David Crystal and Ben Crystal

180 Years of New Vocabulary

Literary authors have played a major role in shaping the vocabulary of English. In this talk David Crystal picks out some of the words from authors published by Macmillan that have since entered the language during its 180 years, and Ben Crystal reads extracts illustrating them. They'll also talk about how to use ideas about word formation and literary extracts in the classroom. Beware, there are also some surprises.

Chia Suan Chong

Bringing Ancient Communication to the Modern Age

For a long time, rhetoric – the art of persuasion - was taught at universities. How is the teaching of rhetoric and the art of ‘influencing’ relevant to our students of today? Perhaps the different interpretations of rhetoric throughout history might give us a clue!