Earlier today, the award-winning blog English with a Twist shared this picture on Facebook and it got me pondering, once again, on an issue I have often reflected on throughout my teaching career. 

Only heaven knows how often I have been tormented for not being able to stick to my painstakingly laid out lesson plan. Only heaven knows how many times the importance of a detailed lesson plan gets hammered into teacher trainees during CELTA/DELTA preparation courses and, consequently, how much sweat goes into producing these lesson plans in order, let's be honest here, to please Cambridge English Language Assessment and have the much sought-after teaching qualification.

Being a freelance language consultant, I mainly do in-company General or Business English teaching on a one-to-one basis or English for Special Purposes in small groups. I rarely have the change to teach exam preparation classes. That said, I have successfully prepared some students for different exams in the past, e.g. FCE, British Institutes, IELTS, TOEIC, and you just never know when the next student will come knocking on your door. When this happens, it is better not to be caught unawares.

As part of the Teacher Training and Professional Development program for English Teachers in Italy, Cambridge English is organising a workshop/seminar in Brescia, where I am based, offering everyone the opportunity to catch up with the latest changes in Cambridge English: First and Cambridge English: Advanced. The seminar is free of charge.

Facebook tells me I haven't posted anything for a staggering 1,047 days. That's quite dreadful!

Ram Consulenze Linguistiche will attend the Cambridge Day to be held in Brescia on 26th February: an informative conference with authors and experts in English Language teaching. We hope to pick up some inspiring ideas to be used in our courses.

Why is it that some language learners still stop reading a dictionary entry after the first definition of the word they are looking up? Why do they content themselves with "one word-one meaning"?

Deep-word knowledge is an important aspect of vocabulary learning for second-language learners. It definitely helps young and adult learners develop their reading and listening skills. It should also prevent would-be translators from making silly translation blunders.

Here is a harmless enough example I have recently spotted in a free magazine I picked up at Bergamo Airport. The brief article describes the Lion Park in South Africa and the English sentence: "Many species of game can be sighted here" was translated into Italian like this: "Il parco comprende al suo interno numerose attrazioni e giochi...".

There are countless categories of translators out there and surely all of them would agree that this poster is a faithful representation of reality. I've found it somewhere on the Internet, by the way. There are many around, one for each profession imaginable. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, there is little to add in way of comment. I’d like to make a few points, though. Needless to say that Google Translate has got many people spellbound, but few will think I hope that this very unusual, albeit sometimes useful, automatic translation tool is bound to replace the human translator. As for dictionaries, it saddens me and irritates me to think that some punters still think that owning a few old-fashioned bilingual dictionaries automatically turns anybody with a grasp of a foreign language into a translator. What do you say about Brussels? Who wouldn’t like to end up in the European Mecca for modern-day translators as a well-paid in-house member of the translation staff?

Even if it doesn't feel like spring at all!

More interesting language events not too far from Brescia. Pity none of them is IN or AROUND Brescia.

A Spring of Languages is an initiative of Drils and CRT di Bergamo, whose aim is to promote R&D into the field of Language Teaching.

The next scheduled appointment is on Thursday 16th February, when a series of innovative and practical workshops to help teachers stimulate their classes and maintain motivation will be held.  The event, TEACHING ENGLISH IN THE DIGITAL AGE, has been organised in collaboration with the publisher De Agostini BlackCat and it is sponsored by Trinity College London.

The talks-workshops will revolve around:

Can you complete the picture by adding one of the missing nationalities? The EU has now 27 members, so we need 12 more comparisons.

And, please, don't forget to use your sense of humour!