I wonder, sometimes, why some of my students seem to be under the impression that, although I have been teaching them all year, I in fact came down with the last shower of rain.

One of my terminally late students wandered in, as usual, after the lesson had started with an armful of shopping bags from Primark. When I asked her why she was late, she simply announced 'the bus'. I couldn't help wondering why our students seem to believe that the buses are so very unreliable that they are the panacea of excuses. In my experience the problem, 9 times out of 10, isn't the bus but the fact that the student gets on it too late to arrive when they are supposed to.

But anyway.

We've been studying communication- I am extremely nervous as our seminar presentation is coming up- and I have as a result been wondering what my clothes say about me. I always try to be smart, but not too smart as that might alienate the students. I wonder if it works?

Then there's my body language. Ever since I learned that the 'thumbs up' is extremely rude in some countries, I've been self-conscious about using it- for some reason, I often do when someone does something well. It's a good non-verbal praise cue for learners with very low levels of English. But I don't want to unwittingly offend anyone. I'm going to talk about the cultural issues surrounding non-verbal communication as my seminar presentation. I've found lots of evidence of the problems it can cause, and hope also to talk about how we can teach our students about proxemics and gestures, as it's a citizenship issue. It's relevant to my teaching, and I hope it will be interesting to the rest of the group. 10 minutes sounds like a lot to most people, I think, but I know how quickly it can go- and how slowly. Hopefully it will be the former.