inner voice

  • Foreign Affairs,  Learner tales

    Accepting the sweet song of a foreign language

    This new Learner Tale begins with the imagined voice of a character in a photo by Robert Doisneau and wanders into the experience of a migrant learning a foreign language in the wild, far from a language classroom. How do we learn to accept the arrival of the foreign language without giving up the identity drawn from our mother tongue? A testimony based on true events from my own learning of French on moving to France.

  • The Subjective Classroom

    Why hearing your own voice is like looking at a selfie

    If you don't like the sound of your own voice on a recording, that's because it's not the voice you hear when you speak. This article invites you to think of it as an audio-selfie : you can spend as long as you like wondering who is in a photo you've just taken of yourself which doesn't look right, it's definitely you. Time to take a listen in the mirror for a closer look at your voice.

  • Orality and Storytelling

    Slowly Bringing The Map To Life

    This could be the start of a scrapbook made of moments in transit. When I return to a place I've not been for some time, a narrative gets triggered by an inner voice. Sometimes it is simply a string of words spun out of the sights, sounds, smells, textures hiding unseen around me. I write down these scraps as best I can. Some get reshaped and these can be shared.