Patchy 4G in the age of 5G

This is a tech-related post - it's been a tricky second half of the week due to Internet issues.

As I've decided not to tie myself to 24-month fixed-line rental (and broadband Internet plans) in Italy, I'm using mobile Internet at home. The Internet is vital to online teaching and so I have SIM cards with two different major network operators. In case one fails, I thought, the other one would still save my day. But after this week, I might have to reconsider my options.

By Sod's law, the back-up SIM card failed me this time round. On Wednesday evening, my main SIM card started connecting to the barely functional 4G+. Normally it would stay on 4G even though my router is '4G+ capable'. This meant the 'stop' mechanism wasn't working. The constant shift between 4G and 4G+ caused the Internet to cut off for a few seconds every time it happened. 

So I temporarily switched back to using my old '4G only' router and tried it with both SIM cards. The speed on 4G was dead slow. By this point I had figured out that upgrading work was being done to my nearest mobile radio tower. I remember a similar two-week ordeal in 2019 - the trigger was a mild rainstorm at that time.

You can imagine my annoyance since a stable Internet connection is required for online lessons.

The solution? I'm going to use a '4G only' router to avoid my SIM card switching inadvertantly to 4G+. It seems my three-day ordeal is over (slight improvement!) and I truly hope I didn't speak too soon. Then I'll also have to look into a third mobile network provider whether it's on mobile or fixed-line Internet.

(For those techies out there, I'd prefer using my '4G+' router on 5 GHz since the family living next door generously uses up two out of three chunks of 2.4 GHz channels.)

Teaching prefixes: mental associations

What's your 30-second story about a word?

It was an improvised idea which worked well with a C1 (Advanced) group of General English adult learners.

We were using a coursebook graded article about a hotel as the langauge input. Halfway through teaching the lesson, the word 'preposterous' suddenly came to my mind. I started pondering how this word had became stuck in my mind. Then I figured out it was the sound of which I've formed strong mental associations - the way how Sir John Gielgud said this word in the screen adaptation of Herman Wouk's War and Remembrance. My brain immediately evokes the image of Sir John, who played the role of Aaron Jastrow, saying this word in a disapproving tone. (The other words are 'mischance' and 'misjudgement' which come from Jastrow's final diary entry.)

Tapping into my personal experience of forming associations with words, I decided to ask my students to choose a word with prefix and tell the class about their mental associations with it. (When did they first come to know the word? What was the occasion?)

It worked well - two students picked the same word by chance! This was an excellent example which illustrates how each of us forms highly personal mental associations even with the same word.