Good omen?

The day before staff from the School of Languages, Otago Polytechnic leave to attend the 2006 CLESOL Conference in Napier where we will present a paper - Daring to use English - a fire breaks out nearby on the hillside above Logan Park High School.

Hmm - students smoking in the bushes?



Wonder if this is a good omen or not . . .

Good Intentions

As you might gather from the date of this post, it was written on the Thursday before the Friday that the 2006 CLESOL Conference opens. Apologies for any typos, errors, omissions and the like. It's been done in a hurry . . . but I have every intent to update it and complete it ("Art is never completed, only abandoned" - was that Oscar Wilde?) hence 'Good Intentions' (can't you just hear the strains of the Beach Boys' Good Vibrations strumming gently in the back ground?).

But to work!

You may well have arrived here by following the address on the handout sheet my colleagues and I from the Otago Polytechnic School of Languages, Susan Mackinlay, Lidsey Shields and William Lucas (yours truly) gave out after our presentation: Daring to use English.

I had planned (and do plan) to make available here our powerpoint presentation complete with script, slides, audio and various links and other information. At this late stage, when we are still refining the actual text, it has become apparent that to have everything up and running beforehand is too big an ask.

Today, therefore, I post our script and include some of the photographs that we used. I shall give you our email addresses . . .

williaml@tekotago.ac.nz
lshields@tekotago.ac.nz
susanm@tekotago.ac.nz


and invite you to leave a short comment here. I would very much like to form a group of likeminded individuals involved in the sorts of activities that we do with our English language learners.

But for now, I have a placement test to run.

Time waits for no man!