Tagged - The Chain of 11s

ELTpic by Fiona Mauchline

The other day, Marisa Constantinides kindly tagged me in a post on her blog - here - as part of a chain post in which one blogger challenges others to answer some questions before passing the ball onto more bloggers.  As co-founder and moderator of #ELTchat, Marisa thought it would be appropriate to choose 11 people who participate in the weekly Twitter forum and regularly contribute summaries.  I was honoured to be considered as one of her eleven names. Perhaps she was curious to know a little bit more about me. Anyway...

The task was as follows:

1. Acknowledge the nominating blogger. -> Done.

2. Share 11 random facts about yourself.  

3. Answer the 11 questions the nominating blogger has created for you.

4. List 11 bloggers.

5. Post 11 questions for the bloggers you nominate to answer, and let all the bloggers know they have been nominated.   

Now I usually steer well away from chain-based activity on any social network, especially when there is some implicit or explicit imposition not to break the chain.  That is not the case here, there being no obligation to take up the challenge.  It's a bit of fun.  I could, however, see a potential problem trying to come up with the names of 11 bloggers from my bookmarked list (other than Cameron K McEwan a.k.a. 'Blogtor Who') who have not already been tagged by others, are likely to be or who would want to take part.  I suspect some will be tagged more than once, especially if going round in ELT circles.  So, I regret to say I have not done parts 4+5. Not yet, anyway.

So despite some reservations, I thought I would complete parts 2 and 3.  This blog already contains a fair amount of personal stuff, some of which has gone back into 'draft' for being too honest.   The blog did begin as a way to keep my family informed of my experiences abroad so was more personal than professional to begin with.  I thought I would only mention things that have not previously been disclosed.  So here goes...

11+ Random Facts About Me:

• The first single I ever bought was 'Summer Nights' by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John from Grease.  My second one was 'Rat Trap' by The Boomtown Rats, which was bought in the week it knocked 'Summer Nights' off the No.1 spot in the UK.
• I wrote a book review of 'The Hobbit' when I was nine years old but my English teacher pointed out that I had completely forgot to mention both Gollum and The Ring!
• As a child, I went to Pimlico school - now Pimlico Academy - in London, but despite one appearance on stage at the Purcell Rooms on London's South Bank, never became an actor or singer.
• My first home computer was a Sinclair ZX81, followed by a Commodore 64, both of which I wrote programs for, but I have never owned a games console. 
• I once recorded an album's worth of songs, when I was 22, entitled 'So Serious', which included nine original compositions plus 3 covers.  It has wisely never been released.
• I used to be the pianist in an amateur jazz band.  We released one CD, 'First Time On Grass', recorded at the Warham Horse Shoes Pub, 1993. 
• My favourite 'celeb moment' remains bumping into Billy Bragg and future London mayor, Boris Johnson, at Glastonbury festival, in 2000. 
• I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in 2007, following 3 months as a volunteer teacher in Tanzania, making a film of the experience entitled 'Phili Does Kili'.
• My first job was in an insurance brokers.  I stayed in insurance for seven years, before going to Anglia Polytechnic (Ruskin) University to study Sociology.
• I love 김치 Kimchi, the Korean national dish, as featured on this week's episode of QI, 'Kitchen Sink', which happens to be my favourite TV show (see below). I can also make 김치찌개 Kimchi Jjigae. I also love Korean Soju 
  소주.
• I am a terribly slow reader of novels, as opposed to being a reader of terrible novels.  I prefer autobiographies and am currently reading Morrissey's. 

Warham 5 - 'First Time On Grass' - recorded 1993.

• 

  At Barranco Camp, day 3 of Kili, 2007.

with Billy and Boris, Glastonbury 2000.

Marisa's 11 Questions (in italics):

1. How long does it usually take you to draft and finalise a blog post?  My posts tend to be quite considered and often quite lengthy, especially reviews.  They can take 2-3 days.  I am a stickler for accuracy and hate to think of spelling errors or issues with formatting to cause unnecessary strain for the reader.  #ELTchat summaries take a long time to put together and I want to do the chats justice. Sometimes I abandon one if I do not think I can finish it off. Once I publish a post, I often re-read it and change details, putting some back into draft occasionally.  I probably worry too much about how it will look or what people might think.

2. Which ICT tools do you actually use with your classes?  Despite having written a masters dissertation on this topic, I have not fully used web tools as might as I would have liked.  This is mostly down to not having been consistently in work since discovering them.  The ones I have used the most are Padlet, Quizlet, Vocaroo, Audioboo, MailVu, Todays Meet, Present.me and mybrainshark.

3. What is your absolute dream job?   Not long ago I thought that my ideal situation would be to have a steady teaching job abroad for nine months of the year, returning to the UK for the summer to do university pre-sessional teaching.  I guess this is still a goal, but speaking a foreign language would make me feel more comfortable in being abroad.  Any teaching job which involves film making on a more regular basis - see also no.10.

4. Which classroom activity do you absolutely enjoy using with your students?   One is all I need.    Watching Pete Gibson's webinar on Integrated Phonology the other day - video here - reminded me just how much I also enjoy pronunciation work with students, including drilling, repetition and those suprasegmental level things like stress, rhythm, assimilation and elision.  I love modelling phonological aspects of the English language.

5. How many of your current friendships were started through a social network?  Around half of my Facebook friends and two-thirds of the people I follow on Twitter are ELT related.  Whilst acknowledging that I am 'friends' with many people I have never met, and that many of these friendships are purely professional, there are some who I would class as friends who I regularly connect with, even if I only see them once a year.

6. Which household chore do you hate the most and which one do you love the best?  Never been a fan of ironing.  A household chore which you love sounds like a bit of an oxymoron.  I enjoy cooking, so that's never a chore.  

7. Name your 10 desert islands CD's.  I always wondered about whether this question refers to 10 pieces of music that would actually complement being on a desert island rather a simple list of favourites.  Rather than selecting appropriate songs such as 'On An Island' by David Gilmour or 'Message In A Bottle' by The Police I thought I would just mention 10 albums that I like.  Ask me next week and it might be a completely different list.

• Raintown - Deacon Blue
• The Queen Is Dead - The Smiths
• Copper Blue - Sugar
• Mezzanine - Massive Attack
• Doolittle - Pixies
• Little Earthquakes - Tori Amos
• Songs From The Big Chair - Tears for Fears
• Post - Björk
• Peter Gabriel IV (Security) - Peter Gabriel
• Harvest - Neil Young

8. Do you wish you had studied something other than what you did study?  Do say what, if the answer is yes.  Studying sociology gave me the ability to view the world with a critical eye and I do not regret taking it.  In hindsight, though, I do wish I had stuck with English (at degree level), and made more effort with French and Spanish.  My inability to nail a foreign language is a huge bugbear.  The furthest I have got is with Korean, which I was beginning to get to grips with before I left the country.  But I have never had a particularly good aptitude or attitude.  Shame on me really for not persevering!

9. Describe the naughtiest thing you have ever done - within reason, of course.   'Naughty' is not really a word in my lexicon. It has connotations of something done as a child.  I once had a seedy experience in Hong Kong which I won't divulge here.   Suffice to say, it wasn't worth it!

10. What artistic aspirations or skills do you have?  I bet I am not the first English Language teacher to have said that I am a frustrated actor/stage performer.  My most enjoyable lessons have been those which have been drama or film based.  The best lessons are in which learners are using English as a lingua franca (ELF) to write a screenplay and create a movie.  I have skills in producing and editing and these come to the fore in those situations.

11. Which TV series or film do you keep watching again and again?  Six Feet Under remains my favourite ever TV series of all time and I have watched every single episode at least twice.  Two other HBO series, The Sopranos and Dexter also stand out for me.  I have a lot of Doctor Who DVDs, including everything from the new series, which get quite a few spins. But I have fond memories for the classic show, especially the Tom Baker and Peter Davison eras.    

I suppose The Matrix, Fight Club, Amélie, The Shawshank Redemption and, appropriately for this question, Groundhog Day would be examples of films which I have watched several times. A special mention, however, must go to Carl Reiner and Steve Martin's The Man With Two Brains!