The English Blog

Word Origins - Cyber Monday

Wordorigins.org has a list of around 400 word and phrase origins. The words and phrases are selected because their origins are inherently interesting or because some bit of folklore, sometimes true and sometimes false, is associated with the origin. Many of the words have been added as a result of questions or suggestions from readers of the site. 

Here's the entry for Cyber Monday (which happens to be today!)

And the Monday after Thanksgiving has been christened Cyber Monday. This day is alleged to be the busiest online shopping day of the year—with people using their internet connections at work to shop. The day, however, is not the busiest online shopping day of the year. In fact, it is nowhere near the busiest online shopping day. 

Cyber Monday was coined on 19 November 2005 when Shop.org, an association of online retailers, made the claim to the New York Times that it was expecting a “substantial sales increase” on that day: "Hence the catchy Cyber Monday, so called because millions of productive Americans, fresh off a weekend at the mall, are expected to return to work and their high-speed Internet connections on Nov. 28 and spend the day buying what they liked in all those stores".

That begs the question: What is the busiest online shopping day?

2007 Marketing Blog Project

This latest edition of the Marketing Blog Project is now finished. 34 students created their own marketing blog using Wordpress. The project home page has links to all the student blogs.

TOEFL iBT

Here in France the computer-based TOEFL (CBT) is being replaced by the internet-based TOEFL (iBT) on 22 October. The main differnece is that the iBT contains a speaking section. For more details, visit the official TOEFL site.

English for Marketing Project

I've got two groups of second-year students doing my English for Marketing option. They are going to do a project which involves creating a blog on a marketing theme of their choice. I introduced the project this morning and I must admit it wasn't a great surprise to discover that hardly anyone knew what a blog was. We're using Blogger for this project and by the end of the lesson all the students had made their first post introducing themselves and giving details of their choice of subject. I was amazed when one of them told me later in the day that she had already received a comment from someone in India. That just goes to show the power of the blog as a medium of communication!

Passerelle Exam Preparation

Today and tomorrow we're receiving over 100 potential candidates for entry to the ESC Le Havre in September. These are students currently studying in 'IUTs' (polytechnics), 'lycées' or universities and planning to take the Passerelle entrance exam next month. The idea is to help prepare them for the exam by giving a series of presentations about the various tests. My contribution was a presentation on the English oral test. The complete presentation on the written and oral English tests can be downloaded here: Download Passerelle.ppt

Expolangues

I recently made my annual pilgrimage to Expolangues in Paris. We're looking to replace our ageing cassette-based Revox language laboratory (see pic below) with something a bit more up-to-date, so I was interested to have a demonstration of a digital lab with a server which can store up to 240 hours of audio material. Now all we need to do is to find 30 thousand euros. All donations will be gratefully accepted!

 

Barnga

A couple of weeks ago our First Year students had the first session in a new Cultural Issues module which I'm organising. Erika Marsillac, a Texan now living in Nantes, came over to run the Barnga Game and give her thoughts on Franco-American relations. Barnga is a card game designed to increase the participants' level of cultural awareness. The students seemed to enjoy it (thanks Erika!) and it's been very interesting to read the reflections they have made in their follow-up written assignment - even if it's taking me ages to mark the 160 papers! Here's a typical comment:

"I think that this game was a very good example of how people react when they are confronted with foreign cultures. It also reminds me that you have to be open-minded to adapt to another culture."

First Post

If you don't know what a blog is, here's a short description. A blog (or weblog) is a sort of online journal in which the new posts always appear at the top. Visitors can comment on what they have read. Older posts are stored in an archive.  It's very easy to create a blog and post to it. This one was created using Typepad. You can find blogs dealing with virtually any subject you can think of. During the recent American election, political blogs attracted a lot of attention. More and more companies are using blogs to interact with their customers. Many bloggers (people who write blogs) just talk about their daily lives. This blog is for learners and teachers of English. I hope you'll come back often and add your own comments and suggestions.