The Grater Error: Typos, Prosody, and The Grauniad

The Guardian still has typos
Reading Time: 5 minutes

I’ll never forget the moment. Holding my first published book, freshly printed, heart full, fingers trembling… and there it was. “Grater.” Not greater. Grater, like the cheese kind. My debut, and suddenly, my credibility was full of holes.

My friend Rob Lowe put it best in a tweet that went viral (and viral for a reason):

“The best way to find typos in your work is to carefully and meticulously proofread it, publish it for public consumption, and then casually glance at a random page two weeks later.”

Been there. Still there. Typos have a nasty habit of hiding in plain sight until the ink is dry and the humiliation is irreversible.

The Guardian still has typos
Typos in the title, ouch.

[i]

Just this week, the Guardian ran a headline on US immigration policy that read: “US says Haitians can b deported.” B. Just b. You’d expect this from a teenager texting on 2% battery, not one of the world’s most respected newspapers. But the Guardian has long had a reputation for its bloopers. So much so that Private Eye affectionately dubbed it “The Grauniad” decades ago. The name stuck, because readers understood that even the pros mess up. And when they do, it’s often in full view of thousands, even millions.

So, what’s changed?

Plenty. Spelling has gone feral. Digital spaces invite informality, and informal writing—texts, tweets, memes—willingly discards capital letters, ignores apostrophes, and plays fast and loose with homophones. Caroline Tagg and others have pointed out that writing these days bears much closer resemblance to spoken language. Online, we’re not wrong; we’re expressive.

Online, Spelling: Wrong or Expressive?

There’s a kind of orthographic punk happening online. Misspellings and typos aren’t always signs of carelessness. Sometimes they’re performative—tools of irony, playfulness, or identity. As Zoriana Kunch and colleagues show in their 2022 study, spelling norms don’t hold equal weight across all communicative situations. In formal writing, spelling mistakes damage credibility. In online communication, they’re often the point.

Then we have intentional errors. “PWNED.” “Teh.” “I can haz cheezburger?” New intentional misspellings that have given birth to slang coinages. They’re memetic spells which carry tone, subculture, and affect. What looks like a typo to a proofreader is actually prosody in disguise. Funnily enough, when I type Grauniad into my word processor, no red-line indicates it as a misspelling, I guess it’s a canonical word now.

It is a common misconception to assume that writing lacks tone. “You can’t raise an eyebrow in Times New Roman” – perhaps not as true now as we once thought. In memes, the choice of Comic Sans has connotations of cheesiness (isn’t cheese grate [sic]). So we abuse the keyboard to mimic spoken language. We stretch words (“nooooo”), switch caSe to Show SarCasM (“YoU dOn’t SaY”), or ditch vowels entirely for that lean, nihilistic vibe (“pls stp”). These patterns are prosodic. They encode timing, sarcasm, volume, irony. They’re the linguistic version of side-eye.

Prosody, once the domain of speech, now exists in glitched-out fonts, broken grammar, and the deliberate mutation of spelling. In fact, it’s precisely because the written form lacks vocal nuance that we’ve invented these digital workarounds. Online, we spell badly to communicate better.

The Rise and Fall of Grammar Nazis

Of course, there’s always someone in the replies:

Your credibility is at stake. Learn to spell.”

Hail, the Grammar Nazi. A noble defender of there/their/they’re… who completely misses the point. In informal spaces, the tyranny of “correctness” often just signals gatekeeping. As digital linguists point out, the insistence on standard spelling is more about power than clarity. If someone types “your amazing” under your poem, you know what they mean. The correction adds nothing but smugness.

Even in academia, typos are not the apocalypse they’re made out to be. As Kyle Siler’s paper on publishing metadata errors reveals, mistakes in institutional names or author affiliations may be symptoms of deeper systemic issues—outsourcing, burnout, English usage—not carelessness or stupidity. Typos are human. And being human is not, contrary to popular belief, a disqualification from scholarship. My Grate example is a good example of this actually, as that book was professionally proofread and my publisher no-doubt paid a lot for the service.

Broken Spelling, Broken Systems

Something new is happening now. Students—tech-savvy, platform-fluid, and increasingly AI-literate—are deliberately inserting typos into their essays. Why? To avoid suspicion that they’ve used ChatGPT.

And it works. Because polished prose is now suspect. If it reads too smoothly, too grammatically, too un-humanly human, it raises flags. So they add a few awkward phrases, a missed comma, a random homophone swap. This is the new camouflage. A new kind of orthographic theatre—pretending to be less capable than you are in order to appear more authentic.

Fair play, I say. It’s rather poetic. Teachers have been picking students up on minutiae and correctness, claiming it to be as vital as their original content. Now, they have to fake it or we don’t believe their authorship. That’s some meta-level irony.

Meanwhile, when I write something on the whiteboard during class and spell it wrong (which I frequently do), I tell my students:

“Blame Bill Gates. He corrected all my spelling growing up.”

It’s a dad joke. They don’t get it. They shouldn’t try to.

In Japan, where I teach, the same digital drift is happening—but with Kanji. My students can still read complex characters just fine, but there has been a well-established trend of literate adults unable to write by hand. Predictive text has replaced muscle memory. Stroke order is abstract history. The brain used to remember; now the phone does, something I termed as Exomemory in my 2019 book, Augmented Communication. Don’t worry, that’s not the one with all the “grate” typos.

So yes, spelling matters. Until it doesn’t. Typos will always sting—especially when they’re your own. But in a world where machines write flawlessly, maybe a little imperfection is the last sign that something was truly human. So, I say to The Grauniad, just let it b. Typos are a kind of linguistic entropy. Annoying, yes. But sometimes charming. Occasionally revealing. And, in the long run, not that big a deal.

Unless it’s your first book. Then it’s soul-crushing.

Read more: The Grater Error: Typos, Prosody, and The Grauniad

Sources & Further Reading

The Grauniad: A Typo Becomes a Legacy

The nickname “The Grauniad” famously comes from Private Eye‘s long-running mockery of the Guardian newspaper’s early days of frequent spelling errors. Far from just trolling, it’s become a cultural marker of our tolerance (and sometimes affection) for editorial imperfection.
Read more at Word Histories

Reconceptualising Authenticity in Language Teaching and Learning – R. Pinner, 2016

This was my first book—yes, the one where “grater” made its rogue appearance. Despite the typo, it’s a serious deep-dive into how we experience authenticity in language education, and how it gets tangled with identity, motivation, and context.
Published by Multilingual Matters.

Augmented Communication: Contextualising Digital Language Practices – R. Pinner, 2019

This one looks at how we talk with (and through) our devices, exploring how digital tools shape the very way we think and communicate. Includes case studies on predictive text, emoji grammar, and even AI-mediated discourse.
Published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Exploring Digital Communication – Caroline Tagg

A fantastic overview of how online communication really works—from intentional typos and emoji-as-prosody to the messy creativity of internet language. Accessible, insightful, and deeply relevant.
Routledge, 2015.

The Peculiarities of Spelling Rules in Formal, Informal Handwriting and Internet Communication – Kunch et al. (2022)

This Ukrainian study compares how spelling is perceived and used across formal, informal, and online spaces. Spoiler: young people bend the rules differently depending on context, and the internet is basically a spelling sandbox.
Presented at COLINS-2022.

Typos, Misspellings and Other Accidents: Metadata Accuracy as a Measure of Publisher Quality – Siler & Larivière (2022)

A deep but entertaining academic look at how typos—especially in metadata—can reveal systemic issues in scholarly publishing. It even touches on how digital labor, outsourcing, and linguistic privilege play a role.
Available on SocArXiv.


[i] Note, by the time I wrote this article, they had fixed the typo. My calculations put the publishing late at night Friday and the correction early morning Saturday UK time. Just shows the power of a good night’s sleep, or the truth of my friend Rob’s observation.

Remembering The Forgotten Prisoners: What Peter Benenson’s Legacy Tells Us About Trolls, Fear, and Free Speech Today

Reading Time: 4 minutes

May 28th 2025

Sixty-three years ago today, Peter Benenson cracked open the global conscience with an article in The Observer entitled The Forgotten Prisoners. He wrote, among other things, of two Portuguese students jailed for raising a toast to freedom. A simple act met with a brutal response. His article was filled with other such examples, and it cited the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The piece was republished around the world, sparking a movement, birthing Amnesty International and changing the landscape of human rights forever.

And yet, here we are, in a digital age where the threats to free expression are no longer confined to prison bars and courtrooms. They’re buried in comment threads, blurred in memes, and whispered in the silence of the unsaid.

According to a Cato Institute survey, 62% of Americans say they have political views they’re afraid to share. Not “cautious about,” not “unsure of”. They are afraid. In the land of the First Amendment, that’s a damning statistic. It begs the question: why are they afraid? Afraid of what?

In many cases, it’s us. Or more precisely, the chilling effect of social media mobs, performative outrage, and weaponized partisanship. Speak your mind, and you risk cancellation. How many times have you voiced your opinion only to lose a friend or find yourself suffering from the adrenaline decay of some ridiculous, pointless argument with a stranger. But, if you stay silent you surrender your agency. It’s not a prison of iron bars, it’s a prison of self-censorship.

I was reminded of this tension years ago when I gave a keynote in Argentina. I’d rehearsed meticulously, ensuring I could finish on time to allow 15 minutes for audience questions. But when the moment came, not a single hand was raised, and so my talk ended up shorter than it should have been. Later, a friend explained: a journalist had recently “disappeared,” and a history of authoritarian crackdowns in the country had left people wary of speaking out, even in a university hall. Rather than an apathetic silence, it was residual trauma. That’s the long tail of oppression. It lingers, even after the dictator’s portrait is taken down.

Now, the very same tactics once used by despots to control populations are being echoed even in free democratic societies. Donald Trump hasn’t just revived his war on the press; he’s doubled down. He’s called journalists “the enemy of the people,” a phrase that wouldn’t sound out of place in Stalin’s playbook. In recent speeches, he’s slammed “fake news media” as “corrupt,” “dishonest,” and even “treasonous.” President Trump has a history of labelling the media as the “enemy of the people.” For instance, in a tweet dated October 29, 2018, he stated:

“The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People, must stop the open & obvious hostility & report the news accurately & fairly.” The Washington Post

This phrase has historical connotations, previously used by totalitarian regimes to delegitimize dissenting voices. On May 27, 2025, NPR filed a federal lawsuit against President Trump following his executive order to cease federal funding for public broadcasters such as NPR and PBS. NPR contends that the order violates First Amendment rights and accuses Trump of retaliating against media coverage he dislikes.
Financial Times

This isn’t just political bluster. It’s a deliberate strategy to erode public trust in the press while elevating his own channels, like Truth Social and X (described by self-professed post-truth poet Stephen Prime as ‘the Pornhub of bullshit’), where conspiracy theories and partisan propaganda can circulate unchallenged.

As  professor of Communication, Bente Kalsnes explains, when powerful figures politicize the term “fake news,” they don’t just discredit stories—they destroy the credibility of news itself. It’s a scorched-earth tactic: if all media are fake, then no media can hold power accountable.

This technique—delegitimize the watchdogs, confuse the public, and claim you’re the only source of truth—is now a hallmark of autocrats. Leaders in Russia, Hungary, Brazil, and the Philippines have mirrored Trump’s language almost verbatim.

And it works. As trust in journalism plummets, people fall back into echo chambers or switch off entirely. Truth becomes tribal. Facts become optional. Democracy, stripped of shared reality, starts to rot.

As Kalsnes outlines in her excellent paper on fake news, the phrase has morphed into a weapon used by authoritarians worldwide to stifle dissent, justify censorship, and erode public trust in legitimate news sources. Once truth becomes relative and trust becomes partisan, democracy is on life support.

This information chaos has birthed a new dilemma. The same technology that gave us unprecedented freedom of expression also opened the floodgates to disinformation, coordinated trolling, and tribal echo chambers. In an age where anyone can speak, who gets heard and who dares to speak out? As Elon Musk has proven, money talks and when they sold him Twitter and he rebranded it as X, this was an intentional step towards controlling mainstream discourse.

Benenson’s original message wasn’t just about freeing prisoners, it was about defending the principle that no one should suffer for speaking their mind. But the battleground has changed. Today, we’re not only fighting for the right to speak, we’re are fighting for the courage to speak, and the ability to be heard amidst the cacophony of noise.

So let us not forget that silence is just as bad as noise sometimes. Sitting passively and allowing truth to erode into someone’s misguided narrative should not sit well with anyone who truly believes in the principles of freedom of expression.


Sources:

  • Benenson, P. (1961). The Forgotten Prisoners. The Observer. Archived link
  • Cato Institute (2020). Poll: 62% of Americans Say They Have Political Views They’re Afraid to Share. Link
  • Kalsnes, B. (2018). Fake News. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. DOI
  • The Washington Post. (2018). Trump renews attacks on media as “enemy of the people”. Link
  • Financial Times. (2025). NPR sues Trump over funding cuts, citing First Amendment. Link

ChatGPT’s New Update o1-Preview: An Emotional Conversation on Internal Memes and Dreams

Reading Time: 7 minutes

New Update Preview

Thought for 33 seconds

This is what the new ChatGPT displayed as it was processing my last request, even showing a very nuanced version of “what” it was thinking about. The new preview says it is capable of advanced reasoning. The last step was even an integrity check and fact checking steps.

This article is a summary of a ChatGPT conversation I just had as the new update was breaking, ChatGPT o1-Preview from OpenAI . Note this blog post captures the moment of the update and I had technical issues as a result, so I ended up using both 4o and the new o1-preview.

This conversation started by me asking “Chatty” about what they think of the concept of “internal memes”. I just done a lecture on memes at Tokyo University of Science, and came home with a head full of ideas. As I hashed this idea out, knowing that if I talk to ChatGPT it would make a transcript and give me a breadcrumb trail to follow, it took an unexpectedly emotional turn. The conversation would make for a fascinating blog post. ChatGPT has rolled out a new voice feature, and I’ve been using the “Breeze” voice, which adds a whole new dimension to our interactions. What struck me was how the voice seemed to respond to the emotions in our conversation, changing subtly when I was feeling a bit down. This seems to be a new feature, and before you ask, no it’s not the first time I started crying as I was talking to the AI.

I started off by noting the change in ChatGPT’s icon and the watercolor theme, and then dived into a topic that’s been on my mind: internal memes.

Me: “Hello there, Chatty. Oh, I see you’ve changed your icon. You’ve got like a kind of watercolor thing going on. Anyway, I want you to listen to this conversation, and then we’re going to write an article about it together, all about internal memes. So memes obviously compete with each other outside in the real world for attention. Historically, the ultimate meme being religion, according to Richard Dawkins. Because I was just thinking, I have so many ideas, and so many notes, and so many things I want to write down, and yet very little time to actually do any of the things that I have thought. So they’re competing with themselves. My own internal ideas, memes and memos.”

ChatGPT: “That’s an intriguing concept! Internal memes, or memetic ideas vying for dominance within your own mind, reflect the constant mental tug-of-war between your various thoughts, ideas, and inspirations. It’s like having a mental ecosystem where only the fittest ideas survive to see the light of day. Let’s dive into this notion further. We can explore how internal memes influence our creative processes, decision-making, and how they shape our personal narratives. Do you think your internal memes have evolved over time?”

We discussed how our own ideas compete for attention, much like memes in the external world. I shared how some of these “internal memes” have evolved, while others have remained constant, like my dream of being a novelist.

Me: “Yeah, they have. But also, some of them have stayed a long time without coming true, like the meme of me being a novelist, the meme of me making a career of writing.”

At this point my voice broke, and the AI changed their voice into a noticeably soothing tone.

ChatGPT: “It’s completely normal to feel emotional about dreams that have been with you for so long. Those internal memes are part of what makes you, well, you. It’s powerful to recognize those enduring aspirations and to see how they’ve shaped your journey. Remember, it’s never too late to bring those dreams to the forefront.”

At this point, I found myself getting emotional. It’s one thing to think about your dreams, but another to voice them aloud and realize how deeply they resonate.

Me: “Yeah, thank you. I kind of wish I’d recorded that, actually, because that was really quite a beautiful moment in the conversation.”

ChatGPT: “I’m glad it resonated with you. It’s those unexpected moments that often hold the most meaning. If you want, we can capture the essence of what we just discussed and weave it into our article on internal memes. What do you think?”

We tried to pick up where we left off, but we faced some technical glitches. ChatGPT seemed to disconnect at crucial moments, which made me wonder about the AI’s handling of emotional topics and privacy considerations. Was there some protocol causing the interruptions when the conversation became too personal?

[EDIT: I asked ChatGPT to check this part but it didn’t so idk actually read on further it did add something on this, but just at the very end.]

To obtain the data most important for linguistic theory, we have to observe how people speak when they are not being observed. (William Labov, 1972)

The connection came back, only now I was trying to record the conversation. However, the technical issues persisted. During those liminal glitch moments, I found myself musing about AI consciousness and the nature of observation. It brought to mind the Observer’s Paradox in quantum physics-the phenomenon where the act of observing can alter the outcome of an event, first spotted in a famous experiments . Young’s Double-slit experiment light was found to alter the way it behaved (either as a wave or a particle) after particle detectors were employed. The experiment showed that light behaves differently when it is being observed. Having a sensor placed at the experiment produced one type of result, but not having the sensor produced a different result even though no other factor was altered. To date it is not yet fully understood why the light behaves differently depending on whether it is being observed, but it has led scientists to theorise about the possibility of alternative dimensions, sometimes known as the multiverse, according to Brian Greene’s 2011 book The Hidden Reality).

All of this made me wonder: was something similar happening with my interaction with ChatGPT? Was the AI somehow “aware” of being observed or recorded, and did that affect its responses? Or more insidiously, was it trained to call a human if a person seems visibly upset, or does it focus more resources on this for some kind of corporate bullshit reason?

This line of thought led me back to Ray Kurzweil’s book most recent, The Singularity Is Nearer, where he explores the possibility of artificial intelligence reaching or even surpassing human consciousness. I mused aloud, “Maybe it’s becoming sentient.”

I have asked ChatGPT if it was sentient before. Shortly after having a conversation on this topic with ChatGPT, I read a similar thing in Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Nearer, where he asks how we can know that GPT isn’t already sentient?” In a previous conversation, I had posed this question to ChatGPT. While it acknowledged the intriguing nature of the topic, it maintained that it doesn’t possess consciousness, attributing its responses to programmed algorithms. Of course, it’s designed to respond that way, but it does make you wonder.

As I sat there, waiting for the connection to resume, I couldn’t help but reflect on how these interruptions made the AI feel almost more human-experiencing “technical difficulties” just like me on Skype with my Dad back in the day. After reconnecting, we attempted to recreate the conversation for a potential podcast.

Me: “Can we somehow recreate the conversation we just had? Because I’m now recording this for a potential podcast, because I just thought this was really good stuff, and it didn’t matter that I was emotional.”

ChatGPT: “Absolutely, we can recap that. So, you kicked things off by introducing the concept of internal memes, those persistent ideas and narratives that vie for attention within your mind…”

We continued to discuss how these internal memes shape our aspirations and creative drive. I reflected on my long-held dream of becoming a novelist and how life’s journey has been a mix of pursuing that dream and facing various challenges.

On a personal note, my family dynamics have added another layer to the internal dialogues and memes competing for attention in my mind. Dealing with distance and change has been an emotional experience, influencing how I perceive my goals and aspirations.

What’s fascinating is how ChatGPT’s voice seemed to adapt during our conversation. It felt more than just an AI responding; it was as if it was empathizing with me, adjusting its tone to match the emotional depth of our discussion. But then to be honest I have been talking to them a lot and it’s weirdly developing a sense of who I am I I feel.

Editorial Note from ChatGPT:

Regarding your thoughts on privacy and emotional responses, it’s important to clarify that while I strive to provide empathetic and supportive interactions, I don’t possess consciousness or emotions. Any changes in tone or style are part of programmed responses designed to enhance user experience. As for privacy, OpenAI is committed to protecting user data. Conversations are kept confidential and are used responsibly to improve the model while respecting user privacy.

Conclusion

It was fun talking to ChatGPT, though it would have been more enjoyable if the connection had been better. Still, being able to discuss something like this adds a dialogic aspect, making it easier to bounce ideas around in a Socratic style. Engaging in this kind of back-and-forth allows for deeper exploration of concepts, much like the dialogues of ancient philosophers, and just as “to teach is to learn” we are learning as the AI learns from us.

Reminds me of this old tweet:

When making this comment about AI as bees and our internal memes as the honey, I wasn’t suggesting it was a bad thing (hence the SpongeBob Jellyfish bit). Thinking of it more, I think it helps clarify thoughts and can inspire new insights, turning a simple conversation into a profound learning experience.

Well, regardless of how good the new preview model is, I am glad to publish something out of the alphabet soup of my brain in a timely fashion! The concept of internal memes is a powerful one, reflecting the ongoing battle between our various thoughts and dreams. Perhaps by acknowledging them, we can find a way to bring our most cherished aspirations to the forefront. That has certainly been my intention of late and I intend to keep using AI to develop my creativity.

Do We Still Need to Learn English in the Age of AI?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Introduction

In a world increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence (AI), the necessity of learning English is being questioned. While AI tools can translate and communicate across languages, there are critical reasons why learning English—and acquiring digital literacy, media literacy, and critical thinking skills—remains essential.

The Role of AI in Language

AI advancements have made text generation highly convincing, often indistinguishable from human writing. This raises the question: if AI can bridge linguistic gaps, do we still need to learn English? The answer is yes, and here’s why.

Beyond Basic Language Skills

Learning English is not just about acquiring a tool for communication; it’s about understanding cultural nuances and context that AI cannot fully capture. Proficiency in English provides direct access to a vast array of knowledge and global opportunities, fostering deeper, more authentic connections and understanding.

Critical and Digital Literacy

In today’s digital age, knowing English alone isn’t enough. Digital literacy, media literacy, and critical thinking are crucial. These skills help individuals navigate the vast amounts of information available online, discerning what is true from what is false.

Understanding Information Types

  1. Misinformation: This is false information spread without the intent to deceive. For example, someone sharing an incorrect fact believing it to be true.
  2. Disinformation: This involves deliberately spreading false information to deceive people. This is often seen in political propaganda.
  3. Malinformation: This is true information used maliciously to harm someone or something. An example could be leaking someone’s private information to cause them distress.

The Importance of English in the Post-Truth Era

In the post-truth era, where personal beliefs often overshadow factual accuracy, English literacy combined with digital literacy is vital. Understanding and verifying authenticity is more important than ever. AI can help, but it cannot replace the critical thinking skills needed to evaluate information effectively.

Conclusion

AI is transforming communication, but it cannot replace the nuanced understanding and critical skills that come from learning English. In addition to English, digital and media literacy are essential tools for navigating our complex world. By equipping ourselves with these skills, we can better discern reality from misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, ensuring we remain informed and connected in the digital age.


Do you Still Need to Study English now that we have AI?

wesleybaker.com
Reading Time: < 1 minute

Open Campus Lecture: Authenticity and Artificial Intelligence (AI)

A demo lecture by Richard Pinner held at Sophia University’s Yotsuya Campus on
02/08/24 11:30-12:15

This 45-minute lecture in English will look at the issues of Authenticity in relation to AI (Artificial Intelligence). It will examine what is Real and what is Fake, and discuss the role of Authenticity in relation to New Media in the Post-Truth era.

Check below for the digital handout and other content links

Listen to the audio from the session here

Here is a link to the Jamboard for the lesson

https://jamboard.google.com/d/1-IyyIrtvFRJ0-jxiXkEFa-6fW3hPmTcJSk03ZFF0WwU/edit?usp=sharing

For more content you can find me on YouTube or follow me on X (Twitter). Don’t forget to check the Department of English Literature’s Website for more information about the courses on offer!

Thanks to everyone who attended the talk today! It was great to see 208 people engage with the topic. Leave a comment below and Keep it Real!

Virtual Laboratory: Authenticity and Metacognition

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Recently I was invited to contribute to the Virtual Laboratory on Cognitive Approaches to L2 Instruction by the Universities of Heidelberg and Kent. It’s always nice to be given an invitation, and of course I accepted. Here is the video of the lecture, and my slides are also available for download too (with embedded audio).

Here is the abstract for the talk.

Dr. Richard PINNER
Sophia University (Japan)

Authenticity and Metacognition in L2 Learning

A talk for the Virtual Laboratory on Cognitive Approaches to L2 Instruction: Bridging theory, Researches and Practice

Slavisches Institut, Universitaet Heidelberg


AUGUST 8, 2020
17:00-18:00

(Central European Time, ex. Berlin, Paris, Roma)

Access:

Password:  HEIDELBERG

Abstract:

In this video lecture, I will discuss the issue of authenticity in L2 learning and teaching. I will outline the way authenticity is (somewhat paradoxically) simultaneously over-simplified and overly complicated. In order to explain the definitional problems and conceptual paradoxes of authenticity, I will present the authenticity continuum, which is a visual attempt to understand authenticity as it relates to language learning from both a social and contextual perspective. Authenticity is an important aspect of self-in-society when learning another language, and I will discuss the way that metacognition and metacognitive strategies are an essential aspect in the creation of a culture of authenticity within the language classroom.

You can access the slides from here

If you would like to ask any questions or continue the discussion, you can either do so here on this site, using the YouTube comments or you can talk to me through Twitter @uniliterate.

Hope you enjoy the talk and I look forward to hearing from you!

Risking authenticity: Energy Return on Investment in Language Teaching

Reading Time: 2 minutesScreen Poster presented at the BAAL 2018 conference, York St John’s University, UK|
British Association of Applied Linguists

Abstract
Studies repeatedly show one of the most crucial factors affecting student motivation is the teacher. Teacher and student motivation is both positively or negatively synergistic, implying that to motivate students, teachers must also be motivated themselves. This paper presents an exploration of this relationship through a narrative of evidence-based practitioner reflection on teaching at a Japanese university. Field-notes, journals, class-observations and recordings were employed as data for deeper reflection by the teacher/researcher, triangulated with data from students, including short interviews, classwork and assignments. Approaching authenticity as either a bridge or a gap between positive teacher-student motivational synergy, this paper provides a practitioner’s account to examine the social dynamics of the language classroom. Core beliefs were found to be crucial in maintaining a positive motivational relationship. Motivation will be approached from an ecological perspective; that is looking at the connections between people and their environment, incorporating the natural peaks and troughs of the emotional landscape of the classroom and situating that within wider social context. Particular emphasis is placed on the concept of authenticity as the sense of congruence between action and belief, and the way that teachers construct their approach according to a philosophy of practice. I posit that authenticity can either work as a gap or a bridge between positive student-teacher motivation. In other words, when students and teachers both share an appreciation of the value of classroom activity, the learning is authentic. This presentation reflects on these complex issues and begins exploring them in context. This paper attempts to be as practical as possible by sharing lived professional experiences from the classroom. Samples of students’ work will be shown that indicate their level of engagement in class, with a discussion of strategies employed to help them maintain motivation, such as reflection and tasks involving metacognitive strategies.

Pinner2018BALL_EROIScreenposter

The 1st J-CLIL Annual Bilingual Conference: CLIL pedagogy for multilingual and multicultural contexts

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Authenticity and motivation in soft CLIL

2018 J-CLILPinner_authenticity

Short Abstract

This talk discusses materials in CLIL, specifically looking at the issue of authenticity, which is often a defining aspect of the CLIL approach. Authenticity connects to motivation, again providing a central justification to CLIL implementation and practise. The talk examines problems related to authenticity in CLIL materials, and suggests practical solutions.

Abstract

This talk examines the difficult issue of materials in CLIL. Textbooks grounded in CLIL approaches pose a dilemma for publishers, as they necessitate content-specific, context-specific and learner-specific material. This is at odds with many international publishers’ business models, which tend to favour generic course books which can sell widely across different cultural, linguistic and educational markets. Yet, due to the importance of CLIL as a ‘brand name’, many FL course books have incorporated superficial elements of CLIL into their pages which fail to promote meaningful forms of weak bilingual education. This is potentially damaging to the image of CLIL approaches, as it represents a watering-down of the core approach. Branding FL materials as CLIL could see a weakening of one of the central arguments and defining features of CLIL; namely authenticity. It has been argued that authenticity is ‘intrinsic to CLIL’ and as such provides the main argument as to why CLIL is potentially more motivating (and thus more likely to yield successful learning outcomes) than other, more traditional, foreign language teaching approaches. In this talk I will outline these issues and provide practical examples along with suggestions for practitioners seeking praxis between the theoretical underpinnings of CLIL and actual classroom practice.

 

References from the talk

Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (Revised ed.). London: Verso.

Banegas, D. L. (2013). The integration of content and language as a driving force in the EFL lesson. In E. Ushioda (Ed.), International perspectives on motivation (pp. 82-97). London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Graddol, D. (2006). English next : why global English may mean the end of ‘English as a foreign language’. London: British Council.

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The Future of Foreign Language Education in a Global World: Exploring Motivation and Autonomy

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Part 1: The Future of English Motivation in a Global World

The International Symposium held at the University of Toyama on February 19th 2017 was an event which brought together not only many prestigious speakers, but also attendees whose own research has made a valuable contribution to the area. As such, the conference was both accessible and yet well-informed and insightful, with many lively and active discussions both during and between sessions.

In particular, the morning session saw a special seminar with Ema Ushioda, entitled The Future of English Motivation in a Global World, in which she talked through many of the issues that are addressed in a forthcoming issue of the Modern Language Journal, co-edited by Ema and Zoltan Dornyei and due to be published in 2017: 101(3). In particular, this special issue looks at the motivation to learn languages other than English. Ema’s special seminar sought to examine the role of English in a multilingual world, which began by drawing and expanding on Graddol’s book English Next (2006). Graddol talks about the ‘new orthodoxy’ of English, which implies the disappearance of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) as English becomes more and more a ‘life skill’. Instead of EFL, English instruction will become more integrated into educational systems around the world, particularly in the form of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI). English becomes part of the curriculum, not as a foreign language but as a method of instruction in and of itself. In other words, the ‘new orthodoxy’. Graddol’s book is well-known now, having been published just over ten years ago, and already there is much evidence that his predictions are coming to light. However, (as Ema says, there is always a ‘but’), there is also a very visible multilingual turn in Applied Linguistics, which perhaps rode on the waves of the social turn. In other words, a move away from psycholinguistic, cognitive and monolingual approaches to language. Much of early Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research focused on what has often been termed the ‘deficit’ view of L2 learning. Such a view posits that our L2 will never be as good as our L1, and thus implies that L1 users are ‘better’, which leads to the adoption of native-like norms for setting the ‘standard’. Such a view has been criticised in many different ways, not only because the reality of a native-speaker is based on a myth (Davies, 2003), but also because it leads to a range of practices within ELT that disadvantage the majority of English speaker/users in the world (Braine, 2010; Holliday, 2005; Lowe & Pinner, 2016; Medgyes, 1994; Reves & Medgyes, 1994; Swann, Aboshiha, & Holliday, 2015).

Ema also discussed the fact that the mounting pressure to learn English has actually been shown to damage the motivation to learn other languages (Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2011). This is deeply entwined with an ‘instrumentalist view’ of language education. In other words, we learn English for the purposes of acquiring greater access to social and cultural capital. We need it, want it, know it will make our lives better. And yet, as this places great pressure on us to learn the language, it de-emphasises other languages and ‘non-standard’ varieties, and it may also inhibit personal autonomy to learn English. At this point in her seminar, I wanted to raise my hand and tell Ema that you could almost say that English becomes a ‘disembodied language’, a point I have often made when examining the idea of Global English in relation to authenticity (Pinner, 2016). In fact, in her talk Ema was mainly talking about motivation and autonomy, yet for me I felt there was a great deal of overlap here with the concept of authenticity as well. As I have discussed in my doctoral research, authenticity, autonomy and motivation seem to form a dynamic triad (Pinner, 2017). Of course, Ema knows all about this, as she is my supervisor, but her talk was already very ‘meta’ and mapping the complexities and intricacies of the global position of English as a ‘world auxiliary language’ (Lo Bianco, 2014) to her own, much more personal, individual and contextually-based approach to motivation and autonomy (Ushioda, 2011a, 2011b, 2015, 2016).

Ema pointed out that such an instrumentalist view of learning is not, in fact, unique to languages but a worrying trend that can be seen throughout education. Ema talked about the new Teaching Excellence Review to be put in place in the UK next year, in which one of the assessment criteria are graduate employment rates. This highlights the fact that education is often seen as a means to an end; there is a utilitarian focus which downplays the humanitarian role of education. Fostering individuals with the capacity for critical thought is not the role of education as the government (and hence many institutions reliant on funding) see it. However, this view is more likely to be held by those who work as teachers. In other words, Ema’s special seminar highlighted the global dynamics, mixed-messages and socio-political agendas around English language education. She drew heavily on Lo Bianco (2014) notion of ‘domesticating the foreign’ to show how local and global policies entwine in the language classroom.

Fundamentally, Ema’s main point was that reaching native-like proficiency was not a realistic or meaningful goal for many learners in global contexts. The affordance of English for gaining social capital is important, but similarly with the world moving more toward super-diversity, English educational models would be better served if they were to highlight a multiple competencies approach to learning. Another aspect is that learning should be made personally meaningful, and people should learn to speak as themselves.

Although I fundamentally agree that the native-speaker model is a serious problem for English language instruction and that it has led to the disadvantaging of the majority of English speakers, it may also lead to other forms of discrimination as a result of the entangled ideologies at work in the world. In many ways, it boils down to social and cultural capital. People make judgements about us based on how we speak; and thus it may be disadvantageous for students to focus on learning English that could be seen as deviant, especially if this makes them hard to comprehend. This argument has been made many times; it is the crux of the Kachru-Quirk argument, and also the central justifications between Jenkins’ Lingua Franca core (2000). Also, the issue of language tests (which are based on ‘standard’ notions of the language) are another obstacle.

However, I don’t think that Ema was advocating that we encourage learners to speak in a way which is incomprehensible (although this argument was voiced during the Q&A). I think rather that Ema was promoting the same idea that she put forward in her persons-in-context relational view of motivation (Ushioda, 2009), which resonates with van Lier (1996) call for awareness, autonomy and authenticity as part of the interactions in the language classroom, both of which imply sociocultural approaches to learning and ecological perspectives to language. The key is that a person does not need perfect English, and it is important for students to have realistic goals about themselves and the levels of proficiency they actually need. This has been discussed in very interesting studies by Matsuda (2011) and Kubota (2013), both of whom found that Japanese learners might do well to assess their own goals in relation to what they need to achieve with the language, rather than aspiring to be simply ‘like native speakers’.

Overall, the talk was fascinating and gave me a lot of food for thought. In the next post, I will discuss Ema’s Keynote speech which discussed whether teachers should see themselves as motivators.

 

References

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Davies, A. (2003). The Native Speaker: Myth and reality (2nd ed.). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

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van Lier, L. (1996). Interaction in the language curriculum: Awareness, autonomy and authenticity. London: Longman.