Would you recommend this?

I wasn't sure whether to post this or not, but it does raise some really interesting questions about a number of issues. The site that I'm referring to is Hot for Words! It is presented by Marina and this is how she describes herself;

"My name is Marina and I am a philologist (one who studies linguistics and etymology). I love to discuss the origins of words."

The interesting motto for the site is 'Intelligence is sexy'. Before you jump to too many conclusions have a look at an example episode of Marina describing the origin of the word 'nuclear'.



Marina is quite obviously using her sex appeal to attract users, but despite that she does seem to be delivering the goods and quite obviously has a huge following with more that 77 thousand subscribers to the Hot for Words YouTube Channel and more that 27 Million views of her videos. That certainly is a lot more than my own YouTube channel!!

I found it really interesting to compare Marina's efforts with those of the BBC and their British Council Innovations award winning 'The Teacher'.



Here's an episode with The Teacher introducing idioms connected with the word 'pie'. I have to say that to watch this on my MAC I had to download 44Mb of Mp4 first!
Click here if you want to do the same comparison

Well I'm not really sure which you prefer but I would be really interested to hear your comments.

• Which would you recommend to your students????
• Trainee teachers???
• Will Marina and Hot for Words be winning next years Innovations award?

There's an interesting clip here telling a bit more about Marina and the origins of the show.



Love to hear what you think so please do post a comment.

Best

Nik Peachey