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Thursday 31 December 2015

2015 roundup


So 2015 comes to an end. And what a busy year it's been! 

Last year the blog hit 100,000 views and recently it passed 200,000 which was quite a surprise. The top 5 posts are still pretty much unchanged. 

1. DELTA or MA, which to do (Thanks Clive!)
4. Left brains and right brains (By Philip Kerr) 
5. Learning styles, facts and fictions

In terms of popular posts this year, the Myth of Neat Histories, which I particularly enjoyed writing was top and a close second was Carol Lethaby's excellent 'do men and women process language differently'. 

At the start of the year I wrote that I intend to write only about 12 posts this year. I actually wrote seven on this blog, eight if you count this one (plus 2 guest posts) 1 for the EAP archivist Blog (here) and a couple for the Gender Equality blog Nicola and I run (here). I also wrote a piece for ELGazette (here). That's about 12, right? 

Last year I said I hoped to write more 'try this is works' posts, but didn't manage to. I also didn't manage to produce anything from Mike's wish list (sorry Mike). Yet again I had no offers from people to blog about something they have expertise in. So I haven't been doing much on the blogging front.

That said I did present at IATEFL and Leicester hosted BALEAP the week after. I was kindly invited by Tyson to speak at TOSCON in Toronto, which was fantastic. I also did my first ever keynote, at NATECLA, which was a great experience. I ended this year with  webinar for BEsig which should be viewable online at some point. In all these events (and in the invite EnglishUK gave me to their conference) I've been touched by the kindness of people. From people like Tyson's boss, Bruce, taking me out to dinner and the other members of Toronto team, and the NATECLA team who helped prepare me by letting me come to another conference,  to the members of BEsig who sat through a practice of my webinar and gave me suggestions for making it better. There are a lot of really great people out there. 


I also met (if only briefly) an number of people I've been tweeting at and reading for years which was great. Far too many to mention but check out the pictures.

 

In what turned out to be a prophetic statement I wrote that IATEFL would be my 'difficult second album'. I won't dwell on this too much as enough has probably already been written, but I would just say that it continues to fascinate me how polarised the reaction was. I still meet people (and talked to a number afterwards) who really liked the talk, or found it interesting and if you watch the video many in the audience seemed to enjoy it. Others did not, and that's fine. what's interesting however, is the narrative that has developed that the talk was a complete disaster. I meet people nowadays who raise their eyebrows and suggest that 'things didn't go well this year, huh?' but who were neither at the talk nor have seen it. ho-hum. 

Next year this blog will be very quiet. I'm going to be working on some other projects and so don't have plans to blog very much. (One such project is a 'learn Japanese' podcast I've started with an old friend). If you know anyone who is well-informed on a subject and want to suggest them for guest post (even if it's yourself) please do, I'll be happy to post it!

Thanks for reading and have a great 2016!






1 comment:

  1. Glad TOSCON reflects well in your year, Russ. It's a highlight in mine too, as is IATEFL... what's common among the two? ;)

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