Graham Davies

I honestly don’t know where I stand at the moment. I’m pretty disillusioned with ALL political ideologies. My father’s family were all committed Socialists. My father, his brothers and his father were coalminers in South Wales and well left of centre. My grandfather worked closely with Arthur Horner, who later became the leader of the NUM – look him up on the Web and you’ll get the picture. My grandfather and grandmother on my mother's side had been “in service” when my mother was a child, working respectively as a groom and a housemaid in a large country house owned by a lord in rural Kent. My father ended up in Kent after leaving Wales in the 1920 and this is where he met my mother. My mother's view of politics combined a leaning towards the left with a great deal of respect for the “ruling class” who, apparently, treated my grandparents and my mother very well. Both my mother and father were psychiatric nurses at the time when I was born, so I suppose you could describe my background as lower middle class. I passed the 11-plus examination and went to a highly selective boys’ grammar school, where for the first time in my life I met people of my own age who came from very well-off families, talked “posh” and made my feel a bit embarrassed about my “Estuary” accent. I leaned towards Socialism in my teens, leaning well to the left in my late teens, but by the time I entered university I was supporting the Liberal Party, which I joined in my early 20s – and I even stood as a Liberal candidate several times in local elections. By my 30s I had become disillusioned with the Liberals, left the Liberal Party and began voting Labour again. I became totally disillusioned with centralised Socialism after a month-long visit to East Germany in 1976. By this time you could say that I was a Social Democrat, I guess. I still vote Labour, even though I don’t really like New Labour – but what’s the alternative? I am now pretty mixed up. I lean left on issues such as Education, Housing and Health, but I lean a bit right on issues such as Terrorism and Law and Order. As a partner in a small business, I get very annoyed with people who equate running a business with being rich. I draw the equivalent of half a novice teacher’s salary from my business – a lot less than I earned as a university professor. I firmly believe in a mixed economy. Capitalism isn’t all bad. I don’t object to paying higher taxes in exchange for better public services. Having been ill several times in the last few years, I really do appreciate the National Health Service – which is not nearly as bad as many people claim, and I would willingly pay higher taxes to improve it. I have worked in around 20 different countries and visited around 10 more. I wouldn’t want to live in any of them, except two: Canada and Ireland, where I have relations – who often don’t bother to lock their doors when they go out, because the chance of being burgled is almost negligible. I recall being anxious before my first visit to the USA some 20 years ago, expecting to meet all kinds of right-wing lunatics and gun-toting criminals. I was pleasantly surprised and have continued to be so on each of the dozen visits I have made to the USA. People are generally very nice – although they don’t seem to know a lot about what is going on in the rest of the world. I felt very much at home in New England: sparkling white weatherboarded houses clustered round a village green and tea and cakes at 5 o’clock. A couple of towns that I visited in Vermont reminded me of the England of my youth. But what disturbs me about the USA is the huge gap between the “haves” and “have nots”. Narrowing this gap is the one issue that I would put before all others – in all countries in the world. Footnote: I recall my first visits to Northern Ireland in the 1960s, when the marches for more democracy began to take place: “one man one vote”. I looked at the poor housing conditions of the people who lived in the Falls Road and the Shankill Road and the very different conditions in which people lived in the smart areas of Belfast and its suburbs. I recall saying to my wife, who comes from Belfast: “You don’t seem to have a middle class here. You just have two classes, the “haves” and the “have nots”. That’s the root of your problem.” It may be significant that since Ireland as a whole, North and South, has become richer and some of the huge differences between the “haves” and the “have nots” have been eroded, it has also become much more peaceful. I wrote that I lean to the left regarding Housing, Education and Health. Of these three issues I believe Education is the key. Although my father's family lived in a working class coalmining community they were all literate and articulate in two languages: English and Welsh. My grandfather's bookshelves included key works of English literature, biographies, political works (including "Capital" by Karl Marx) and religious works - many of which I inherited. My grandfather was very active in the Worker's Educational Association. When I visit my local pub (in Berkshire) and listen to inarticulate young men aged 18-25 communicating in a series of monosyllabic grunts liberally interspersed with the "f" word, I wonder what has gone wrong with Education? How is it that families like that of my father managed to achieve such a high standard? Was it because Welsh working class communities valued Education and saw it as the "escape route" from the hard life in the mines, or was it something else? Certainly, teachers in these communities were highly valued as pillars of respect. I am happy to answer questions. I am a language teacher, however, and not a political scientist or historian. I vote Labour these days, albeit half-heartedly. As I have grown older (I am now 63) I have lost faith in political ideologies and now hold a mixture of beliefs. I recall being dismayed when Margaret Thatcher got into power in the late 70s. I thought this would spell hard times, financially speaking, for myself and my family, so I drew out all our savings and took us all on a month-long holiday, thinking it might be the last one that we would be able to afford. I now realise that a change of goverment in this country hardly has any impact on the finances of individuals like myself who sit comfortably in the "middle zone". During the Thatcher years I continued to enjoy rises in income and continued to enjoy good holidays abroad with my wife and my two daughters (who are now grown up and starting their own families). Tony Blair's arrival on the scene has made no difference to my life style. I hated the poll tax that was introduced under Thatcher, which I felt was sheer madness, as well as damaging to low and middle income groups. I also hated the introduction of the National Curriculum, which the current bunch we have in power has continued to support, along with the league tables, SATs etc. I cannot forgive Tony Blair's government for killing off the subjects that I used to teach, German and French. Making these key subjects optional beyond Key Stage 3 is a disaster. We are turning into a tongue-tied nation of arrogant monoglots.

I didn't read the headline as applying to ALL teachers, but in the context of the article I read it as applying to SOME teachers, namely those who contributed to the online discussion. This is the nature of headline language. If I read the headline "Firemen save family from blazing house" I would assume it referred to the firemen who achieved the rescue. If the headline were "Teachers win prize for outstanding professional performance" I would assume it referred to a group of teachers who won the prize rather than every teacher.

Hey, what’s all this libel talk? I looked at the Daily Mirror article at and the TES Online page at http://www.tes.co.uk/2134485. It’s quite clear from the context of both these articles that it was a lighthearted discussion which should have been confined to coffee breaks in the privacy of a school staffroom rather than being aired in public – bearing in mind how easily parents might take offence at their children’s chosen names being slighted. Libel might come into question if both first name and surname were publicised in a public forum, but I don't think this happened. I can recall such lighthearted discussions about names in school staffrooms going back many, many years, but we wouldn’t have made them public. One of my colleagues (back in the early 1970s) used to address every girl pupil as “Debbie”. “Why do you do that?” I asked. “They are all called Debbie”, he replied – and a glance at the class registers indicated that Debbie was indeed the most popular girl’s name in the school in which I was teaching at the time. I think Emily is currently the most popular girl’s name and Jack the most popular boy’s name in England. Following England’s Ashes victory, watch out for a spate of Freddies…

There was a lively thread concerning the European Day of Languages around 10 days ago in the Linguanet Forum at http://www.mailbase.org.uk/lists/linguanet...um/archive.html Lots of interesting suggestions came in from teachers. The European Award for Languages 2005 is being presented on the 2005 European Day of Languages, Mon 26 September, at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office by Sir Trevor McDonald. I have been invited to attend this event. See CILT's website for further information about the European Day of Languages http://www.cilt.org.uk/edl/ Try the A-Z challenge: How many languages can you say "Hello" in? I counted 15 languages in which I can greet someone - and also order a beer!

John writes: Exactly my wife’s experience. She did an OU degree in the 1970s/80s, having never passed a formal examination (not even O-level) at school. She ended up with a 2.2 in English, Philosophy and English. I said the following in a keynote I delivered at the UCALL conference, University of Ulster at Coleraine, June 2005: “Whither technology? Expansion of online learning Undoubtedly, there will be an expansion of online learning, but it is more likely to supplement conventional modes of learning rather than replacing them. Language learners in particular cannot acquire certain skills, for example conversational skills, without face-to-face contact with an experienced teacher, but software tools such as Wimba now facilitate synchronous and asynchronous oral communication and are already being used in distance-learning CALL environments. Many universities, however, may be focusing on the wrong target group. The typical university student aged around 18–25 is the least likely person who would want to spend their time studying for a degree sitting in front of a computer screen. Such a student is more likely to want to get away from home and enjoy university life in all its aspects: “But do we really want to deliver whole courses via the Web? Do we really want to deprive young people of the valuable experience of leaving home, studying and socialising with their peers, joining societies, going to clubs and parties, travelling, and falling in love? Do we really want to breed a generation of screen-gazing zombies?” (Davies 2002) The spectacular crash of the UK e-University (UKeU) in 2004, which was set up at great expense and launched in 2000, is a clear indication that the target groups of online courses still need to be identified. The thousands of students who were expected to sign up for UKeU courses simply did not materialise. More market research on the demand for online courses clearly needs to be done, and the vast amounts of expenditure on the technological infrastructure of such courses need to be reduced. Established distance-teaching universities have tended to focus on older people (aged 30-plus) returning to education and lacking the time to spend studying in the traditional way. Perhaps this is the group that online courses need to focus on too.” Davies G. (2002): “ICT and modern foreign languages: learning opportunities and training needs” [Online]. Available at: http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/needs.htm

I agree with Audrey. The main problem lies with the performance tables. Headteachers are very good at working out which GCSEs deliver the best pass rates and this determines which subjects are on offer to their students. For many years foreign languages have faired badly in the performance tables, and now that foreign languages are no longer compulsory in schools in England beyond Key Stage 3 the majority of schools have stopped entering candidates for GCSEs in foreign languages. If performance tables are here to stay I would favour making certain core subjects compulsory, e.g. as in the requirements for university entrance when I was at school in the 1950s and 1960s. In order to get into university you had to have good A-levels in at least two subjects – which would normally be the subjects that you intended to study at university or closely related subjects – plus five O-levels (= GCSE) in English, a Foreign Language, Maths or a Science subject, plus two other optional subjects. As a prospective student of German at university I had to have an O-level in Maths or Science (I passed in Maths) and in English, and a Civil Engineer, for example, had to have an O-level in English and a Foreign Language. In other words, this system was close to the Bac in France and which, in my opinion, made much more sense. I think I received a more rounded education than kids do nowadays. In the UK we are now faced with a whole generation of humanities students who can’t calculate a percentage and science and technology students who can only communicate in English, which they often do very badly. You should see the badly spelt and ungrammatical emails that I receive from ICT managers in schools! As for foreign languages, well most school ICT managers are clueless. I recall a long discussion with an ICT manager who was convinced that there was something wrong with a program that we had sold to his foreign languages department, because there were “funny letters on the screen that looked like Greek”. The program in question was for learners of Russian. I explained to the ICT manager that Russian is written in the Cyrillic alphabet, which is different from our alphabet. His reaction: “Cyril who?”

Whoops! I pasted in the wrong link to the Tom Whipple story. It should be: http://education.guardian.co.uk/aslevels/s...1554179,00.html It's hard to get ANY kind of qualification in modern languages. The problem with acquiring a SKILL as opposed to KNOWLEDGE - and this applies to mastering a musical intrument as well as a foreign language - is that it takes hours of PRACTICE, invoving a lot of TIME. TIME is precious in the school timetable today, and this is what may account for the drop in standards and pass rates of skill-based subjects. You can practise some of the skills involved in acquiring a foreign language on your own, e.g. the receptive skills of reading and listening, but you need help in acquiring the productive skills of speaking and writing. ICT can help in providing an artificial environment in which you can practise these skills, but there is no substitute for a good teacher or, better still, a long visit to a foreign country if you wish to acquire a high degree of proficiency in listening and speaking and develop good conversational skills.

It's a disaster, of course. Language teachers are furious with this government's policies. Elsewhere in this Forum there is a reference to the story of Tom Whipple, a journalist who managed to get an A in Sociology at AS level after a fortnight's study: http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,748499,00.html I have mixed reactions to the Tom Whipple story. On the one hand, it may just prove that Tom Whipple is exceptionally clever and can mug up on a subject quickly - and, as a journalist, he probably would have been acquainted with many sociological issues by virtue of experience in his job. On the other hand, I wonder how easy it would be, for example, for a journalist to mug up as quickly on maths or a skill-related subject such as music or foreign languages. There are stories of gifted mathematicians and musical and linguistic geniuses, but these are rare people. I consider myself a fairly gifted linguist. I speak German fluently, French adequately and I can "survive" in Italian, Spanish, Russian and Hungarian, and I can make some sense of written Dutch, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish. I could not, however, imagine myself getting up to AS standard in a new foreign language in a fortnight, even in a cognate language of one that I had already learned. The Council of Europe estimates that an adult learner needs on average 350-400 learning hours in order to reach Level B1 (Threshold Level) of the Common European Framework (roughly a good GCSE pass). At this level you just begin to communicate with a degree of confidence - and you need many, many more hours to achieve fluency. I got up to basic conversational level in Hungarian after around 100 learning hours - an hour a week with a Hungarian teacher for two years, combined with six two-week visits to the country over the same period. I found it difficult to progress further, however - I just ran out of time. This explains why headteachers in England are allowing foreign languages to go into decline in state secondary schools, i.e. they are perceived as "difficult" (which is borne out by GCSE results) and they skew the perfomance tables. At least two thirds of state secondary schools in England have now stopped making foreign languages compulsory beyond Key Stage 3. We are stepping backwards into a time when only public school and grammar school kids acquired any kind of proficiency in languages, grooming them for jobs in the Foreign Office, The British Council and those industries whose bosses were intelligent enough to realise the value of knowing a foreign language to our export potential.

I have mixed reactions to the Tom Whipple story. On the one hand, it may just prove that Tom Whipple is exceptionally clever and can mug up on a subject quickly - and, as a journalist, he probably would have been acquainted through experience with many sociological issues by virtue of experience in his job. On the other hand, I wonder how easy it would be, for example, for a journalist to mug up as quickly on maths or a skill-related subject such as music or foreign languages. There are stories of gifted mathematicians and musical and linguistic geniuses, but these are rare people. I consider myself a fairly gifted linguist. I speak German fluently, French adequately and I can "survive" in Italian, Spanish, Russian and Hungarian and I can make some sense of written Dutch, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish. I could not, however, imagine myself getting up to AS standard in a new foreign language in a fortnight, even in a cognate language of one that I had already learned. The Council of Europe estimates that an adult learner needs on average 350-400 learning hours in order to reach Level B1 (Threshold Level) of the Common European Framework (roughly a good GCSE pass). At this level you just begin to communicate with a degree of confidence - and you need many, many more hours to achieve fluency. I got up to basic conversational level in Hungarian after around 100 learning hours - an hour a week with a Hungarian teacher for two years, combined with six two-week visits to the country over the same period. I found it difficult to progress further, however - I just ran out of time. This is why headteachers in England are allowing foreign languages to go into decline in state secondary schools, i.e. they are perceived as "difficult" (which is borne out by GCSE results) and they skew the perfomance tables. At least two thirds of state secondary schools in England have now stopped making foreign languages compulsory beyond Key Stage 3.

Yes, Win98 IS old, but (like my 1982 Mercedes 200) it works. I just had a look at the hit counters of two websites that I maintain. They both contain educational materials for language teachers and are accessed mainly by teachers from their educational institutions or from home. The hit counters indicate which operating systems were used by visitors. These are the figures: Site No. 1 - since January 05 98 - 17424 visitors XP - 13856 visitors 2000 - 10064 visitors Other OS: significantly fewer visitors than any of the above Site No. 2 - July 2005 only XP - 7150 visitors 2000 - 2012visitors 98 - 1417 visitors Other OS: significantly fewer visitors than any of the above I'll probably ditch my Win98 system when I finally find a burning need to do something that I can only do with a newer system. But, now that I'm retired, I tend to spend my money on eating out, travelling, playing golf, etc... I've used Norton AV for many years. It allowed one virus into my system around five years ago, but since then my system has been virus-free and stable. I pay 17 pounds per year for Norton AV.

Toby asks: No problem! My motto is: "If it ain't broke don't mend it". I am still driving a 1982 Mercedes 200 that I bought from my brother in 1988. It starts first time, doesn't need a lot of maintenance and is very comfortable. I hate new technology...

It was a West Midlands LEA that blocked Google UK in all its schools. I know of at least two language teachers who have given up using the Web in school because half the sites that they wish to access are blocked - for quite stupid reasons. A colleague had an email rejected by one LEA (Medway, I think) and was accused of using obscene language. What she wrote was: "There is no single correct approach to language teaching. One needs a cocktail of different approaches". This amused another mischievous colleague, who invented the following - which is almost guaranteed to set alarm bells ringing in some email filtering systems: "Ah, cocktails for two in Scunthorpe, followed by a bumper meal. Bottoms up!" I once wrote to a teachers' discussion list about my dog. My email included the following: "I love greyhounds. I have a retired racing greyhound called Swifty and my daughter has a dear little black greyhound bitch called Millie." My email was rejected by one LEA and I was accused of using racist language!

John writes: I still use Windows 98. I don't trust anything that Microsoft releases until it has been around for at least 5 years.

The lack of interest is probably mainly due to the fact that most teachers switch off totally during the month of August. Language teachers who use Moodle are a growing community. Moodle featured, for example, in several workshops and presentations at the EUROCALL 2004 conference in Vienna: http://www.eurocall-languages.org You'll find a lot of links to language materials at the Moodle site: http://moodle.org However, I also detect a certain degree of ennui among teachers with regard to Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs). There is some evidence of a backlash against online learning among language teachers, many of whom prefer to use the Web as a source of downloadable materials that can be used offline rather than as a live, interactive learning environment. We experienced a similar backlash against technology in the 1970s, when language teachers became disillusioned with the shiny new language labs that had been installed in their schools. The labs delivered far less than they promised - but this was largely due to the lack of imagination of the teachers who used them and not the technology. In the end, the technology was blamed for being ineffective and now most language labs have disappeared from schools. I visit many schools as an ICT trainer. It is quite frustrating running courses focusing on the Internet. Many schools block Internet access by children, unless they are closely supervised, and I have found that some security systems used by schools are so sensitive that they block access to hundreds of completely harmless websites. I ran a course in the West Midlands a couple of years ago. Access to http://www.google.co.uk was blocked throughout the education authority. Curiously, however, I found that we could get into Google via http://www.google.com

What is e-learning? I am currently one of the authors of a set of e-learning training materials, commissioned by the DfES, that targets teachers of foreign languages in adult education (16+). We use the term "e-learning" strictly in the sense as defined by the DfES - and this has been endorsed by the E-Strategy Unit: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/e-strategy/ E-learning, according to the DfES, must NOT be equated with online learning. Online learning is just one aspect of e-learning. E-learning, according to the DfES, embraces ALL aspects of using computers as a tool for learning, ranging from producing printed handouts with a word-processor to a full-blown course wrapped up in a VLE. This is the definition of e-learning given in the DfES consultation document Towards a unified e-learning strategy, July 2003: “If someone is learning in a way that uses information and communications technologies (ICTs), they are using e-learning. They could be a pre-school child playing an interactive game; they could be a group of pupils collaborating on a history project with pupils in another country via the Internet; they could be geography students watching an animated diagram of a volcanic eruption their lecturer has just downloaded; they could be a nurse taking her driving theory test online with a reading aid to help her dyslexia - it all counts as e-learning.” However, the situation is terribly confused among teachers at the chalkface at all levels of education. who have different concepts of e-learning, although most appear to equate it with distance learning. This is why I always use the term "online learning" when I am talking about ICT-based distance learning, i.e. to avoid confusion. What appears to have happened is that the "e" in "e-learning" has been associated with "e-mail", i.e. communication at a distance, rather than "electronic", which covers a wider range of ICT applications. What do you think?

I experience fairly frequent hiccups when accessing the Education Forum: 1. Homepage slow to load - or just doesn't load. 2. "Page expired" message. 3. Etc... I don't see anything sinister in this. I assumed the problems were due to the usual reasons: 1. The tackiness of Windows as an operating system. 2. Bugs in the software that drives the Forum - no software is bug-free. 3. Congestion on the Internet. 4. Incompatiblity problems with certain browsers. I experience similar problems when accessing all kinds of different websites - particularly discussion lists and blogs.

15 pounds an hour sounds very cheap. I know some people who are earning 50 pounds an hour as online tutors. Online tutoring requires special skills, over and above the knowledge about the subject area. This became very clear while the NOF ICT training scheme for teachers was in operation from 1999 to 2002. The scheme was hammered both by OFSTED and by many trainees who took part in it. Those training agencies that attempted to deliver their training mainly online came in for particular criticism. Trainees often felt isolated and tutors were overloaded. It was estimated, for example, that a tutor could not cope with more than 30 trainees at one time - i.e. about the same number as a teacher can cope with in a face-to-face situation. The Institute of Education in London offers a diploma course in Online Education and Training: http://www.ioe.ac.uk/english/OET.htm The spectacular crash of UKEU last year indicates that online courses are probably not as much in demand as people thought they would be. UKEU failed to recruit enough students to make it viable. In addition, the target audience of online courses has not been thought through very carefully. Most people who follow distance learning courses tend to be in their 30s and 40s: v. the experience of the Open University in the UK. Offering private tuition online to children is quite different, of course. It might work in some subjec areas.

When I was a student in London in the 1960s I did a lot of research into my family’s history, tracking down birth and marriage certificates and visiting the Public Records Office several times. I could not get back very far on my father’s side. The problem is that our family has a very common surname, Davies, and tended to recycle first names such as David, John and Thomas. When you are confronted with records of half a dozen John Davies’s you can never be sure that you have the right one. A shortage of first and second names is typical of Welsh families and explains why the Welsh resort frequently to nicknames based on their town of origin, profession or a physical characteristic. My grandfather, Samuel, was often referred to as “Sam Pont”, because he came from Pontyberem. A few months ago, I posted a message in this forum mentioning the close association of my grandfather with Arthur Horner, the left-wing miners’ leader, during the General Strike. The message was picked up in a Google search by a second cousin of mine, John, whom I had never met. We exchanged several emails and telephone calls. It was clear that John shared my interest in our family history – so we pooled our resources. This enabled John and I to add a few more bits to the jigsaw. John has now managed to trace an ancestor born in a rural Welsh community in the 1790s. That’s as far back as we have got so far. Interestingly, although the Web has proved a useful resource, the most useful resource we have is my 95-year-old aunt, whose memory is still intact and can recall names and places of birth with remarkable clarity. She has also copied substantial handwritten records from two large (Welsh) family bibles for me. In the course of my research in my student days I discovered (from my aunt) that Sybil Burton (née Williams, the first wife of Richard Burton) and I have a common aunt (who married my father’s brother). As for using the Web, a Mormon colleague of mine (who also has a common Welsh surname) at Brigham Young University gave me several tips and pointed me towards BYU’s library resources: http://www.lib.byu.edu There is also Genes Reunited (http:/www.genesreunited.com), a site closely associated with Friends Reunited – through which my wife Sally managed to trace a long-lost friend with whom she lost contact 30 years ago. The friend turned up on a farm in Australia and is now in regular contact with us.

John writes: It depends on the subject area. In my subject area, modern foreign languages, there are a number of essential pieces of information that are simply right or wrong and where there is no room for debate. Most verbs are conjugated according to a set of fixed patterns and most nouns are declined (e.g. in Russian) according to a fixed set of rules. There are acceptable variances, of course: e.g. we Brits use “got” as the past participle of “get” while North Americans say “gotten” and pronounce many words differently from us – but no more differently (and often a lot less differently) than speakers of regional variations within the British Isles. Learning a modern foreign language involves committing a large amount of information to memory (around 2000 vocabulary items for basic communication), mastering a set of grammatical rules that allow little room for manoeuvre and getting one’s tongue round a lot of new sounds. This is what makes modern foreign languages a “difficult” subject area, namely there are a large number of hard facts that have to be learned, combined with the skill element involved in understanding language spoken at normal speed and engaging in conversation. Our discipline, like music, requires hours and hours of practice rather than reading books and analysing what they say. And modern school timetables simply do not have enough spare room in which the required hours of practice can be made available. Times have changed. When I was at school I calculate that I spent around 550 hours in French classes over a period of five years – and passed my O Level without a problem. 350-400 hours is reckoned by the Council of Europe as being the average amount of learning hours needed to achieve CEF B1 (Threshold) level, i.e. the point at which most people being to communicate in a foreign language with a degree of confidence. Sorry, I digress… However, in the case of literature (which represents the main content element of most traditional university courses in modern foreign languages) there is enormous scope for opinions and in this respect literature is more like history or politics. In the case that I cited above, however, i.e. the Wikipedia entry on Computer Assisted Language Learning, certain facts were wrong, key reference works were missing, titles and dates of cited reference works were incorrect, and the information in general was out of date – and few experts would argue about the amendments that I made. The original article had probably been written by a North American teacher of English as it cited only North American reference works and focused exclusively on English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). Current amendments that have been made by other authors seem to indicate information emanating from the Asia-Pacific region – which is good.

The idea of a free-content encyclopedia on the Web that anyone can sounds great, but it’s not all good news. While Wikipedia covers an enormous range of subjects in different languages there is no guarantee that what you read is accurate, as the content can be added to or amended by any member of the public, and there is no indication of the authorship or the authors' credentials – which, for me, is vital when seeking any kind of information, in print or in electronic format. On the one hand Wikipedia can be perceived as a wonderful example of collaborative writing, but on the other hand it can be perceived as a golden opportunity for the propagation of oddball ideas and self-promotion. I checked out an article on Computer Assisted Language Learning (my own specialist area of expertise) in early 2005. It was hopelessly out of date, sketchy and inaccurate, so I amended it. Two weeks later it was amended back to what it was, so I amended it again. A few more additions have since been made by someone else (authorship unknown) but the article is generally OK - for the time being. There's some good stuff in Wikipedia, but it's not a reliable source of information compared, say, with a properly refereed and edited encyclopedia, either in book form or online. I checked out a few more Wikipedia entries relating to subjects that I know quite a bit about. Around half were good, and the remainder were poor. On a different but related matter, I work as an external examiner for a British university. In recent years plagiarism has become more commonplace, as students can scour the Web for articles containing information on virtually any subject under the sun and simply copy and paste what they find into their assignments. This has led to the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) setting up a plagiarism detection service, which is hosted at http://www.submit.ac.uk. This service enables institutions and staff to carry out electronic comparison of students' work against electronic sources including other students' work. It appears to be very effective. Wikipedia is a source of information that students often use. I can nearly always spot a Wikipedia article that has been used as a source as there’s usually something about it that doesn’t ring true, but JISC’s service will find it anyway. I wonder to what extent Wikipedia articles are themselves plagiarised from other sources.

John writes: Yes. John writes: No. John writes: Did Blair bring an end to IRA bombings by passing tougher laws against them? Blair's popularity will soon go when people realize that his "tough talking" does not work. Do you really think these proposed measures will bring an end to terrorism?

Am I the only one that thinks our Tony is doing a good job? I fully support his tough policies on terrorists and I don't feel in any way threatened by the new legislation that is proposed. You can think of me as right-wing, if you like. Anyway, it's not a question of being left or right, and I abhor the trend to see everything in left-right political terms. It's a question of how much one is prepared to accept threats to our society and what we are prepared to do to combat them. By the way, I descend from a Welsh Socialist coalmining family, and my grandfather was a close associate of Arthur Horner - who was considered a bit too left for the South Wales miners. I have always voted Labour since I got the vote. Of course, the police made a dreadful mistake in killing the Brazilian lad, but the guy who pulled the trigger clearly thought (wrongly in restrospect - and it's easy to be wise after the event) that he was confronting a suicide bomber and acted accordingly. If he had been right he would have been a hero. The shoot-to-kill policy is not new, by the way. It's been in place for a very long time. And the word "execution" is a completely misleading emotive term.

John writes: Is this what we expected? When the IRA bombings were taking place every politician - regardless of their political leanings - who took a tough line was showered with praise (not, of course, by those who supported the IRA). I wonder to what extent the current climate has prompted the IRA to state that it has given up the armed struggle. I can't remember who said it - I think it was during a TV discussion last night: "Al-Quaeda has given terrorism a bad name".

When I was in my late-teens, early-20s I too thought that we could change things. I think we probably did to some extent. Public opinion against the Vietnam War probably influenced US government policy – but it took a long time. In the UK, public opinion against the Poll Tax was probably effective. We even had a riotous demonstration outside Maidenhead Town Hall – yes, Maidenhead! You have to understand what kind of a genteel, middle-class, Conservative town Maidenhead is in order to appreciate what this meant. I got involved in local politics in my 30s and even stood for election on three occasions, but then I became disillusioned with the type of people that I met in local politics. Most of them were ambitious dickheads, regardless of their political persuasions, and only interested in making a name for themselves. So I got out of politics and concentrated on my career as a teacher in HE – and never looked back. Now that I am retired, I find I don’t really care much about political ideologies. Democracy is just a concept that may or may not be implemented, depending on what a particular politician feels at the time, and most politicians, left or right, water it down as soon as they get into power. The difference between left and right in the UK is becoming blurred – as is already the case in the USA. Looking back on my life, I can’t recall a single government policy (whatever the colour of the government at the time) that made a significant change to my personal circumstances. I have always had a modest income, I have always paid more tax than I wanted to, but I had an excellent education, enjoyed a good career as a teacher and (which is especially important in my old age) I am on the whole satisfied with the care that the National Health Service has given to me. I have been in hospital on three occasions in the last two years for three totally unrelated problems, all of which have been resolved. I know that education and health are a bit of a lottery, depending on where one lives. I guess I have just been lucky enough to live in the right places. I have now run out of energy. Walking my dog, playing the occasional round of golf and enjoying a swim at the local fitness centre are all that I have energy for these days. Let the youngsters keep up the political struggle. And - by the way - thanks to all you young guys and girls for paying my pension.

When I was in my late-teens, early-20s I too thought that we could change things. I think we probably did to some extent. Public opinion against the Vietnam War probably influenced US government policy – but it took a long time. In the UK, public opinion against the Poll Tax was probably effective. We even had a riotous demonstration outside Maidenhead Town Hall – yes, Maidenhead! You have to understand what kind of a genteel, middle-class, Conservative town Maidenhead is in order to appreciate what this meant. I got involved in local politics in my 30s and even stood for election on three occasions, but then I became disillusioned with the type of people that I met in local politics. Most of them were ambitious dickheads, regardless of their political persuasions, and only interested in making a name for themselves. So I got out of politics and concentrated on my career as a teacher in HE – and never looked back. Now that I am retired, I find I don’t really care much about political ideologies. Democracy is just a concept that may or may not be implemented, depending on what a particular politician feels at the time, and most politicians, left or right, water it down as soon as they get into power. The difference between left and right in the UK is becoming blurred – as is already the case in the USA. Looking back on my life, I can’t recall a single government policy (whatever the colour of the government at the time) that made a significant change to my personal circumstances. I have always had a modest income, I have always paid more tax than I wanted to, but I had an excellent education, enjoyed a good career as a teacher and (which is especially important in my old age) I am on the whole satisfied with the care that the National Health Service has given to me. I have been in hospital on three occasions in the last two years for three totally unrelated problems, all of which have been resolved. I know that education and health are a bit of a lottery, depending on where one lives. I guess I have just been lucky enough to live in the right places. I have now run out of energy. Walking my dog, playing the occasional round of golf and enjoying a swim at the local fitness centre are all that I have energy for these days. Let the youngsters keep up the political struggle. And - by the way - thanks to all you young guys and girls for paying my pension.