The Climate Connection - Episode 1: Taking the temperature

Download the first episode, show notes and transcript from our podcast series 'The Climate Connection'.

The Climate Connection series overview

The Climate Connection is a ten-part podcast series from the British Council which explores the relationship between the climate crisis and language education.

Across the ten episodes, we’ll hear from a wide range of leading practitioners working in the sector – teachers, trainers, researchers, publishers and authors. We’ll travel from Colombia to China, Moldova to Mali, and Palestine to Poland in our quest to share what’s happening at the cutting edge of climate action in language education.

In partnership with the Oxford English Dictionary, we’ll also learn more about the origins of climate-related language, in both English and other languages. 

Episode 1: Taking the temperature

The opening episode of The Climate Connection considers what the ELT Community is already doing - and what it should be doing - about the climate crisis.

The first interview is with Harry Kuchah Kuchah, President of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language, who provides some general guidance on this issue whilst also talking specifically about his work in Cameroon and with young learners. Picking up some of Harry’s main themes, Deepa Mirchandani and Chris Graham talk about their forthcoming report Climate Action in Language Education, which brings together the reflections and ideas of hundreds of professionals working in the ELT sector. In between, in From the Field, we visit the coastal city of Gabes in Tunisia, where we discover how one school is not only directly involving itself in environmental clean-up campaigns of the heavily-polluted beaches, but is using the waste materials they find to learn English. And finally, in The Green Glossary, the term ‘Climate Emergency’ – the 2019 Oxford Word of the Year – will be explained by an editor from the Oxford English Dictionary. 

Show notes

Each episode contains downloadable show notes. These include the following:

  • Information about the interviewees and the 'From the field' section of the podcast,
  • The 'Green glossary', kindly provided by Oxford University Press, with links to definitions of key vocabulary in the Oxford English Dictionary
  • Ideas for how you could use the podcast in your teaching
  • Bonus material

How to listen or subscribe to the podcast

You can listen and subscribe to the podcast in the following ways:

  1. Download the episode below
  2. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts - just search for 'The Climate Connection' and subscribe, or paste the RSS feed URL below in to your podcast platform:
    https://feeds.captivate.fm/the-climate-connection/
  3. Listen on Apple Podcasts
  4. Listen on Google Podcasts
  5. Listen on Spotify

Downloads

  • Episode 1: Taking the temperature (audio file)
  • Episode 1: Show notes
  • Epsiode 1: Transcript
  • Full interview with Harry Kuchah Kuchah

This episode is produced for the British Council by Chris Sowton and Kris Dyer

See other episodes in this series

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