Teaching the present perfect
A longstanding client of mine recently wanted to pick up lessons again with the aim of refreshing his grammar skills, to increase his confidence in using the language which he is already quite proficient in and uses on a daily basis. While I generally am more of a business and communication skills trainer, teaching the […]
Kishi Bashi
Wow. Kishi Bashi. I hadn’t seen the ads, instead discovering him through Paste Magazine. All that attention to detail, craftsmanship and polish. Animal Collective meets Andrew Bird and classical Japanese music. They are hosting a video-based riddle contest for idioms like wearing _ _ _ _ h _ _ _ _ _ _ your _ […]
“What are you selling?” “Personality”
Comedian Salesman Kenny Brooks: “I’ve got a disease called enthusiasm”. Catching! Goes into suburbia with his cleaning liquid, deals with bad attitudes, and lays his word wit on his potential customers, playing to their social anxieties (“Don’t laugh too hard cause the neighbors gonna see this black kid scrubbing your windows”). My favorite one-liners: My […]
Online tools and resources for scientific writing
I’m still struggling to teach scientific writing to a diverse group of PhD candidates that I only see occasionally. My latest attempt is to give them a set of online tools to analyze their genre of target texts (published works and their own work in progress), and to tell me how they like what the […]
iCloud: iUnderstand
This is one of Steve Job’s last presentations, still explaining “his” products with inspired simplicity and clarity. Focus with me for a moment on his metalanguage (often called signposting), that is the language he uses to take us from one point to the next. Metalanguage or signposting varies widely between presentation types, and is generally […]
Learning to listen to scientific lectures
One of the greatest challenges for non-native academic users of English as a Lingua Franca is keeping up with what is being said in discussions to the point where they can process the information in real time and contribute themselves. In a word, the challenge is information overload. Not only are you trying to understand […]
Limericks and the life of an English teacher
Stan Carey of the Sentence First blog and the MacMillan blog and sundry other lingusitic habitats is holding a limerick competition – yeah! – and there are some really great ones there, don’t miss them. Deadline: September 21st. My contributions are a bit dour for limericks, but such is the life of an English teacher: […]
