Grammar Guru: Stop …!
One of my dear students is having trouble with the difference between stop to do something and stop doing something. I used to use that Talking Heads film title to pound it into people (oh, you pound people too?? Nasty laughs.) But Lady Gaga is more up to date, and her “Telephone” is hot. No, […]
Altering Alice
This editing game is more ‘focussed practice’ than ‘game’: Copy the paragraph into “Comments” and change one word. A word may need to be replaced by two words (or several words may have to change together). Make every version meaningful. If someone ahead of you has made a change that you think requires another word […]
Spring fashion: Alice style featurette
Alice in Wonderland has a sumptuous look. After Snowgeddon, spring will be a blooming affair, so this stuff will surely go into it. An interview with costume designer Coleen Atwood has good language if you like talking about clothes. Words, in order of appearance: costume designer, put it on, second fitting, coat, layers, silk, shear, […]
Expanding Alice
Come play a game: Copy and paste the last version of the sentence into “Comments” and add a word or phrase to expand the sentence. You can also start a new sentence. Make each version meaningful. Don’t delete anything anyone else has written. Alice in Wonderland. Alice was in Wonderland.
Avril Lavigne: Alice (Underground)
The magic of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland: All that wild “eat me”, “drink me” growing and shrinking. Mind-bending, awareness-raising, full of wonder, essential. Alice is entertained, but completely unphased: “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!” she says, and lands back in the safety of happy summmer days. In Through the Looking Glass she […]
Room full of testosterone
Looking for sitcom scenes for a grammar exercise on reported speech (yeah, really), I wound up spending the morning watching selections from “Two and a Half Men“. Didn’t find a scene that works perfectly for that purpose, perhaps because they’re all so good it’s hard to cut them short. The scene I’m using – it’s […]
Kathryn Bigelow
The Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker won best picture on Sunday at the Oscars, and Kathryn Bigelow won best director. Kathryn Bigelow on filming her character studies: “Hurt Locker’s about humanity. It’s about friendship and comeraderie in an absolutely hellish environment, and I think that’s universal, that’s not necessarily gender specific. I’m making a […]
