Science blogs have been attracting the attention of linguists, rhetoricians and communications scholars alike as the discourse of science becomes more and more influenced by new digital media and more scientists engage in the practice of blogging for the purposes of knowledge dissemination and public engagement. The paper analyses writer-reader interaction in a corpus of blogs maintained by individual scientists, considering both posts and comments. The analysis is corpus-driven to the extent that it harnesses corpus linguistic tools for frequency observations to detect language patterns of interaction, but tries to interpret frequency in light of linguistic and rhetorical models of audience engagement in science popularization. The findings confirm a tendency of blogs to exploit all of the linguistic strategies of audience involvement already found in the literature, reader pronouns, questions and the conversational style typical of spoken science communication, testifying to the blurring of genres and audiences.

March 2020 saw the advent of a pandemic that is having a profound impact on all facets of our lives with special reference, in our case, to language education. Universities worldwide found themselves in an emergency predicament and we had to suddenly abandon traditional forms of classroom and/or blended learning and move to a completely remote online delivery of courses. The imperative to continue teaching in these new circumstances did not come, as very often is the case, from the relevant institutional administrations in a top-down manner, but from our own, inner pedagogical and human instincts. The usual lines of communication with our students and colleagues were cut off and we had to find and resort to new ways of communicating and teaching. We had no precedents to refer to and found ourselves in the situation to search for innovative solutions using the already existing technology, skills, resources, and methodological approaches. This situation was challenging in the extreme. Searching for solutions and support, our language learning community developed, in many ways, new lines of communication. It was then, in June 2020 that we had the idea of writing a case study each to be published together in one volume, to make some of the informal conversations that had happened during the lockdown formally available to the whole community. We come from different countries, different institutions with distinct academic, linguistic, cultural, and professional backgrounds and yet we all found ourselves in the position to have to solve a major puzzle – a pandemic-caused lockdown that fragmented our established practices.

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BackgroundThe UK Risk Sharing Scheme (RSS) provided information on the effect of first-line multiple sclerosis (MS) disease-modifying treatments on long-term disability.ObjectiveThe aim is to provide results specific to glatiramer acetate (GA; Copaxone®) from the final 10-year analysis of the RSS.MethodsA Markov model was used to assess clinical effectiveness measured as Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) progression and utility loss. Untreated patients from the British Columbia MS cohort (1980–1995) were used as a ‘virtual comparator’ group. A separate Markov model assessed cost-effectiveness, based on a 50-year time horizon (with a 50% treatment waning effect imposed at 10 years) and using NHS list price (£513.95 per 28 days). Results were expressed in quality-adjusted life years (QALYs).ResultsIn total, 755 patients with relapsing–remitting MS (RRMS) received GA, with a mean follow-up of 7.1 (standard deviation 1.3) years. EDSS progression was reduced by 23% (progression ratio 76.7, 95% confidence interval [CI] 69.0–84.3) and utility loss by 39% (progression ratio 61.0, 95% CI 52.7–69.3) compared with no treatment. There was no persistent waning in GA treatment effect over time (EDSS: p = 0.093; utilities: p = 0.119). The cost per QALY was £17,841.ConclusionGA had a beneficial effect on long-term disability and was a cost-effective treatment for RRMS.