youtu.be/iitq4Zrphdk?... Hannah Fry: "there are certain situations where AI can do superhuman things but you know so can forklifts you know what I mean like we built tools that can do things that humans can't do for a really long time doesn't mean that they're godlike"

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... "For researchers and practitioners, there seems to be an interesting blend of excitement to experiment and publish and fear of missing out on the waves of GenAI." - nice way to put this, FOMO in GenAI research

For doing things like searching for articles from one particular journal: github.com/fabiobatalha...

野菜の詰め放題、ごぼうはまだまだいけた

Yorkshire puddings. Definitely the first time I've made them in My 16 years in Japan, and maybe first time ever

Happy Pancake Day and Happy Chinese New Year. According to Claude it's the first time the 2 have aligned since 1953. The next time they align will be 2029.

If this works well in practice, sounds like an amazing tool: Hu, N., Lu, X. & Hu, R. Developing fine-grained sense-aware lexical sophistication indices based on the CEFR levels of word senses. Behav Res 57, 226 (2025). doi.org/10.3758/s134... GitHub too: github.com/fulan233/cef...

If you're in and around Tokyo and interested in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), my department is hosting this event with featured speakers Prof. Makoto Ikeda and Dr. Barry Kavanagh. There will also be 10 CLIL-related poster presentations www.rikkyo.ac.jp/events/2026/...

I used an activity in class today that I learned in my first intensive TEFL course, but had never used before. It was swilling around for 17 years and I finally found a use for it.

Getting my new slides in shape. I have it on good authority that the typeface I have chosen is "woke" (aka sans serif)

Some songs I've been listening to over the last 3 months, not necessarily released or discovered by me in the last 3 months... music.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Always doing academic writing with the ghosts of reviewers past on my shoulders... 👻

Some light winter reading...

University of Hong Kong professor steps down from associate deanship after AI-generated references scandal hongkongfp.com/2025/12/18/u...

Maybe these ChatGPT adverts on social media don't give us the full insight into what the models are most useful for

It’s been fun while it lasted: “Purdue University will begin requiring that all of its undergraduate students demonstrate basic competency in artificial intelligence starting with freshmen who enter the university in 2026.” www.forbes.com/sites/michae...

I'm teaching Statistical Rethinking again starting Jan 2026. This time with live lectures, divided into Beginner and Experienced sections. Will be a lot more work for me, but I hope much better for students. I will record lectures & all will be found at this link: github.com/rmcelreath/s...

www.podbean.com/ew/pb-7dir8-... On this week’s Lost in Citations podcast, I am pleased to share my conversation with Dr. Akira Murakami from the University of Birmingham, who is an expert in #corpuslinguistics, statistics, and quantitative methodology. (1/3)

[Strong Message Here] AI Hallucinations (with Stewart Lee and Sarah Wynn-Williams) #strongMessageHere podcastaddict.com/strong-messa... via @PodcastAddict

www.podbean.com/ew/pb-7dir8-... On this week’s Lost in Citations podcast, I am pleased to share my conversation with Dr. Akira Murakami from the University of Birmingham, who is an expert in #corpuslinguistics, statistics, and quantitative methodology. (1/3)

www.podbean.com/ew/pb-dvscn-... Delighted to share this podcast that I recorded with Prof. Susan Hunston, expert in #corpuslinguistics, English grammar, and former senior grammarian. We talked about the paper “Coming to Terms with Success” (1/3)

From its Monty Python origins to its dominance in the age of AI. Yes, we're talking about Python. 🐍 We sat down with creator Guido van Rossum to discuss its incredible trajectory in the 2025 Octoverse report. 📊 Learn how community and stability shaped a global powerhouse. 🚀 https://gh.io/AAyvkm9

Really enjoyed listening to this episode of #LostInCitations with Professor Susan Hunston, hosted by @coopersensei.bsky.social Before discussing the paper, they talk about Susan’s career and work in general (including her involvement in the COBUILD project), and briefly her recent open access book😊

www.podbean.com/ew/pb-dvscn-... Delighted to share this podcast that I recorded with Prof. Susan Hunston, expert in #corpuslinguistics, English grammar, and former senior grammarian. We talked about the paper “Coming to Terms with Success” (1/3)

Stephen Fry and the Godfather of AI | BBC News youtu.be/ZKRY827SCew?...

Enjoyed attending #jalt2025 for the first time in 6 years, here are the slides from my presentation about using Python and R in research www.researchgate.net/publication/...

We are deeply saddened by the loss of Greg Newby, who led Project Gutenberg ( @gutenberg.org ) with passion and purpose. Greg’s belief in free and open access to knowledge continues to inspire us and so many others working to preserve our shared culture online. gutenberg.org/about/newby....

I've just been using the Write & Improve Corpus, I didn't know that there was a Speak and Improve Corpus too: englishlanguageitutoring.com/datasets/spe...

Interesting article: arxiv.org/abs/2510.04764 Are BabyLMs Deaf to Gricean Maxims? A Pragmatic Evaluation of Sample-efficient Language Models

I contributed a chapter to this (Bringing Sarcasm and the Speech Act of Requests Into the Tertiary EFL Classroom With Short Movie Clips). Thanks to the editors (Adrian and Matt) for meticulous feedback and for allowing me to write this practical chapter. www.candlinandmynard.com/screenmedia....

What's more annoying than another acronym? Another acronym in the wrong order: "English as a business lingua franca (BELF)"

Yeah, maybe Microsoft Word Copilot isn't quite there for catching typos...

I think I prefer the term "vibe coding" to "prompt engineering", it's much better matched to the complexity of what you are doing

I never thought I would find academic writing enjoyable, but I kind of do, now that I don't have the pressure of a producing a 100,000 word thesis

First time that I've seen this on a university job advert: "It is desirable to have enthusiasm for developing teaching materials or curricula by utilizing generative AI." Looks like using gen-AI is becoming a necessary skill for educators.

www.iastatedigitalpress.com/plugins/book... Comparing Human Raters’ and ChatGPT-4’s Scores in Measuring Content in CLIL Presentation Rie Koizumi, Saki Suemori, Yusuke Kubo

youtu.be/LneiTaz2QoM?... Brian Eno: "I can see from the little acquaintance I have with using AI programs to make music that what you spend nearly all your time doing is trying to stop the system becoming mind numbingly mediocre" Is the same true with AI in language education?

Pattern, Construction, System: A Unified Approach to Grammar and Lexis. Susan Hunston's latest book. It's Open Access, so the PDF is available online already... www.cambridge.org/core/books/p...

After our very succesful Corpus Linguistics 2025 conference hosted by @robbielove.org at Aston, CL is going on tour! Our next conference will be Easter 2027 in Hong Kong at HK Poly U. In summer 2029 we return to Europe when @michamahlberg.bsky.social will host CL at Erlangen!

Missed out on #CL2025? Four of our wonderful plenary talks are now available to watch on demand! YouTube links on conference website and in replies: www.cl2025.co.uk/home

Check it out - the corpus MOOC is back (15th September) on a new platform (edX) exploring new topics, including AI. One thing has not changed - it is still free to access 😁 Find out more here: www.edx.org/learn/social...

My article 'Predicting the CEFR level of English listening texts with machine learning methods' is free access in Research Methods in Applied Linguistics for a couple more days (until 20 Aug) with this link www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Interesting article by Cannon-Jones and Wiegand (2025) To what extent can a comedy drama provide a classroom model for natural conversation? A multi-dimensional register analysis of the British series Cold Feet www.jbe-platform.com/content/jour...

So many learner corpora in this list from UCLouvain www.uclouvain.be/en/research-...

I seem to have noticed a lot of students "diving into topics" or "taking a deep dive" in their final presentations this semester. Is this an AI-ism?

The ICAME call for papers is out. Hopefully I can make it to Koblenz in May next year wp.uni-koblenz.de/icame47/cfp/

I sat in the interviewing chair for Lost in Citations again this week, interviewing Dr. John Gayed about his AI assessment tool AIAWE, check it out here www.podbean.com/ew/pb-bbamc-... John was a bit ahead of the curve on AI in applied linguistics, so it was great to talk to him about this