English teachers and students of a certain age may remember The Lost Secret, a BBC Education video course from 1986.
It tells the story of a man who has lost his memory and who encounters a gang, led by the sinister Professor Sline. The cast includes Miranda Richardson and Vladek Sheybal.
The course is aimed at lower-level students. There are 11 episodes of 13 minutes, each focusing on particular language points.
The videos are currently available on archive.org and YouTube.
Kanatip Soonthornrak, aka Loukgolf, is an English teacher from Thailand with a YouTube talk show called Loukgolf’s English Room. He chats to his celebrity guests mainly in English.
The Cambridge ELT blog, World of Better Learning, has an interview with Loukgolf: Part One and Part Two.
If your first language is not English, you may use a dictionary in any examination at INTO and UEA unless it is expressly forbidden – for example, during an English language test.
It must be a translation dictionary (e.g. Chinese-English) from one of these series:
It may be a good idea to buy one of these dictionaries, as you can use it throughout your time at both INTO and UEA. Prices range from about £4 to £14.
The Smithsonian Channel is a collection of short educational videos on science and other subjects. For example:
The videos have subtitles. There are other video categories at the Smithsonian’s main Videos page.
The Age of Uncertainty is a BBC television series about the evolution of economic thought from Adam Smith onwards. It was written and presented by the post-Keynsian economist John Kenneth Galbraith and broadcast in 1977.
In response the free-market economist Milton Friedman made a TV series called Free to Choose.
Both The Age of Uncertainty and Free to Choose are currently available on YouTube. Books associated with the two series are in UEA Library.
Also, Joseph Stiglitz writes about Galbraith and Mark Skousen writes about Friedman in the Christian Science Monitor.
Among the films and TV programmes on Netflix are some business documentaries. These ones are currently available in the UK:
Learn English with Cambridge is a new YouTube channel, with videos presented by five youngish teachers.
The videos so far:
World of Better Learning is a blog about English language teaching, from Cambridge University Press.
Posts are written by various people and divided into three categories: Insights, Techniques and Tools. There are also audio and video presentations.
Some examples:
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a novel by George Orwell. It was published in June 1949 – 70 years ago this month. It has been translated into numerous languages.
In the year 1984 Britain is a province of a superstate ruled by the Party. It is a society of meaningless slogans and worship of the Party leader, Big Brother. There is no privacy and dissent is punished by torture, brainwashing and death. The main character in the novel, Winston Smith, tries to rebel against the system.
The ELT Journal has been published since 1946. Until 1981 it had a section called The Question Box, which answered readers’ questions. Three examples from the earliest issues:
Question: I have recently come across fry-pan for frying-pan. Is this form considered correct?
Answer: Fry-pan is not accepted as standard English and is considered incorrect by most grammarians. It is probably an American form. Similar forms are swim-suit and fly-bomb, both to be found in newspapers in Great Britain. It is likely that such forms will spread and be accepted in time. Grammarians will explain that the correct forms are swimming suit, made up of the noun suit modified by the gerund swimming (a suit for swimming), and flying-bomb, made up of the noun bomb and the participle flying (a bomb that flies). The ordinary user of language does not trouble himself about nice distinctions between gerunds and participles. If the root form of the verb (fry, swim and fly) expresses the meaning, the gain in brevity will in time probably result in the adoption of the shorter forms.
ELT Journal (1946) ‘The Question Box’, 1(2), pp. 50-51. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/1.2.50-b
Question: Should we, in English, use Netherland or Netherlands as an attributive adjective? The bank named after the Midlands is the Midland Bank, and the regiment that derives its name from the highlands is called the Highland Light Infantry.
Answer: Usage requires the use of the plural form, as in The Netherlands Indies. For the foreign student of English it would be helpful if there were uniformity in these matters, but unfortunately there is not uniformity.
ELT Journal (1947) ‘The Question Box’, 1(7), p. 198. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/1.7.198
Question: Which is preferable: an opportunity (chance) to see you or an opportunity (chance) of seeing you ?
Answer: Both are correct and there is no preference either way.
ELT Journal (1947) ‘The Question Box’, 2(2), p. 54. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/II.2.50
