This blog is about my language learning comic book project Gnomeville.  I’ve been working on the project off and on for a very long time, and have now finally published Episodes 1 to 3.  The song from episode 2 has been performed and recorded a few times.  The song from episode 3 (La Mission) is on my album On the Rocks (spoilers).  I also produced a set of mugs and a T-Shirt with designs from the first Gnomeville episode.

In the blog I write about applied linguistics and extensive reading-related research that is relevant to my comic book, as well as about progress on the comic book project itself. I review other books intended for extensive reading and sometimes put up language learning resources related to the comic book.

I also have a Gnomeville Facebook page which has short updates and comic book previews, and occasional links to blog posts.

About the Author

I’m a computer science academic with interests in music, languages and usability. Born of my own frustrations with my skill level after being a top student in my high school French class for five years, I started developing the ideas for Gnomeville. After completing my PhD in music information retrieval, I started applying my information retrieval research background to the topic of readability of French for people with an English-speaking background. I have continued tinkering with language-related research since then, as well as applying what I’ve learnt to the comics I write and to my own language skills.

My Promise

I’m aware that a non-native (B1+) speaker writing and publishing in French is likely to be less authentic and may contain sentences that a native speaker would not write. My promise is that I will always get the text checked by a native/near-native speaker of French and correct the comic based on the feedback I receive. In addition, any issues with the text that have been found after publication, or that led to disagreement on authenticity, or simply were chosen to keep vocabulary simple, are described on my Errata and Anomalies page.