Skip to main content

Olympic experience

We've been caught up in all the excitement of the Olympic games and were lucky to get tickets for the basketball at the Olympic park. We also took the opportunity to watch the men's time trial going through Kingston, so we got caught a fleeting glimpse of Le Colonel Wiggo himself.

Le Colonel Wiggo sur le pont de Kingston
We got a superb impression of the organisation of the games in London. The Javelin train from St Pancras to the park was swift and comfortable, the welcome at the park warm and efficient, security fuss-free and friendly. The atmosphere around the park was exciting, food not unreasonably priced and of fair quality, and the venue we experienced was superb. We watched two basketball matches: Lithuania versus Nigeria and Great Britain against Brazil. We had the distinct impression that basketball fans have a short attention span, what with the constant entertrainment in the warm-up, time-outs and half time, Mexican waves, singing, kiss cams and chanting. It was a lot of fun.

The Lithuania match was one which made some minor headlines owing to the racist behaviour of a small group of fans. From our position we were only aware of the non-stop whistling from them every time Nigeria, clearly the inferior team, got the ball. Not quite the Olympic spirit. One Lithuanian fan was subesequently fined for his behaviour, which included making a Nazi salute at one of the black volunteers. He claimed, in his defence, that this was normal behaviour in sports venues in his country.

Talking of the volunteers, they were superb. Numerous, friendly, helpful and clearly glad to be part of the celebration.

The following day we found a spot on Kingston bridge to watch the time trialists speed through. This was rather exciting too, partly because we knew we were witnessing a British sporting phenomenon, partly because of the knowledge that we were sharing the excitement with many others. I took the chance to pay a visit to Tiffin School, close to the town centre, where I taught for four years from 1980.

Exciting times, as they say.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is skill acquisition theory?

For this post, I am drawing on a section from the excellent book by Rod Ellis and Natsuko Shintani called Exploring Language Pedagogy through Second Language Acquisition Research (Routledge, 2014). Skill acquisition is one of several competing theories of how we learn new languages. It’s a theory based on the idea that skilled behaviour in any area can become routinised and even automatic under certain conditions through repeated pairing of stimuli and responses. When put like that, it looks a bit like the behaviourist view of stimulus-response learning which went out of fashion from the late 1950s. Skill acquisition draws on John Anderson’s ACT theory, which he called a cognitivist stimulus-response theory. ACT stands for Adaptive Control of Thought.  ACT theory distinguishes declarative knowledge (knowledge of facts and concepts, such as the fact that adjectives agree) from procedural knowledge (knowing how to do things in certain situations, such as understand and speak a langua...
Post a Comment
Read more

Zaz - Si jamais j'oublie

My wife and I often listen to Radio Paradise, a listener-supported, ad-free radio station from California. They've been playing this song by Zaz recently. I like it and maybe your students would too. I shouldn't really  reproduce the lyrics here for copyright reasons, but I am going to translate them (with the help of another video). You could copy and paste this translation and set it for classwork (not homework, I suggest, since students could just go and find the lyrics online). The song was released in 2015 and gotr to number 11 in the French charts - only number 11! Here we go: Remind me of the day and the year Remind me of the weather And if I've forgotten, you can shake me And if I want to take myself away Lock me up and throw away the key With pricks of memory Tell me what my name is If I ever forget the nights I spent, the guitars, the cries Remind me who I am, why I am alive If I ever forget, if I ever take to my heels If one day I run away Remind me who I am, wha...
Post a Comment
Read more

Longman's Audio-Visual French

I'm sitting here with my copies of Cours Illustré de Français Book 1 and Longman's Audio-Visual French Stage A1 . I have previously mentioned the former, published in 1966, with its use of pictures to exemplify grammar and vocabulary. In his preface Mark Gilbert says: "The pictures are not... a mere decoration but provide further foundation for the language work at this early stage." He talks of "fluency" and "flexibility": "In oral work it is advisable to persist with the practice of a particular pattern until the pupils can use it fluently and flexibly. Flexibility means, for example, the ability to switch from one person of the verb to another..." Ah! Now, the Longman offering, written by S. Moore and A.L. Antrobus, published in 1973, just seven years later, has a great deal in common with Gilbert's course. We now have three colours (green, black and white) rather than mere black and white. The layout is arguably more attrac...
26 comments
Read more