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Archive for the 'language' Category

Grammar Guru: until or by?

Posted by Anne on June 29th, 2010

You’re going camping and want to borrow a friend’s tent over the weekend. So you say: “Could I have it ______ Friday afternoon? We’re leaving on Friday after work.”

Until or by?

Until means from now until then.
By, used for deadlines, means not later than then.
By… at the latest!
Imagine: If you said “until Friday”, your friend [...]

Kleiner, uralter Gott – Ancient little god

Posted by Anne on May 29th, 2010

In a week we’ll be burying my mother’s ashes on Drummond. We’ve decided to read some of her poems, with a translation into English. She published a volume of them in the Wilhelm Andermann Verlag in Vienna in 1944 when she was 21; a miracle, since paper was so rare towards the end of the [...]

Feed the grammar guru

Posted by Anne on April 10th, 2010

My favorite quote so far at IATEFL: “Do not teach things that are wrong.” That’s Dave Willis. And as he proves in this talk held before a room full of English teachers, it’s easier said than done. We often enough do teach total malarkey, namely as soon as we teach prescriptive grammar rules that don’t [...]

Altering Alice

Posted by Anne on March 14th, 2010

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 [...]

Expanding Alice

Posted by Anne on March 12th, 2010

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.

The Onion Radio: Rules Grammar Change

Posted by Anne on March 2nd, 2010

Nonsense rules!

Pigeon: Impossible

Posted by Anne on February 22nd, 2010

Pigeon Impossible, the silent animated film by Lucas Martell released on 9 November that took 4 years to make, passed the 1 million views mark on YouTube after less than 2 weeks online. The film is set in the neighborhood of the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., where two of my nieces and I [...]