In a conversation with my daughter today, I remarked that you very seldom see people studying in public. I do it all the time, as I always have a Volats test with me if I go out walking or use public transport, such that it no longer feels like an odd thing to do. I was at Gatwick airport the other evening, to meet her and her friends who'd been skiing in la Clusaz, and it seemed noteworthy that I was the only person who seemed to be using that spare half hour in the arrivals area. There are hundreds of students living near us in New Cross, attending Goldsmiths College, but you still don't often see people studying in public. I don't know whether it's my imagination or my memory playing tricks with me, but I have this vision of young people walking around with bags full of books, or sitting on steps and benches reading Moliere or some such. Did that ever happen?

Anyway, I was wondering whether anyone promotes studying in public as a good thing to do. Is there a www.study-in-public.com? In a way, I suppose those of us who contribute to sites like this are probably doing that in our own fields...

So there I was, googling 'study in public', when I came across the following online resource, which I might not subscribe to:

learning-at-home.co.uk has a Japanese language module, 30 quid for a 10-12 hour CD-rom course. These screen shots are from the on-line preview:-






And -



Oh boy.

In their defence, each of these example words has an audio clip giving the pronunciation. Even so... Way to teach Japanese!