The U.S. government should not be in the business of shutting down social media firms on the basis of China-hate. TikTok is no worse (and in fact seems to be far better) than various social media apps from U.S.-based firms. There's a lot of be upset with China about, but TikTok (and drone leader DJI, which also has bipartisan China-hate trying to ban it) are not where Congress should be getting involved. If Congress passes such bans and Biden signs them, there will be major court battles and courts should strike the bans down.
I don't know why I'm amusing myself this way today, but I just remembered one of my favorite small business typos ever. There used to be a Japanese restaurant near me that had a massively typo ridden menu.
The best item on the menu?
Crap Rolls.
Even better? It wasn't really a typo. English was not their first language. I really don't think they understood that CRAP was not the same as CRAB because underneath the menu item for Crap Rolls was the description:
"Imitation crap, avocado, fish eggs..."
Everywhere on the menu where crab was an ingredient, the word crap was used instead.
Despite the dodgy sounding menu item name, I can attest that their crap rolls were definitely not total crap.
I just noticed that my favorite sliced bread company (Gabriel’s Bakery, though I think they’re more known for their bagels 😂) have a new brand video out and they’re such a lovely family! Available at your local New Seasons; the walnut one is the best! #Portland#PDX 🍞🥯❤️ (EDIT: Also available at Whole Foods but some locations only have the bagels.) https://youtu.be/wMZbXMiF4lg?si=3k6ej0naxkKi84Un
@agnes
Thanks for sharing! This is a great video to share with my #ESL students and it looks like a lovely business to visit when I'm in #portland this spring!
What a final game on #ESL#DreamLeague Season 22 #DOTA2 - #esports can definitely be entertaining when presented correctly and DreamLeague do a fantastic job of it.
The racism in chatGPT we are not talking about....
This year, I learned that students use chatGPT because they believe it helps them sound more respectable. And I learned that it absolutely does not work. A thread.
A few weeks ago, I was working on a paper with one of my RAs. I have permission from them to share this story. They had done the research and the draft. I was to come in and make minor edits, clarify the method, add some background literature, and we were to refine the discussion together.
The draft was incomprehensible. Whole paragraphs were vague, repetitive, and bewildering. It was like listening to a politician. I could not edit it. I had to rewrite nearly every section. We were on a tight deadline, and I was struggling to articulate what was wrong and how the student could fix it, so I sent them on to further sections while I cleaned up ... this.
As I edited, I had to keep my mind from wandering. I had written with this student before, and this was not normal. I usually did some light edits for phrasing, though sometimes with major restructuring.
I was worried about my student. They had been going through some complicated domestic issues. They were disabled. They'd had a prior head injury. They had done excellent on their prelims, which of course I couldn't edit for them. What was going on!?
We were co-writing the day before the deadline. I could tell they were struggling with how much I had to rewrite. I tried to be encouraging and remind them that this was their research project and they had done all of the interviews and analysis. And they were doing great.
In fact, the qualitative write-up they had done the night before was better, and I was back to just adjusting minor grammar and structure. I complimented their new work and noted it was different from the other parts of the draft that I had struggled to edit.
Quietly, they asked, "is it okay to use chatGPT to fix sentences to make you sound more white?"
"... is... is that what you did with the earlier draft?"
They had, a few sentences at a time, completely ruined their own work, and they couldnt tell, because they believed that the chatGPT output had to be better writing. Because it sounded smarter. It sounded fluent. It seemed fluent. But it was nonsense!
I nearly cried with relief. I told them I had been so worried. I was going to check in with them when we were done, because I could not figure out what was wrong. I showed them the clear differences between their raw drafting and their "corrected" draft.
I told them that I believed in them. They do great work. When I asked them why they felt they had to do that, they told me that another faculty member had told the class that they should use it to make their papers better, and that he and his RAs were doing it.
The student also told me that in therapy, their therapist had been misunderstanding them, blaming them, and denying that these misunderstandings were because of a language barrier.
They felt that they were so bad at communicating, because of their language, and their culture, and their head injury, that they would never be a good scholar. They thought they had to use chatGPT to make them sound like an American, or they would never get a job.
They also told me that when they used chatGPT to help them write emails, they got more responses, which helped them with research recruitment.
I've heard this from other students too. That faculty only respond to their emails when they use chatGPT. The great irony of my viral autistic email thread was always that had I actually used AI to write it, I would have sounded decidedly less robotic.
ChatGPT is probably pretty good at spitting out the meaningless pleasantries that people associate with respectability. But it's terrible at making coherent, complex, academic arguments!
Last semester, I gave my graduate students an assignment. They were to read some reports on labor exploitation and environmental impact of chatGPT and other language models. Then they were to write a reflection on why they have used chatGPT in the past, and how they might chose to use it in the future.
I told them I would not be policing their LLM use. But I wanted them to know things about it they were unlikely to know, and I warned them about the ways that using an LLM could cause them to submit inadequate work (incoherent methods and fake references, for example).
In their reflections, many international students reported that they used chatGPT to help them correct grammar, and to make their writing "more polished".
I was sad that so many students seemed to be relying on chatGPT to make them feel more confident in their writing, because I felt that the real problem was faculty attitudes toward multilingual scholars.
I have worked with a number of graduate international students who are told by other faculty that their writing is "bad", or are given bad grades for writing that is reflective of English as a second language, but still clearly demonstrates comprehension of the subject matter.
I believe that written communication is important. However, I also believe in focused feedback. As a professor of design, I am grading people's ability to demonstrate that they understand concepts and can apply them in design research and then communicate that process to me.
I do not require that communication to read like a first language student, when I am perfectly capable of understanding the intent. When I am confused about meaning, I suggest clarifying edits.
I can speak and write in one language with competence. How dare I punish international students for their bravery? Fixation on normative communication chronically suppresses their grades and their confidence. And, most importantly, it doesn't improve their language skills!
If I were teaching rhetoric and comp it might be different. But not THAT different. I'm a scholar of neurodivergent and Mad rhetorics. I can't in good conscious support Divergent rhetorics while supressing transnational rhetoric!
Anyway, if you want your students to stop using chatGPT then stop being racist and ableist when you grade.
but I can infer things from basic contextual shite, exactly as I used to teach my #ESL students to do when encountering a word they were unfamiliar with (use the context to infer meaning) blah blah blah.
#ESL po rozmowach z zawodnikami i wewnetrznych testach zdecydowalo, ze play-offy #IEMKatowice2024 zostana rozegrane na najnowszej wersji gry, z patchem, ktory pojawil sie dzisiaj...
To co #ESL powinno ogarnac na turniejach takiej rangi to sa godziny rozgrywania spotkan - po co informowac, ze #ENCE beda grac o 19:30, skoro wiadomo, ze poprzedni mecz moze trwac 3 mapy + dogrywki?
Pamietam, ze potrafili zaplanowac to tak, zeby kazdy mecz mial swoj staly slot, a teraz znowu mieszaja 🤷♂️
#Izak chyba dzisiaj moze powiedziec, ze lata pracy jako komentator #esport.owy sie oplacily i chyba dzisiaj rozbil bank 😲
"10 lat temu Virtusi zostali legendami wygrywając EMS podczas Intel Extreme Masters w Katowicach, mój świat wybuchł, wszystko zaczęło pędzić, a my mieliśmy własną Małyszomanie w esporcie.
Od tego czasu przychodzicie do mnie na transmisje oglądać Counter-Strike na najwyższym poziomie.
W swojej karierze, nie sądziłem, ze kiedykolwiek to napisze, ale:
Zapraszam na mój kanał Twitch oraz Youtube na transmisje z IEM Katowice oraz całego ESL Pro Tour! Startujemy w środę!"
nie wrzucam linka do wpisu (filmu) na FB bo bez logowanie i tak nie da sie go zobaczyc, wpis zaktualizuje jak doda ten film na YT
"W dniu dzisiejszym podczas konferencji prasowej Prezydent Miasta Katowic, Marcin #Krupa, oraz Aleksander #Szlachetko, Dyrektor Zarządzający w #ESLGaming Polska, podpisali umowę przedłużającą współpracę w ramach Intel® Extreme Masters Katowice 2024, które będzie odbędzie się w dniach 9-11 lutego.
Intel® Extreme Masters to kamień milowy i element napędowy do rozwoju nowoczesnych technologii w naszym mieście — powiedział Marcin Krupa. Wydarzenie pokazuje, że Miasto Katowice liczy się na mapie świata, przede wszystkim w esporcie, daje wielką promocję miasta i przyczynia się do jego rozpoznawalności — w szczególności wśród młodych ludzi. Bardzo się cieszę z podpisania umowy na tegoroczną edycję Intel Extreme Masters Katowice.
Cieszymy się z bycia częścią transformacji Katowic i przejścia z ciężkiego przemysłu ku nowym technologiom — skomentował Aleksander Szlachetko. Mamy za sobą wspaniałą historię – ponad dekadę wydarzeń esportowych w Katowicach. Ta edycja będzie wyjątkowa z wielu powodów, to będzie już dwunasta odsłona Intel® Extreme Masters Katowice — niewiele jest wydarzeń na taką skalę, które przez tak długi okres odbywają się regularnie w jednym miejscu. Oprócz tego turniej będzie rozgrywany po raz pierwszy w nowej odsłonie gry - Counter-Strike 2, co również przyciągnęło wielu fanów, a bilety wyprzedały się w rekordowym tempie."
“Two years ago, a linguistic and political Pandora’s box was opened in China. Under new rules, tutors were no longer allowed to hold private classes in person or online for students based in China. Though this was not exclusive to English-language courses, it largely affected tutors and education companies that specialized in teaching English as a second language (ESL).”
My cousin may be going abroad next year as an ESL teacher. She has studied languages herself but doesn't have ESL teacher training. She has expressed an interest in reading some good books on language teaching & ESL teaching specifically to get prepared.
Can anyone in #teaching circles recommend good books on how to teach ESL that have practical, actionable advice for a smart, educated, motivated aspiring teacher?
Thank you to @afreecaTV_gl, @CallMeTasteless, @Artosis, @StateSC2, and all of the players at #GSL, #ESL, etc. - you will be remembered as early legends in a new category of competitive sport - the very first, and best eSport ever created.
Trying to find an interesting way to revise use of the present perfect and past simple.
I really hate the way most textbooks approach this. There must be a better one… #Linguistics#ESL#EFL
Over the weekend I presented some talks on Australian language and culture for an international language event. The one for Aussie slang was fun - explaining terms like budgie smugglers, spitting the dummy and bringing a plate. Host and I agree our favourite is “it’s cactus” to describe something broken beyond repair. #language#slang#australian#ESL#TESL
ESL Polska poinformowało, że nadchodzące ESL Mistrzostwa Polski w CS:GO będą ostatnim takim turniejem. Jest to decyzja odgórna dla całego świata, więc polski oddział również temu podlega.