Grandiose Grammar

Hello folks!

It’s been a while since I last produced some content for this website and my podcast. Last week, I had some very interesting feedback from a friend regarding a comment I made about the salutation Dear Sirs towards the end of episode 43. Anna K. informed me that her language school teaches students that the salutation Dear Sirs should be used when addressing a legal entity. I had never come across this before and so I decided to do a little reading and investigating.

This is a link to an article from The Guardian. If you’d like to check out Ken Adams’ article, you’ll find it here. It’s very informative and definitely worth a read. Have a look at this to find out what the UK Law society has to say and here is a link to an announcement by the Irish Law Society on the same topic.

Hello folks,

this week while preparing a lesson for one of my grammar classes I stumbled across a footnote in a grammar book on cognate objects. The topic is absolutely fascinating from both a grammar perspective and a cognitive linguistic perspective. If anyone is interested in reading more about this topic, I highly recommend this article. In particular, chapters 4 and 5 of this dissertation are worth reading if you have some time on your hands.

Hello folks!

This week I’m chatting with you about how to address people in emails. In this episode I have things to say about honorifics and mention the conversation about gender-neutral titles. If you are interested in reading more about that, check out this link.

Hello folks!

I’m back with more from my interview with Anna. In this episode we talk about the impact of Covid-19 on teaching and what the future might bring. We also spoke about how a digital future could impact our work. Another topic that came up was the idea of global English or English in an international context and how the subtleties of hedging require a human teacher/trainer. During our chat we referred to some news articles we had read that claim that native English speakers are poor communicators. Here’s one from the BBC. And here’s a link to the SAP News Center article on Digitizaton vs. Digitalization.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on these topics. Feel free to leave a comment below.

Hello folks!

This week I’ve got another interview; this time it’s with my friend Anna. She works in adult education and has lots of really interesting insights into teaching. This week we talk about teaching, imposter syndrome and Anna shares her method of teaching Germans how to use the present perfect - of course that led to a bit of grammar geekery.  There’ll be a part two for this interview, so be sure to come back and listen in to the second half of this conversation.

Thanks again to Anna for sharing her time and insights with us! I really enjoyed this conversation.

Hello folks!

This week I’ve got part two of my interview with Anja. In particular, we discussed how Covid-19 has impacted our teaching. Anja brought up the topic of teacher bashing and the widespread mis-conception that educators are unwilling to embrace modern technology when in fact the real problem is a lack of investment in educational infrastructure. 

This series of interviews will continue into the autumn of this year. If there’s someone you’d like me to interview, leave a suggestion in the comments. If there are questions you’d like me to ask, leave those in the comments too.

Hello folks!

This week I’ve got part one of an interview with my friend Anja who is a teacher in Bavaria. This week Anja introduces herself and tells us a little about her work before we start digging into topics like fun over fear and fluency over accuracy and then we start really digging into the meaty of topics of edutainment, learners as consumers and what that might mean for independent thought and further education.  Come back next week for part 2! We’ll be discussing topics like open book exams and how societal changes impact our classrooms and what that could mean for the future.

If you have questions you’d like to hear answered in future episodes, leave them in the comments. This interview series is going to carry on over the summer and early autumn. I’d love to ask your questions: share them with me.

Hello folks!

This week I’m going to talk you through the processes I follow when I see a verb phrase that my English-native-speaker gut feeling tells me is wrong and I automatically know how to correct it but I want to really understand what’s driving the correction. This episode was inspired by one of my students who will remain anonymous and the use of the verb phrase have been arising.

Here’s a link to the dictionary definition that I refer to in the episode.

If you want to read more about stative verbs, check out chapter 5.3 of Biber, Douglas, et al. Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English, which I also reference in this episode.

If you have verb phrases you suspect are “wrong” but can’t figure out why, leave them in the comments below and we can investigate them together.

Hello folks,

This week I’m back with another episode of say this, not that. I’ll be talking you through two errors that my students frequently make in written English and one transfer error from that German that really amused me recently.

If you have suggestions for expressions you think should appear in a future episode of say this, not that… leave them in the comments below.

Hello folk!

This week I have part of my interview with Victoria Gath. In this week’s episode we discuss whether or not native English speakers make better English language teachers. Victoria speaks from personal experience about raising children bilingually and about language acquisition in general. We also tackle the tricky subject of error correction.

If there are questions you would like me to pose in future interviews, leave them in the comments for me.