Category Archives: Blog

Rankings from The Economist

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Do you know which country’s citizens go to the cinema most often? It’s Iceland, followed by South Korea and Singapore.

The Economist‘s World in Figures site has a Rankings tool. It ranks countries according to various criteria, such as:

Penny Ur’s 100 Teaching Tips

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This book is aimed at English language teachers. Tip number 1 is “Start with a smile” and number 100 is “Do your own thing.” Here are some of the others:

  • Don’t give homework at the end
  • Use the coursebook – selectively
  • Do correct mistakes
  • Use mother tongue to explain
  • Avoid grammatical terms
  • Limit tasks by time, not amount
  • Don’t worry about the topic
  • Don’t always pre-teach vocabulary
  • Don’t make students read aloud
  • Talk a lot
  • Teach a lot of vocabulary
  • Teach spelling rules

The Resource Centre has a copy, which you can borrow.

Opinion polls

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Sometimes you need data about people’s opinions to include in an assignment. For example, a recent opinion poll asked who should be the next British monarch after Queen Elizabeth II.

These polling companies publish some of their results online:

YouGov and Ipsos MORI have partner sites in other countries. Some examples of their polls:

You can also find polling data on the statistics site, Statista.

RSA videos

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The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, more usually known as the Royal Society of Arts or the RSA, was founded in 1754. Even the internet didn’t exist then! Now that it does, the RSA has taken advantage of the fact by publishing videos of talks, some with animations.

For example, you can listen to South Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang on Economics is for Everyone:

You can watch the videos on the society’s own website or on YouTube.

Drama Online

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Drama Online has over 2,200 plays which you can read online. You can browse them by title, playwright, period or genre (for example, Theatre of the Absurd, Asian drama, Children’s theatre, Feminist theatre, Musical theatre, Street theatre).

From The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde:

Lady Bracknell: Are your parents living?
Jack: I have lost both my parents.
Lady Bracknell: Both? To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune — to lose both seems like carelessness.

From Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett:

Vladimir: Pull on your trousers.
Estragon: You want me to pull off my trousers?
Vladimir: Pull ON your trousers.
Estragon: (Realizing his trousers are down.) True. (He pulls up his trousers.)
Vladimir: Well? Shall we go?
Estragon: Yes, let’s go.
They do not move.

Brexit collocations

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Have something to say about Brexit? You’ll need the right vocabulary! According to the iWeb Corpus, these words are often found near the word Brexit on web pages:

affect, aftermath, ahead, amid, backed, border, campaign, campaigners, challenges, concerns, consequences, deal, debate, economic, economy, election, exit, fallout, favour, fears, hard, immigration, impact, implications, independence, looming, mandate, minister, negotiate, negotiations, outcome, parliament, pound, presidential, prime, prospect, referendum, result, risks, scenario, secretary, shadow, shock, so-called, soft, softer, stance, sterling, supporters, surrounding, talks, threat, trigger, uncertainty, union, upcoming, vote, voters, wake, warned

Some examples:

  • Despite the uncertainty sparked by the Brexit vote, London has remained attractive to global tech firms…
  • Analysts put the probability of no deal or a chaotic Brexit at 30%. # A hard Brexit will also affect the EU.
  • The Lib Dems pledge to hold a referendum on the final Brexit deal following two years of negotiations between London and Brussels.
  • In the wake of the recent Brexit referendum, this is especially important.
  • And while Spain would prefer a soft to a hard Brexit, the matter of migration between Spain and the UK lingers in the air.
  • The aftermath of the UKs Brexit vote last month sees much uncertainty within the investment community.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang

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Green’s Dictionary of Slang is completely free to everybody from today, Guy Fawkes Night.

Mr Green explains why here. Previously the definitions were available to all, but the examples required a subscription. Now you can see the examples too.

For example, a Norfolk breakfast is no breakfast at all:

1939 Beds Times 25 Aug. 6/2: In the eastern Counties they galk [talk?] about giving the pigs a ‘Norfolk breakfast’ on Sunday mornings — which means they get no breakfast.

Many of the terms are, of course, unsuitable for polite company.

The three volumes of the 2010 print edition can be consulted in UEA Library.

Correct

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A man using this Chinese ATM pressed the Correct button three times and the machine swallowed his card.

He thought Correct was being used as an adjective, but it was a verb!

  • correct (adjective) = right; OK; with no mistakes
  • correct (verb) = remove mistakes; revise; change something which is wrong, to make it right

Source: Language Log

Synonyms for “unkempt”

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Two days ago we quoted a letter to The Times from 1968, which described some UEA students as “childishly noisy”, “completely lacking in manners” and “unkempt”.

The Oxford English Dictionary has various defintions of unkempt. The one intended by the letter-writer would seem to be:

Of a person’s or (occasionally) an animal’s appearance, condition, etc.: characterized by uncombed or untidy hair; (more generally) scruffy, dishevelled.

The OED’s Historical Thesaurus lists this meaning under: the world > physical sensation > cleanness and dirtiness > dirtiness >  [adjective] > dirty and mean. Words in this category (with the earliest year in which they were recorded) are:

  • ungoderly c1400
  • sluttish 1549
  • squalid 1596
  • scrubbing 1603
  • sordid 1611
  • snotty 1681
  • frowzy 1710
  • grub 1719
  • seedy 1725
  • unkempt 1838
  • grubby 1844
  • crumby 1859
  • ratty 1867
  • scruffy 1871
  • scrutty 1914
  • scummy 1932
  • ribby 1936
  • raunchy 1937
  • sleazy 1941
  • scroungy 1948
  • manky 1958
  • grungy 1965
  • scungy 1966
  • scuzzy 1969
  • scrungy 1974

Words with similar meanings include grimy, tatty, shabby, dowdy and mangy.

You may have noticed how most of these words have two syllables and end in y. About half of them begin with s. This may be an example of sound symbolism or iconicity.

Old HK newspapers

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Hong Kong Public Libraries have an online collection of old newspapers, both Chinese and English, from 1853 to 1991.

Hong Kong was then a British colony and the English-language newspapers reflect the preoccupations and views of the expatriate population. Nevertheless, they are an interesting historical source.

To see the newspapers, click on Explore, then (under Collections) Old HK Newspapers. Reading them requires a web browser with Flash.

Old newspapers online

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If you want to know how past events were reported at the time, you should consult old newspapers. Some are available online. UEA Library provides access to these collections:

Collection Years Region
Burney Collection 1600-1799 Mainly Britain and its colonies
British Library 1800-1900 Britain
Google Newspaper Archive 1750s-2009 United States, Canada and others
The Guardian and The Observer 1791-2003 Britain
The New York Times 1851-2014 United States
The Times 1785-2012 Britain
Nexis 1980s-present International
Nikkei Telecom 1975-present Japan*
Independent Voices 1950s-present Mainly United States (alternative press)
Daily Mail 1896-2004 Britain

Wikipedia has a more comprehensive List of online newspaper archives. Some are free to access; others are behind a paywall.

*For an English menu expand the item: スペシャルコンテンツ.

The gerbil who won a UEA election

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From The Associated Press, February 13, 1988

Ken The Gerbil Wins Student Election At University

DATELINE: NORWICH, England

A gerbil named Ken, campaigning on a platform of free beer and soft toilet paper, beat five other candidates to become president of the Student Union at the University of East Anglia. Ken’s owner, chemistry student Julian Campbell, 21, said he entered his pet as a joke and was amazed that the mouselike rodent won the job, which pays $94.50 a week.

The university is in Norwich in northeast England. Ken polled well over a third of the 1,500 votes, beating his nearest competitor by 194 votes. He celebrated his victory Friday night with sunflower seeds and a sip of vodka from a water bottle.

“I think he’ll make a great president. And he definitely won’t be making any boring speeches,” Campbell was quoted as telling The Star.

But outgoing Student Union president Rob Davies, 23, was not amused.

“The students have not taken the vote seriously,” Davies was quoted as telling the Daily Mirror. “I don’t think many know how much hard work goes into the job.”

Ken was named after Education Secretary Kenneth Baker, whose education reform bill is currently being considered by Parliament. But it turns out the name is somewhat of a misnomer.

Campbell found out during the campaign that Ken is actually a female and is pregnant.

Source: Nexis

The election was overturned and a fresh election held, in which Ken’s owner, Julian Campbell, was elected.

More rankings than you can shake a stick at

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IREG Observatory lists university rankings.

At present count there are 17 global rankings, plus various regional and specialized rankings (e.g. best fashion schools). Of the national rankings, Britain has three.

For a somewhat cynical view of rankings and related matters, see University Ranking Watch.

For the origin of shake a stick at, see this article.

Irregular verb forms

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Can you give the correct forms for the verbs in square brackets?

  1. They fell asleep soon after they had [lie] down.
  2. Once again the dog had [lay] its head on her lap.
  3. He remembered he had [drink] the cocktail before.
  4. I got up immediately after I had [wake] up.
  5. Their efforts failed, though everyone had [strive] for success.

For the answers read This is highly irregular in the Macmillan Dictionary Blog.

Bare plurals

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A plural noun is “bare” if it does not have a determiner, such as the, two, many, all or my. Consider these three examples of the bare plural, rabbits:

  1. Rabbits are mammals.
  2. Rabbits eat lettuce.
  3. Rabbits ate my lettuce yesterday.

The meaning of rabbits is different in each case:

  1. All rabbits are mammals.
  2. Most rabbits eat lettuce.
  3. Some rabbits ate my lettuce yesterday.

The problem with the bare plural is the ambiguity of certain statements. For example:

  • Mosquitoes transmit malaria.

In fact, only female mosquitoes from a minority of species of the Anopheles genus can transmit malaria. Most mosquitoes can’t transmit malaria.

Bare plurals are often used by newspapers to over-generalize, especially in headlines. For example:

  • Women really do prefer rich men (The Times, 5 January 2018)
  • UK men prefer personality over appearance in partners (The Daily Telegraph, 30 November 2017)
  • Minorities distrust companies (USA Today, 14 January 2004)
  • Muslims back faith killings (Sunday Express, 27 July 2008)

The article under the last headline says, “The YouGov survey questioned 600 Muslims in 12 universities across the country and found 32 per cent said resorting to extremist action to honour their beliefs was right.” So Muslims in the headline means only some Muslims – about one third of the students in the survey. The casual reader may assume it means most or all Muslims.

The lesson is: be careful of bare plurals when reading newspapers and writing assignments!

Not One-Off Britishisms

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British people have been complaining about Americanisms – words or phrases from the United States that have become common in Britain – since the eighteenth century.

For example, nowadays you often hear train station instead of railway station, fries instead of chips and movie instead of film.

Ben Yagoda’s blog Not One-Off Britishisms is about movement in the other direction:

Over the last decade or so, an alarming number of traditionally British expressions have found their way into the American vocabulary.

Some Britishisms are advert, DIY, ginger (a person with red hair), gobsmacked, Hoover (verb), kerfuffle, mobile (i.e. a mobile phone), on holiday, queue, sell-by date, short-listed, snog, straight away, take a decision, twee.

The latest blog post is on cheesed off.

different + from/than/to?

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A clear victory for from:

From Google Ngram Viewer.

Top journals according to Google

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A list of the top 100 publications in various languages is produced by Google Scholar. The journals are ranked by their h-index and h-median metrics. You can read an explanation here.

The current top 10 English-language publications are:

  1. Nature
  2. The New England Journal of Medicine
  3. Science
  4. The Lancet
  5. Chemical Society reviews
  6. Cell
  7. Nature Communications
  8. Chemical Reviews
  9. Journal of the American Chemical Society
  10. Advanced Materials

You can also see the top journals in particular fields – for example, Business, Economics & Management.

Gutted

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  • World Cup 2018: ‘Gutted’ Harry Kane says England gave it their all as millions of Three Lions fans suffer World Cup heartbreak once more (The Sun)
  • Holly Willoughby and Kate Hudson lead an army of ‘gutted‘ stars on social media after England’s crushing World Cup semi-final loss to Croatia (Daily Mail)
  • ‘I’m absolutely gutted’: disappointed England fans speak of World Cup hurt from Russia (iNews)
  • Your Favourite Musicians Are Gutted About The England Result (Clash Magazine)
  1. A gutted fish is a fish whose guts – internal organs – have been removed, so that it can be cooked.
  2. A gutted house is a house whose interior has been emptied or destroyed, usually by fire.
  3. If a person is gutted, they are bitterly disappointed. This is British slang. The adjective is normally used in the predicative position (after a verb like be, become, grow, look or seem). However, the first two newspaper headlines are using it attributively (before the noun).

 

Sketch Engine

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Sketch Engine is an online tool for analysing text corpora in various languages. You can use it to find collocations, compare words, generate word lists, etc.

For example, you can find objects of the verb undergo:

  • surgery
  • transformation
  • treatment
  • renovation
  • change
  • training
  • testing
  • procedure
  • chemotherapy
  • examination
  • transition
  • therapy

British universities have free access only until the effective date of Brexit, i.e. 29 March 2019.

IELTS test taker performance

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The results for 2017 are summarized here.

For example, the average bands in the Academic test for speakers of these first languages:

First language Listening Reading Writing Speaking Overall
Arabic 5.63 5.37 5.06 5.88 5.55
Chinese 5.97 6.15 5.41 5.46 5.81
Indonesian 6.54 6.67 5.78 6.26 6.37
Japanese 5.90 6.09 5.41 5.59 5.81
Kazakh 6.06 6.04 5.51 5.81 5.92
Korean 6.20 6.21 5.46 5.79 5.98
Malay 7.03 6.86 6.07 6.54 6.69
Punjabi 5.92 5.47 5.56 5.67 5.72
Russian 6.74 6.71 5.89 6.52 6.53
Spanish 6.65 6.89 5.93 6.62 6.59
Thai 6.24 6.03 5.46 5.90 5.97
Turkish 6.42 6.42 5.70 6.22 6.25
Vietnamese 5.97 6.17 5.59 5.71 5.93

Credo Reference

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Credo Reference is a collection of online reference books. It can be browsed and searched like an encyclopedia.

For example, if you search for global warming, you are shown the topic page on climate change (“the now commonly used term, having replaced “global warming”), extracts from many books, a list of related topics (Climate change, Greenhouse gas, Kyoto Protocol, etc.), images, and a mind map.

It might be a good place to start research for your long essay or project.

Nexis

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Nexis is a database of newspapers and other news sources. It contains full-text articles.

For example, you can search for UEA in the headlines of UK national newspapers:

  • UEA criticised by notable alumni for ‘thuggish’ development plans (The Guardian, September 7, 2016)
  • UEA academics from different subject areas unite in disappointment at Brexit result (The Independent, June 24, 2016)
  • UEA fighter jet ‘missing’ during Yemen combat mission (mirror.co.uk, March 14, 2016)

I bet you never knew this university had its own fighter jet.

Statista

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Statista provides statistics, reports and infographics on a range of subjects: for example, social media, e-commerce, smartphones, China, the United States, the food industry, cosmetics, gaming.

  • Did you know that 78% of people in Thailand were interested in football, but in China and the US it’s only 32%?
  • In 2007 there were 59 million vehicles in China; in 2016 there were 194 million.
  • Last year McDonald’s was the most valuable fast food brand in the world with an estimated value of 98 billion US dollars, while the brand value of Starbucks was 44 billion dollars.

 

The Vogue Archive

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UEA has online access to every issue of the American Vogue, from 17 December 1892 to the present day. You can read the magazine exactly as it was printed, including the pictures and advertisements.

To leaf through the magazine, choose an issue and click on any item on the contents page. Then click on Browse this issue at the top of the page:

A Vision of Britain through Time

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A Vision of Britain through Time combines maps and population census data from 1801 to 2011. You can look up statistics for particular areas of the country. For example, here are some of the key findings about Norwich:

  • The population grew from 31,770 in 1801 to 132,512 in 2011.
  • The highest infant mortality rate recorded was 229.72 infant deaths per thousand live births in 1861, and the lowest was 3.94 in 2001.
  • In 1841, 50.16 per cent of all workers worked in manufacturing, but in 2011 this had fallen to 6.52 per cent.
  • The highest male unemployment rate recorded by the census was 14.95 per cent in 1991, and the lowest was 1.94 in 1951.
  • In 1911, 12.89 per cent of people were living in households with over 1.5 persons per room, but in 2011 this had fallen to .53 per cent.

Uh. Uh? Uh-uh. Uh-huh. Uh-oh.

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Do you know the meaning of these interjections?

uh

I’m thinking or unsure what to say next.

  • We’ll be meeting them at, uh, 4 o’clock.
  • Of course I still love you, it’s just, uh…
  • Uh, maybe.

Sometimes written as “er”.

  • She’s, er, busy.

uh?

What did you just say? What do you mean?

– Amy, Question 5?
– Uh?
– Please pay attention. What’s the answer to Question 5?

– I’m going to marry your sister.
– Uh?

uh-uh

No.

– Have you seen Bill?
– Uh-uh.

uh-huh

Yes or I understand/agree/am listening.

– Then we went on to the party…
– Uh-huh.
– … and Sarah was there – you remember Sarah?
– Uh-huh.
– … and she goes up to Tom and you know what Tom’s like.
– Uh-huh.

uh-oh

There’s a problem.

– Hey, the red light is flashing.
– Uh-oh.

– Isn’t that your teacher?
– Uh-oh.

For more information, try these definitions at Collins English Dictionary: uh, uh-uh, uh-huh, uh-oh.

Searching with site:

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When searching the internet, you can limit your search to a particular website or type of website. Put the word site: (with the colon) in front of a domain name such as uea.ac.uk or ac.uk.

For example, you could use these search terms to find information on Chinese societies at different universities:

Limit search to these websites Search terms
UEA chinese society site:uea.ac.uk
Edinburgh University chinese society site:ed.ac.uk
any British university chinese society site:ac.uk
any American university chinese society site:edu

 

Some other examples of searches:

  • probiotics site:nhs.uk
  • visas site:gov.au
  • peace site:mfa.gov.kp

The site: operator works on Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo.

For more information, see our Researching page.