Welcome to Flight 018 (June 2025)! This is a new start of the annual cycle (I initially published Flights weekly, hence ‘18’ rather than ‘13’), which means we have the biggest flight ever! Not only do you have the regular material but also revisits from last year! But this will not be the only change.
Previously, I would add some extra articles to the Flight. These articles will now be published separately on this Substack. You will find them at the extra sections for which you can subscribe or unsubscribe individually (all free). There is no publication schedule. I post on whatever I like, whenever I have time but always connected to English Language learning and teaching.
The Flights themselves, however, will still be published monthly (usually the third Tuesday of the month). It will still have my reading of the previous month and a suggestion for a student read. If you want to keep up to date with my current reading, you can connect with me on TheStoryGraph and/or GoodReads.
Flight 018
For the Study Guide we will visit the Socratic Method and a student paper on keeping a Reading Journal. This is based on a project in which I let my students keep a reading journal. You can find a Dutch article on this project here.
Use of English is steady as she goes. This month we have the final assignment on Advanced Grammar. Next month we will start discussing Basic Grammar.
Listening continues with the BBC’s “5 Minutes on”. Though not always topical because of this year’s restrictions by the BBC, these listening tasks are great listening assignments that take about 7-8 minutes in total.
There will be no more new lessons on doing presentations but we revisit the whole series from this month onwards. So, if you missed the beginning, you can now catch up. All other speaking tasks will continue as usual.
Writing has a new series: Creative Writing! I will focus on Flash Fiction first as these are easy to implement in class. Each lesson will discuss a writing item and there will be a prompt. This month its writing paragraphs and the initial sentence as a prompt.
Essay writing is approaching the end. This Flight we go into punctuation to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. I have planned 12 lessons in total, so still two more to go.
Flight 018
You can download the complete Flight 018 here (zip-file at Stack):
Flight 017 will still be available for a month.
Flight 018: Contents
Study Guides
Study Guide 029: The Socratic Method
Study Guide 030: The Reading Journal
Study Guide 001: Study Area (Revisited)
Study Guide 002: Study Behaviour (Revisited)
Vocabulary
OWL 051: People - Brazilian Carnival
OWL 052: Arts - Oliver Twist
OWL 001: City (Revisited)
OWL 002: Business (Revisited)
Use of English
Advanced Grammar 013: dangling participle modifiers
Advanced Grammar 001: fragments (Revisited)
Idioms 013: games
Idioms 001: colours (Revisited)
Phrasal Verb 013: TAKE
Phrasal Verb 001: LOOK (Revisited)
Word Formation 013: SENSE
Word Formation 001: APPROVE (Revisited)
Listening
Listening 028: 5 Minutes On - “'Unethical' or 'dignified' - What GPs think of assisted dying”
Listening 029: 5 Minutes On - “Ratty's Return to the Lake District”
Listening 001: 5 Minutes On - “Weather forecast with AI” (Revisited)
Listening 002: 5 Minutes On - “Innocent in jail” (Revisited)
Speaking
Speaking - Individual Long Turn 013: Games - Playing Games
Speaking - Individual Long Turn 001: Technology - Using a mobile phone (Revisited)
Speaking - Cooperation 013: People - Moods
Speaking - Cooperation 001: Global Issues - Fears (Revisited)
Speaking - Pronunciation 013: /h/
Speaking - Pronunciation 001: /t/ (Revisited)
Speaking - Presentations 01: Communication (Revisited)
Writing
Essay Writing 10: punctuation
Creative Writing 001: Flash Fiction / paragraphs / prompt: initial sentence
Reading
Wolf Hall
I have finally finished Wolf Hall. I am (re-)reading this wonderful novel series with the reading guide from Footnotes and Tangents. This novel has grown on me (mainly thanks to the guide). Wolf Hall is dense. It is a slow read and knowing some of England's history during the Renaissance is helpful if not vital. It is a book that demands time but delivers.
In Week 16 Simon Haisel of Footnotes and Tangents ended with the following words which really captured the essence of the novel:
"If Wolf Hall reminds us of a stage play, it is because the plot is driven by dialogue, conversation after conversation, between two, three, four or five men and women, a fistful of Thomases, in small rooms, five hundred years ago.
There are a few set pieces. very little action and no battle scenes. And yet, there is tension and drama on every page. Hilary Mantel’s imaginative work was to read between the lines of history and ask: what hidden thoughts and unrecorded moments made their world?"
The AI Con
I was really looking forward to this book as it would have many issues with AI all put together into one work. It does start strong making valid points on the hype of AI and it is well-supported.
However, I was put off by the implied racism in AI that kept seeping in. Yes, datasets are biased and contain racist information against Black people. And yes, facial recognition systems have a bias against Black people. But implying it is white men trying to dominate the world with AI at the expense of all others without sound evidence, is weak, if not, racist too.
So, at times he book wants to turn the AI hype into a struggle of white men against Black and indigenous people, cherry picking by focussing on Elon Musk and venture capitalist Andreessen Horowitz. Altman, Zuckerberg, and Amodei are often conveniently sidelined as they don’t fit this narrative. This is unfortunate because most else of the book is solid.
The ending for these kinds of books is always problematic, for how to end positively when hope still needs to be figured out? "Stop using ChatGPT and fund libraries" are not convincing glimpses of hope. We can show the limitations of AI by underlining the importance of our fields. We need to keep talking and not be silenced by cheerleaders. The bubble will eventually burst.
The Cellist of Sarajevo
This novel was ok for me but felt contrived. Bombs falling where the plot needed them to drop, snipers hitting where they needed to hit or missing where they needed to miss. It ticks boxes and does a fine job doing so, and in the process people still remember the madness of Sarajevo during the Balkan Wars.
Summer Reads
The Summer break is a wonderful time for a long read. Therefore I have five suggestions for students to read in the vacation. There is fantasy, a 19th century detective, a literary thriller, a library of a book, and an adventure to the American frontier. I have asked my colleagues to give their five Summer reads for students too, so expect more options this month!
Student Read of the Month
The Student Read of the Month is Lies of Silence by Brian Moore. The Troubles might be something of the previous century, the moral choices in this book are timeless. The length of the novel and the pacing make this a great read for students who are not regular readers.
When Michael Dillon is ordered by the IRA to park his car in the car park of a Belfast hotel, he is faced with a moral choice which leaves him absolutely nowhere to turn. He knows that he is planting a bomb that would kill and maim dozens of people. But he also knows that if he doesn't, his wife will be killed.
Author: Brian Moore
Published: 1990
Pages: 192
CEFR: B2
Plot Complexity: moderate
Language Complexity: moderate
Ideas Complexity: moderate
You can find more novel ideas at www.rookreading.com.