American Factory - a film produced by Obama

 A fascinating documentary that highlights cultural differences in the workplace between China and the USA

https://www.youtube.com/embed/m36QeKOJ2Fc

David Crystal - the future of English

 

Pre-listening - possible research questions based on the title of the talk:

 

 Will English continue to be the international language in the future?

What language/s might replace English as a world language?

Summary

• The speaker (David Crystal) argues that people only learn languages to improve their work prospects, so in the future nobody knows whether we may all be learning Chinese. Spanish or Arabic - it depends which countries become more influential and prosperous.

•  English around the world is spoken by non-native speakers. There are around 400 million English speakers in India alone. The brand of English spoken there may be different, but it is valid in its own context and may influence the language spoken in the future, just as American has influenced British English.

•  It is not possible to predict whether English will continue to be the world language. Nobody could have predicted a thousand years ago that Latin would no longer be around, so we cannot assume that the same will not happen to English

Further research questions:

What obstacles do people face to learning English in different parts of the world?

 

Can technology help to break down barriers to language learning?

Ken Robinson - Do schools kill creativity?

Title of the talk: Do schools kill creativity?

Pre-listening research questions:

How is creativity taught in schools?

What are the barriers to teaching creativity?

Summary

• The education system in most countries throughout the world is geared towards maths and languages in order to prepare people for the industrial workplace.

• This approach is out of date as it does not prepare students for the challenges of the future. 

• We need to give equal importance to the arts, in order to embrace the richness of human capacity and educate the 'whole child'.

Possible future research questions:

Does competition from other countries influence the need to prioritise sciences to the detriment of more creative subjects?

Can the skills that people will need in the workplace of the future be anticipated? How?

Natives: Race, Class in the Ruins of Empire - By Akala

 

'Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire'

Research questions before listening:

How does the legacy of empire affect race and class in British society?

What is the future of race and class in British society? Will it be more homogeneous?

You can access the recording here, through BBC Sounds:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p067g765

Summary

• This talk discusses policies towards slave trading in the Brtish empire, and how genocide was viewed as being preferable to the emancipation of slaves.

• The speaker asks: why do we hold the Japanese or Germans accountable for attempted genocide in the second world war and not the British Empire for the way they treated slaves?

• history is subjective and can be manipulated according to what people want us to hear. 

• if this information were included in school curricula, it would make history more interesting for many people, and would help them to understand that anyone can be guilty of discrimination and treating others unfairly. 

Possible future research questions: 

 

Will slavery under the British Empire be included in school books in the future?

 

Why do countries whitewash their own misdeeds in the past?

Brexit and the End of the British Empire

Pre-listening research questions:

What is Brexit?

How is it connected to the British Empire?

 

 

 

 

• The media makes people from the UK feel different than other countries in Europe about their place in the world. 

• The British education system does not inform British subjects of the true history of empire. 

•  Xenophobia has been used historically.

•  Social progress has been attained through the aftermath of disastrous events like war.

•  The history of empire is linked with the reasons why the UK voted to leave the European Union,
  

•  The conservative government used Brexit as a means to get support, relying on exploiting people's fear of foreigners and gaining votes from extremist, far-right parties.

• Demographic statistics show some ome surprising results, such as the relationship between obesity and voting for Brexit.

Further research questions:

Have people's attitudes to Brexit changed since the UK has lost all its low-paid workers?

 

Is this form of isolationism peculiar to the UK, or are all countries susceptible to it in the age of identity politics?

 

Teaching English witout Teaching English

Pre-listening research questions:

Why is it necessary to try to teach English in a non-traditional way?

How does the speaker teach English without explicitly teaching it?

 

Summary

• The speaker, Guzman, outlines how he encourages his students to adopt critical thinking skills in filtering out which information is valuable. 
• He points out typical signs that tell us when a person lacks authority. or doesn't know what they are talking about. These include obfuscation, never answering a direct question or providing detail or clarification and 'ad hominem', which means resorting to personal attacks which may not be related to the argument.

Further research questions:

Does this style of learning suit all learners? 

How can it be exported to different contexts?

Presentation skills - presentation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vey78erbEpE

Infinitive or gerund? Tourism advertisement

Visual essay: science and technology

Timeline

Kaycie Yates video

A Comment on her performance in the two work placements she did.

B Outline the things she should do to improve her employability.

C Suggest possible career paths she could explore in the future.

D Any other information you consider to be appropriate.

Hi Kaycie,

I have just seen the video of your two work placements and I wanted to offer you some advice on your possible future career options.

I realise that life is not always easy. You seem to have had some trouble when you were younger but I think you have proved from this experience that you are capable of success if you put your mind to it. As long as you find something you enjoy, work will not seem like a ‘chore’ and you will be able to pull yourself up, just like your ancestors did. It’s not fair to keep asking your mum to support you if she can’t afford it. Also, your boyfriends won’t be happy if you are always asking them for expensive things. You know from experience now that one day reality has to kick in and you have to make your own opportunities.

The lady in Liverpool is a good example. She was a single mum at 17 with no family to fall back on but she managed to make it by not being afraid of hard work. It’s a shame you didn’t enjoy working in the café but, as the lady said: “hard work never killed anybody”. You can’t always have it easy with everything handed to you on a plate.

The next placement seemed much better and Karina was a good role model. She also started off as a pot washer. You have to start somewhere! You did well in the end even though you had to go to hospital in the middle. This is proof that you can succeed if you work hard. Maybe this is the kind of work you could do in the future? It could be glamorous if you are in a swanky hotel. 

Whatever you do, the work placements were a good learning experience so I hope you will learn from them and keep trying to do well in the future.

Best of luck!

Word count: 327

Lenny henry from nathan Lomax

A trip to the Jaguar factory, Castle Bromwich

Company background Jaguar is owned by a family based consortium from India called TATA group. They have bought up a lot of businesses, including Tetley tea and Corus steel. TATA have changed the fortunes of Jaguar, giving them investment and the freedom to design new cars. Interestingly, the group don't have shareholders and all the money they make goes into a family 'pot'.

On the shop floor The Jaguar plant operates according to the principles of Kanban. This means that they have a central 'marketplace', like an IKEA store, and deliver components on a 'Just in Time' basis. This system, borrowed from Toyota, is a huge improvement on the waste that used to occur due to overproduction and the storage of large quantities of equipment. Deliveries around the factory are outsourced to DHL. A Kaizen, or 'continuous improvement' system is also in place. This means that tasks are compartmentalised and workers are given incentives for ideas to eliminate waste and improve efficiency. 90% of the assembly of the chassis is done by (Japanese and Swiss/Swedish) robots. At the finishing stage though (panel beating and door fitting) most of the work is done by skilled technicians. This is because problems may be different on each car and special tools may need to be designed to fix them. One big difference made by technology is that workers no longer need to do heavy lifting, for exampleof wheels or doors, due to 'assisted lifting' by robots. According to the guides, who used to work on in the factory, the finished car is ready to drive away, whereas in the past, 20 or 30 people would be crowded around it, fixing problems that were not detected until the end of the production process. The plant can produce around 70 luxury cars a day, though for some more popular models the turnaround time is faster. there is a waiting list of 6 weeks to 1 year, depending on the model. This is because rather than being mass produced, cars are now made to order.

Are multinational teams more successful? How is it possible to answer this question?

Review: Are multinational teams successful? (2012) Harmut Haas and Stephen Nuesch. 

 I have just finished reading this research paper and wanted to share my views.

At first glance, I imagined the article would discuss teamwork in business, but the entire paper is about a study conducted on the efficiency of football teams in the German Bundesleague. The research measures performance in 4284 football matches over a 15 year period and finds that multinational teams do not perform as well as those that are culturally homogenous.

Although there is a very thorough explanation of how the results were obtained, including independent judges of team performances, there are several issues that make me doubt the value of the research. Firstly, the paper mentions multinational team performance 'in many sectors', but all of the data collected refers only to football teams and their performance in sports. The research may be useful if the focus is on improving football team performance but, as factors such as language skills and cultural barriers to communication are not explored, the study is of limited use for anyone studying business or human resource management.

Attempting to classify the behaviour of any group of human beings is problematic due to the amount of variables (personality, training, language skills, the focus of the group activity) that need to be considered. Whilst this may have been an interesting study for the authors, who I assume are football fans, it does not, in my opinion, earn the right to be considered as a key text for human resource management studies.

Reference:

Are multinational teams successful? (2012) Harmut Haas and Stephen Nuesch.
International Journal for Human Resource Management, Routledge. [online] Available at:
http://tinyurl.com/pgu8tsg  Accessed 3/9/13

Organisational Culture and Values

_____________________________________________________________________________ Dean Davey begins by asking: does culture affect the company's 'bottom line (profit)'? His answer is yes. He goes on to explain why. The talk is divided into 3 parts: 1. Definition of organisational culture and values This is divided into 3 sub-levels. Level one: tangible, observable artifacts i.e. how an office is organised. Is it hierarchical or flat? Level 2: Espoused values. This means the values that may be shared in the organisation's mission statement. Research shows that when employees share their company's values the organisation is more efficient. He gave an example of a small company that uses the LEAPT acronym (Love your work, have Energy, Audacity to try new things, Proof or results and Truth. Level 3: when culture and values are matched with the management approach 2. How is culture created? Davey argues that culture must be modelled by management and good behaviour should be rewarded, e.g. by prize giving. 3. What is the impact of culture? Davey discusses the difficulty for new managers of changing company culture. He describes resistance to change and the need for managers to match their own management approach to the exisiting culture and value system. Discussion The lecture was well organised, but would have benefitted from more concrete examples, like the LEAPT acronym. The idea of company culture is quite abstract, so more real life examples would help.

Brewood on PhotoPeach

Polite requests - EFL role play

Politeness: embedded questions


Match:


Is there any                                                      chance you could open the door?


I don't suppose you could                                 open the door, could you?


Do you think                                                     you could open the door?


Would you mind                                                opening the door, if it's not too much trouble?

Answers:

Erm, I'm afraid I'm ....

Sorry...

Sure, no problem!

That would be great. Fantastic thanks a lot

Role plays:

You have picked up the wrong bag. It looked the same as yours. You found the person’s number inside. Call them and ask them to meet you.

You have lost your phone on the train. You call it and someone answers. Ask them to return the phone to you.

You work in a shop. You suspect someone of shoplifting. Ask them to empty their pockets.

Your classmate has body odour. You want to tell them but you are afraid of upsetting them. Ask them to buy some soap.

You have invited someone out for dinner but you find out you don’t have enough money to pay the bill. Ask them to pay.

Someone keeps asking you out on a date. Politely ask them to stop asking.

http://www.tools4trainers.co.uk/difficult-conversations.htm

My Prezi

Here is a link to a presentation about my home, family and hobbies

Nathan on Prezi

May - Jul 2010

A memorable journey

This is a story I made as a model for students to make their own