2023届高考英语复习专题★★You-know.docxVIP

2023届高考英语复习专题★★ You know, said one of my students to me. Mega sad face. The fact that I could barely understand a student of mine, whos usually quite articulate, got me thinking about communication and the years to come. We all think we communicate all the time, and thats true. Theres also non-verbal communication you could add into the mix - everything were saying when were not saying anything. But theres a fine line between saying things to people, or liking and sharing a post on social media, and communication. Im quite well connected - theres Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, email, iEverything(!), but sometimes communication starts to feel like a chore. Check this blog post, read that article someone shared, text back to someone else and answer their question ... Sometimes I feel like a cross between Siri and a mad juggler. Nothing seems to go in and Im always mixing people up - asking someone how their band is going when they cant play an instrument or how the job search is going when someones just written to say how depressed they are that they cant find a job. So it was quite a shock to spend New Year in the Highlands in Scotland with no phone signal, no internet and no communication at all, apart from with the people I was with. Suddenly all the pressure to communicate disappeared. All of our conversations became slower, more inverted and far more interesting. We were a group of 12, a mixture of couples and friends, only one of whom I was at university with, so I was meeting a bunch of new people for the first time. Our conversations veered towards the banal and the humdrum in that we often discussed our plans for the day and what we were going to cook in the evening, but often they went a lot farther and a lot deeper. Tucked up on the leather sofas, digesting dinner, we dissected Brexit and one person even changed their perspective entirely! We shared ideas and theories, plots of books and plays and city trips wed been on, described family troubles