hightonandy

Amazing coincidences and old jackets

My daughter has been doing her end-of-high-school Matura exams. This week, she called me to tell her about her English listening exam that she had just completed. What she told me was a pleasant surprise. The listening text was about my home town in the UK. Maybe that wouldn’t be too surprising if I cameContinue reading “Amazing coincidences and old jackets”

Free AI Chatbot – see below for details!

Last year, I took it upon myself to create an AI chatbot for people to practise their spoken English. If you have read the post previous to this one, you’ll see that I am more than happy that AI has entered the arena of tools for language learners but I am fairly confident that inContinue reading “Free AI Chatbot – see below for details!”

Learning tools

When, quite a few years ago, I started my first language teaching course, the tools available to us were limited compared to what is available to the language learner and teacher nowadays. I had to prepare my own OHP slides – something so old that most of you reading this won’t even know what I’mContinue reading “Learning tools”

Making monumental mistakes

I remember way back in the late 20th century, I was in a French language lesson doing a dictation, which was one element of our lessons I particularly despised. I did my best and handed in my written interpretation of the sounds I’d heard. The total number of words was about the same as thisContinue reading “Making monumental mistakes”

1001 albums

In 2025, I read about a project. There’s a book called 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die . I don’t particularly like bucket lists or being told what I must do before I die but what I liked about this was that someone created a simple app which offers one of these albumsContinue reading “1001 albums”

The Babel fish

“The Babel Fish is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe.” So begins the description of this strange creature in the classic 1979 book ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ Douglas Adams, the author of the book, described a fantastic creature that you place in your ear and which allowsContinue reading “The Babel fish”

“Language learning is like cooking”

I heard this statement many years ago. The simple premise is that you could have the most expensive pots and pans, the best kitchen utensils, the most exquisite oven but if you can’t actually cook anything with this collection, you’ve got a problem. Almost all of us learn foreign languages using methodology that hasn’t fundamentallyContinue reading ““Language learning is like cooking””

First steps… again

I first started writing a blog many years ago – certainly before my now-teenage kids were on the scene. I think I wrote a couple of pretty good posts but then other events caught up with me and time disappeared, and this was before we all had smartphones permanantly in front of our faces. MaybeContinue reading “First steps… again”