

Is there an international standard of every language that should be determined by the people using the language as a co-operative tool, rather than the people who grew up with it?

And has EIL completely taken over from what Esperanto was meant to be?  Is there hope for the grand vision of the language yet?

Maybe.  “Esperanto” means “hope” after all…

In Action

When I was a child, I was absolutely held in thrall by an educational programme that would occasionally screen in the mornings on ABC.

The ABC had a programming schedule that would alternate between educational programmes and children's entertainment, depending on the day of the week.  I can't remember exactly which day was which, but if you were watching morning television on, say, a Monday you would see cartoons and such, but if you watched on a Tuesday you'd see programmes about maths and chemistry.  I loved those.

They were part of an educational support programme that ABC was running for schools in the 80s and 90s.  The broadcaster would have a schedule of programmes, which it would send to teachers, and those teachers could then arrange to have their class watch TV at that particular time.  My grade 5 class watched the entire series of something to do with Australian settlers (I can't remember what it was called, but it was something generic like The Colonials).  However, I think most classes at the time couldn't quite structure themselves around live TV, so most teachers asked their schools to buy the videos, if such things were available.

Sadly, my mother insisted on sending me to school, so I didn't get to see many of the educational programmes on ABC but, thanks to the fact that Aunty* ran its scheduling based on the school calendar for the southern states, I could watch a couple of weeks a year when the Queensland holidays ran a week earlier or later.  I was always secretly pleased when any sick days coincided with an episode of Square One (a maths programme), or something equally dorky.

But the show I loved most - and one that would occasionally be screened early on Saturday mornings - was French in Action.

It was actually my mother who got me onto that show.  She had an idea, at the time, that we would watch the programme together and learn French - one she vehemently denies, now.  I don't know how she heard of it, but I do remember her saying that she heard it was a particularly good language programme.

It was.  In fact, I've never seen anything that can compare to it - not just in languages, but in televised classes in general.  FIA was simply one of the best examples of education design I've ever seen.  Even today, whenever I watch an educational show or listen to a podcast, I find myself thinking "that's kind of like what they did in FIA, only FIA did it better..."

If I explain the format, you'll recognise most of it.  Other programmes have used similar techniques before and since.  There was a plot running through the entire series - each episode would show a few short chapters of this ongoing story.  Snippets would be repeated, with particular words highlighted.  Those words would be shown in other context, spoken by a variety of other people in a variety of other settings.  The spelling of the word would be shown, and a mime would act it out - just to drive it home.

Everything (apart from an introduction right at the beginning of each episode explaining what we were about to see) would be entirely in French.  Even the "class discussion" (there was a "class" who would often discuss what was happening in the story) was done entirely in French.  The learner was expected to "pick up" the meaning of the words based on the context(s).

Did it work?

Well, on the one hand I don't speak French. On the other hand, I did spend a lot of my childhood randomly spouting French things like "Je déteste ce!" and "J'suis malade" - these are things I picked up from the programme, and still remember to this day.  I didn't pick up useful things like counting and the days of the week.  They might have been in the episodes I didn't see, or they might have been left out entirely.

When I took myself to French evening classes for one semester in high school, I found myself in the peculiar position of being the only person in the class who couldn't count to ten, but could say entire sentences (albeit rather short ones).

And I have to admit that I'm finding what little French I do know a bit sticky.  I'll occasionally come up with the French word when I'm trying to think of the German or Estonian (both languages I am actually trying to learn at present, as opposed to French, which I'm not).  One day I'll probably start learning French again, and I expect I'll find a few more traces of FIA floating in the back of my brain.

I think I can safely say that FIA gave me a foundation in French that would have proved rather useful if I had built on it by continuing with the language.  What it definitely did, though, was give me a benchmark for educational design.  So often I find myself wondering how we can bring the FIA way of doing things into our own educational what-nots.

And so, just to indulge myself more than anything else, I'd like to finish by outlining six educational design principles that I first discovered in FIA, which I believe are worth pinning to a notice board if you are going to work on a series of vodcasts or podcasts:

1. Never underestimate the value of light entertainment (people engage with stories and anecdotes - they always have and they always will)
2. Give people a heads-up - let them know what they should be seeing and learning as a result of watching (or listening to) this thing.
3. Repeat your keywords.  Feel free to repeat them a little too often.  They become stickier by being slightly annoying.
4. Embrace the pastiche.  By mixing and matching different techniques to emphasis the important parts of your message, you are making sure your audience doesn't start tuning your "voice" out as background noise.
5. Write short and write long.  Each part should be able to stand on its own, but become richer when experienced as part of a bigger picture.  One episode on its own should be perfectly fine.  Three episodes in sequence should be even better.
6. Offer context.  Offer lots of context.  Let them see what you are talking about, and see it from a variety of different angles.

*"Aunty" is a common nickname in Australia for the ABC (from back when it was the Australian Broadcasting Commission).  It indicates something that is a part of the family, but a little bit dowdy.

Formats

So, here I am wondering whether we've reached the point where I should automatically be weeding anything in our collection that's on VHS, when I walk past the store and notice we still have Beta...

Too Many Acronyms Spoil the Broth

Today I was sent an email that started with the following sentence:

"Last Thursday, CAUL approved the CAIRSS Future proposal developed by the CAIRSS Advisory Committee (CAIRSSAC). "

Now, I barely know what CAUL stands for, I have no idea what CAIRSS stands for, and I noticed they very rarely used CAIRSSAC anyway (but they did eventually throw in a COSIAC).  The same email also referred to an ARC and a COP without any description of what these might mean.

I think I was sent this email because I'm part of something for which all of these acronyms must surely serve a meaningful purpose... but I have to admit that I took one look at the wealth of things I did not understand and thought "this email is not for me".

Where poets go to die...

 I had been looking forward to seeing Florence for months.  Florence is the city where English poets went to die.  Keats died there.  Elizabeth Barret Browning died there.  At least one other person I can't remember at present also died there.  I know Byron visited for a while.  I was looking forward to seeing this famously beautiful city which attracted so many poets.  I found it incredibly disappointing.

The day in Florence we had scheduled in our itinerary dropped us in the heart of the old town - where the tourists come in droves and the Italians, Indians and Africans gather in droves to take their money.

Indian and African immigrants apparently try to make a living in Italy by selling baubles to anyone foolish enough to step off a bus and stand still for more than three seconds.  They also have great difficulty hearing, because it doesn't seem to matter if you say "no" (or even, "go away"), they will stand around thrusting their nick-nacks at you until you leave or another bus turns up.  This is, at least, better than the Italian beggars, who will cross themselves continuously and talk earnestly (and incessantly) about their bambini, as if invoking both God and children is a magic formula that can make you forget that you have said "no" several times already.

I have a policy about giving money to people on the street.  If you aren't playing a guitar, I don't have any change.  I'm willing to be flexible about the kind of activity you are performing (I saw a great example of some chalk artists doing their thing in Florence, and I gladly threw money in their hat), but you need to be doing something more than just sticking out your hand.

I found the streets of this part of Florence oppressive, and the Uffizi Gallery, while interesting, suffocating.  It was lovely, up until the point where I decided I had seen enough and I should leave.  I thought the sign that pointed to the cafe, toilets and exit was an indication that, seeing as I was near the cafe and had just used the toilets, I was somehow near the exit.  I kept following the signs that pointed to the exit...  And kept following them... and kept following them...

I found myself travelling through room after room of exhibits of things that would probably have been beautiful and fascinating, if I wasn't getting increasingly desperate to get out of the building.  It just went on and on for ever.  I would begin to suspect that I had actually passed the exit and was now in a different part of the building entirely, when I would see another sign encouraging me to keep going.  I started to feel like was trapped in a labyrinth full of art, antiquities, and three hundred thousand pictures of the Virgin Mary (almost all of them looking like she was either bored or depressed).

Just when I was starting to feel as depressed as the pictures of the saints I had seen (why do they all look miserable?  And why does St Sabastian keep turning up in weird places, looking somehow bored by being magically transported to the birth of Christ?), I found the gift shop.  "Huzzah!" I thought, believing I had finally found the exit.  Except, when I followed the signs, it took me to another gift shop.  And then another.  It was the museum that never ended.  I found myself on the verge of shouting "let me out!  Let me out!" by the time I finally found a door that lead onto the street.

Then I didn't really have time to get further out from the tourist-trapping inner streets.  I decided to come back the next day during my "free time" instead of going to Lucca, just because I wanted to give myself a chance to see the beautiful city that I had been told was here.  I hired a bike and rode around for a bit, and I found the gardens (that aren't free) to be quite wonderful... but in the end I think I would have preferred to see Lucca.  I didn't find the Florence I was looking for.