-
Making A Chatbot For Students Of French
As a teacher, I’ve been struggling for years to find a way for students to stay in touch with the language once they are done with their courses. Sure, they can (should) read, listen to the French radio channels, watch films, yada yada…the ways to stay in touch with the…
-
Pet Peeves #3 Abbreviations
I excelled at acronyms in school. During a creative writing workshop, organised by my school in 4th grade, one of the activities was imagining the full form of acronyms. I was the unbeaten champion in the exercise, coming up with ingenious versions. My penchant for the long and winding has,…
-
Goodbye Christopher Robin
My in-flight movie viewing tends to include at least one tear-jerker, so it had to be the case even this time. After a few relatively light views on the way out and in (should I reveal here that I shed a tear or two while watching “Murder on the Orient…
-
Pet Peeves #2 Badly Composed Tweets
As a language teacher, I’m used to dealing with all kinds of badly framed sentences: incorrect tenses, missing articles, wrong prepositions and invisible (I really mean absent) punctuation marks. I know it infuriates my colleagues, but not me. I understand that my students ‘ work is just that – students’…
-
FranceSay: The Chatbot
There are several ways to learn a language – the old-school method of joining a class, using text books and other traditional study material, through immersion and speaking to locals exclusively in their language, or the more modern method of apps, like DuoLingo. But how do you go beyond the…
-
My Students And Other Animals
The urban animal population seems to have an affinity to me, invading my home and even classrooms with little regard for my feelings. We’ve always had a dog at home, and briefly welcomed turtles, fishes and even birds – all adopted by my brother. But we’ve also played host to…
-
Pet Peeves #1: The Usage of “Would” In Indian English
Once a student of English Literature, I tend to be a bit of a stickler for correct usage of grammar. As a language teacher, I have learnt to turn a blind eye to some common mistakes my students make. But there are some things that bother me too much to…
-
Boozy Fruit Cake
I’ve been baking cakes for nearly over two decades now and though I’m a stickler for following recipes, I’ve started taking liberties and doing my own thing (within the pre-defined limits of a recipe of course). Last week’s boozy fruit cake came from a random mélange of recipes of fruit…
-
Handy Tips for Translating a Corporate Web Site
I recently translated (French → English) the entire website, ticket booking platform and marketing material for Mystifly. It was the first time that I was handling such a big project. But more importantly, it was also my first translation assignment since 2011. I was quite obviously nervous when I started,…
-
Writing For A Chatbot
I started moonlighting for Skilla a few months ago. For the uninitiated, Skilla is a chatbot (currently in closed beta on Facebook Messenger) that allows people to create a professional page to showcase their skills and eventually find people with complementary skills for their project / startup. Users can message…
-
Two Amazing Delivery Apps That Are Ruining Us
A few weeks ago, we asked some friends to come over on a Friday evening for beer and kebabs – what was to be a short affair, became a full fledged dinner party and we found ourselves wondering what to feed our guests. Swiggy zindabad, I yelled! Try Dunzo, said…
-
How Being A Social Media Ballerina Got Me A Pot Of Mustard!
Food Trucks are quite the rage in Bangalore since last year and you can eat a wide variety of stuff ranging from kababs to to pav bhaji to burgers to pancakes! My favourite of course is Le Casse-Croûte, a French food truck which launched in September 2015 and serves sandwiches…
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
PlainGeets 