Feed the grammar guru

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

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 […]

Grammar Guru: Watching an old film on TV

You watch an old film on TV for the first time. Afterwards, what do you say? “This is the first time I see this film.” You use the present tense because it’s true now. “This is the first time I saw this film.” You use the past tense because the film is over. “This is […]

U is for understand

I understand. — Empathy, part 2: an effective active-listening phrase when you don’t really want to listen to somebody (“too much information”), but don’t want to sound rude. Laughs c/o sitcom Two and a Half Men, 1st season, 7th episode. I put together tips and a language exercise on active listening here.

Grammar Guru: This has to be done until/ by Friday

Last week’s options were I especially like Indian summer. (7 votes) I like especially Indian summer. (0 votes) All votes were correct – so my students weren’t voting ;).  Adverb placement is one of the trickiest issues in English grammar. As a rule of thumb, place them before the verb, but after an auxiliary verb […]

Losing face in English

I woke up this morning thinking about the debate on this blog on Westerwelle. It seems to me that this is an interesting case of a person losing face in public because he is being forced to speak English. BTW, I think the discussion has showed that both sides lost face: Westerwelle was most obviously […]

Grammar Guru: I especially like/ I like especially

Last week the Grammar Guru question was: Which two are correct? Many emails are written needlessly. (100%, 9 Votes) = correct Many emails are needless. (67%, 6 Votes) = correct Many emails are written needless. (0%, 0 Votes) = incorrect Many emails are needlessly. (0%, 0 Votes) = incorrect Why didn’t everybody choose “Many emails […]