Adrian Buck > Recent Status Updates

Display the title "It's like as drug" and ask the students to guess what the article is about - or anything in the article that describes the topic in an interesting or unusual way, good idea for a lead in.

"...this text also contains an interesting and unusual example of 'used to'. Usually this form describes past habits that no longer continue the present. However, in this text, the writer is using it to describe a habit that still continues in the present" - either the writer has made an slip (native speakers do) or this is not what 'used to' means

"To make the task more challenging, you can encourage learners to post their reviews on well known websites such as Trip Advisor or London-eating.com" - this actually makes the task authentic.

"Uncovering reasons....For example a prompt might ask 'Why is the writer using the passive?' - some familiarity with the form of the passive is necessary before we can ask the reason for the passive.

"In TBL, the starting point of the lesson is a communicative task in which the learners achieve a specific outcome...For example, they might choose the most appropriate candidate for a job, plan a class trip..." - it doesn't seem important whether the task is real or fictional.

"...rather than use traditional comprehension questions...it is better to ask questions that elicit feelings or opinions?" - if they understand the conventional meaning of what they have read it is, if they haven't, feedback is likely to be a very frustrating experience for the students.

"...using the progressive rather than the present simple enables us to demonstrate that use of form depends on the speaker's intentions at this particular moment. It is not a fixed idea but something that is entirely context dependent." - well, and the conventional meaning of grammatical forms.

"it is more accurate to say that the passive is used to maintain topic focus and to structure information..." - this isn't rule, it's a reason for using the passive. The rule is about how to form the passive, i.e. its morphology and syntax. The problem is not with grammar rules as such, but the ambiguity over the meaning of 'grammar'.

"Blanka had become just another of the Henriettes that swarmed around the whitewashed house, and more of a prisioner than any of her family had ever been, despite posessing a real passport that could take her anywhere." - one in the eye for Marai.

"[My mother] told my father that she was afraid for Blanka and that he should bring her back home" - which would have resulted in Blanka's immediate internment as a dissident. It's not clear that Irene would call her mother's name out in her moment of death.

"In our school, being made to kneel was the worst punishment of all" - background to Orban's issue in the recent European football championship?

"Therefore, when L2 learners read and listen to authentic texts or are involved in genuine communicative tasks, they will be exposed to examples of language use that would be included in a descriptive grammar but might contradict the simplified rules found in a pedagogic grammar..." - No kidding!

"A focus on grammar can prevent fossilisation" - fossilation of what? A focus on grammar is unlikely to help with fossilised vocabulary or pronunciation.

"1. Grammar enables you to create an infinite number of sentences" - Chomsky argues that this is true of syntax rather than 'grammar'. The latter is too vague a word to be left undefined in academic discussion. I suppose what he means here by 'grammar' is those aspects of language which are typically labelled as grammar in ELT.

"And they learned that in everyone's life there is only person whose name can be cried out in the moment of death" - this being Hungarian, I guess it's 'anya'.

"They persisted in the hatred they had from the beginning for sacred Ilios and Priam and his people, because of the blind folly of Alexandros, who had scorned the goddesses" - The Iliad is not the whole story we associate with Troy, but neither is the story of Troy a whole story; it is part of an wider ranging mythology.

"You will never kill me [Phoibos Apollo] - I am no creature of fate" - the Gods are merely immortal, not omniscient, nor omnipotent. But what does this say about fate?

"And at your pyre I [Achilles] shall cut the throats of twelve splendid Trojan children, in my anger for your killings" - so not only was ancient Greek history a litany of war crimes, their literature was too - you have to wonder why we give the Aztecs such a hard time.

"She put strength in his shoulders and knees, and set in his heart the daring of a mosquito, which although constantly brushed away from a man's skin, still insists on biting him for the pleasure of human blood." - Homer, the last poet to have something positive to say about mosquitoes.

"The bronze spear passed right through and up under the brain, smashing the white bones. His teeth were knocked out and both his eyes flooded with blood: wide-mouthed he spurted a well of blood through nostrils and mouth: and the black cloud of death covered him over" - the graphic depiction of injury is ubiquitos as the genealogical notes.

"...real progress requires investigators to learn the appropriate methods to answer important questions, rather than letting the method they know dictate the questions they can answer." - I'm not convinced that neurology is on the edge of methodological breakthrough.

"The point is that cognitive psychology (including human brain mapping) is not neuroscience, as it does not investigate the mechanisms of the functioning brain." - the limitations of brain mapping have been obvious all through the book, but is it is also not obviously psychology either.

"When the lots were cast, I [Poseidon] drew the grey sea as my domain for ever, and Hades drew the murky darkness below, and Zeus drew the broad sky among the clouds and the upper air: but the earth and high Olympos were left common to us all." - so how did Zeus become no. 1?

"As illustrated in numerous scientific findings reveiwed in this box, each cognitive process is mediated by many brain regions, and these brain regions are activated at different times and interact with one another." - does this imply the 'cognitive processes' are complex collections of brain actions, more like programs than the instructions of a programing language?

"Arrows illustrate connections between regions and direction of information flow" - the most sophisticated modeling of memory so far in the book. They are the results of animal vivisection, based of the principle that humans have the same brain proceeses - which might be an argument for not doing these experiments in the first place.

"Towards the land of Troy now [Zeus] did not turn his shining eyes at all - he did not think in his heart that any of the immortals would come to bring help to either Trojans or Danaans" - all seeing, but not all knowing?

"Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment patients shift from pattern separation to pattern completion...in the real world this might mean aMCI patients having a high rate of false memories to new related items" - pattern separation vs pattern completion are types of behaviour under experimental conditions, not unfortunately things that brains do.

"These striking similarities in paradigms, cognitive processes and brain regions suggest that working memory is simply another label for imagery" - what about words? My working memory is primarily auditory, and I 'hear' not 'see' it's contents.

"The term retinotopic map refers to activations in early visual regions where adjacent locations in the visual field are mapped onto adjacent locations on the cortext (which is the way that the visual field maps onto the retina of each eye" - to what level of detail? The retina consists of individual rod and cone cells can we map them to individual neurons?

"...individual participant results assess whether the exact same brain regions are associated with different two different cognitive processes, while analyzing separate groups of participants blurs activations such as might appear similar when they are actually distinct." - the location of the process is visible, but the internal structure underlying the process is invisible?