The Climate Connection - Episode 9: Environmental writes

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 9: Environmental writes

In episode 9 we explore how the global climate crisis is represented in English language textbooks. From the practitioner side, the teacher, researcher and textbook writer George Jacobs explores how the climate crisis can successfully be integrated into language learning, so as to engage and inspire learners. From the publisher side, Andrew Robinson from National Geographic Learning and Angelica Manca from Hoopla Education talk about how their companies have responded to environmental challenges, both in terms of their own business practices, and in the kind of ELT books which they are publishing. In From the Field, we hear from Sheena Adams, who has worked with a group of Inuvialuktun elders in Canada’s Northwest Territories to create a new  vocabulary of renewable energy terminology so that they can more effectively talk about – and solve – some of the new challenges presented by the climate crisis. In the penultimate Green Glossary, the team share some of their favourite climate-related words which we haven’t had a chance to discuss in the series so far.

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:

• Download the episode below
• 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/
• Listen on Apple Podcasts
• Listen on Google Podcasts
• Listen on Spotify

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

See other episodes in this series