bureauista » language http://bureauista.com/blog This is my blog. Fri, 09 Apr 2010 08:47:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 There’s no such thing as innocuous http://bureauista.com/blog/2009/01/theres-no-such-thing-as-innocuous-2/ http://bureauista.com/blog/2009/01/theres-no-such-thing-as-innocuous-2/#comments Sun, 11 Jan 2009 03:38:00 +0000 bureauista http://www.bureauista.com/blog/2009/01/11/theres-no-such-thing-as-innocuous-2/ Heard a story this evening from a friend who works with special needs kids.

When I was at secondary school in the north of Scotland, we had a special needs department as part of the main school complex. The special needs kids were partially integrated into the main school and would join the rest of [...]]]> Heard a story this evening from a friend who works with special needs kids.

When I was at secondary school in the north of Scotland, we had a special needs department as part of the main school complex. The special needs kids were partially integrated into the main school and would join the rest of us for certain classes. Being typical schoolchildren, we refused to call them anything as politically correct as ’special needs kids’; instead, we called them ’spastics’ or, if we were feeling particularly generous, ’spackers’ – a phrase that is still in common use among my generation of Scots (perhaps in other parts of the world as well; I’m not sure).

Apparently, at some point since I left school, The Spastics Society, as it was then called, realised that a generation of kids was being labelled ’spastics’ and ’spackers’ and decided to go for a rebrand, changing their name to SCOPE. This, I suspect they thought, was an innocuous name that no one could mould into a nasty pejorative term of abuse.

They should have saved their money. Today’s schoolchildren now refer to their peers with cerebral palsy as, wait for it… ’scopers’!

There’s no such thing as innocuous]]> http://bureauista.com/blog/2009/01/theres-no-such-thing-as-innocuous-2/feed/ 4 Wise words http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/12/wise-words-2/ http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/12/wise-words-2/#comments Mon, 22 Dec 2008 19:39:00 +0000 bureauista http://www.bureauista.com/blog/2008/12/22/wise-words-2/ As the saying goes: ‘If you’ve nothing good to say, then say nothing’. So rather than inflict a deluge of Yuletide bad cheer on you, gentle readers, here are some jokes in regional British dialects. If you don’t get them, ask Johnny for an explanation – he has more time on his hands than me.

Yorkshire [...]]]> As the saying goes: ‘If you’ve nothing good to say, then say nothing’. So rather than inflict a deluge of Yuletide bad cheer on you, gentle readers, here are some jokes in regional British dialects. If you don’t get them, ask Johnny for an explanation – he has more time on his hands than me.

Yorkshire joke:
A bloke from Yorkshire goes to the jewellers:
He says, “Can tha mek a gold statue o’ mi dog?”.

“Aye, reckon a can,” sez the jeweller.
“Does tha want it eighteen carat?”.

“Neigh,” sez bloke, “I want it chewin’ a bone.”

Courtesy of Popbitch.

Scottish joke:
Wha’s the quickest way tae gie a Scotsman a sex change?
Throw him aff a tall building so he lands wi a fud.

Courtesy of the fitba pundits on Radio Scotland.

Wise words]]> http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/12/wise-words-2/feed/ 4 As promised – PARSNIP http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/12/as-promised-parsnip/ http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/12/as-promised-parsnip/#comments Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:51:00 +0000 bureauista http://www.bureauista.com/blog/?p=44 My explanatory guide on subjects to be avoided at all costs in ELT materials.

PornographyStudent: Teacher, what is ‘pornography’?Teacher: Er, it’s pictures of naked people.Student: Do you mean like paintings?Teacher: Er, not really.Student (smelling blood now): So, what is the difference?Teacher: … Why don’t you ask Michel? He was looking at some on one of the [...]]]> My explanatory guide on subjects to be avoided at all costs in ELT materials.

Pornography
Student: Teacher, what is ‘pornography’?
Teacher: Er, it’s pictures of naked people.
Student: Do you mean like paintings?
Teacher: Er, not really.
Student (smelling blood now): So, what is the difference?
Teacher: … Why don’t you ask Michel? He was looking at some on one of the student lounge computers just this morning.

Alcohol
Qatari education minister: So, you want to supply my country with your English books?
Publisher: That’s right. We have some top-quality authors and our books have won awards from the British Council.
Qatari education minister: What is this picture on page 55?
Publisher: Oh, that… That’s just … some young people, at a party, sipping … non-alcoholic cocktails?
Qatari education minister: Next!

Racism
Teacher: Today we’re going to discuss racism. Anyone have any stories they’d like to share?
Student: My sister was beaten to death by white supremacists.
Teacher: On second thoughts, let’s turn to the grammar section on page 11.

Sex
Teacher: Today we’re going to talk about sex. Perhaps those of you I’ve already slept with could get into pairs and give me a score out of five. The rest of you should line up in the corridor outside the storeroom.

Narcotics
Teacher: Class, let’s talk about drugs, and the evil they do to our society.
Student: Carlos sells the best weed. Honestly, you should try some.
Carlos: Yeah, anyone not have my number?

Islam
Teacher: So what do we know about the ancient religion of Islam?
Chinese student: Muslims are all terrorists and women-haters.
Muslim student: Chinese people eat dogs and babies!
Italian student: Who wants to hear a joke about 9/11?

Pork
Qatari education minister: Ah, I see you have chosen some more appropriate pictures for your textbooks this year.
Publisher: Yes, we spent a lot of money checking and then reprinting the series to remove all possible connotations of sexual behaviour or alcohol consumption. I think you’ll be delighted with the results.
Qatari education minister: What is this picture here, on page 121?
Publisher: It … appears to be a young man … enjoying a … bacon sandwich… I’ll get my coat.

As promised – PARSNIP]]> http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/12/as-promised-parsnip/feed/ 7 The best thing… http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/12/the-best-thing/ http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/12/the-best-thing/#comments Wed, 03 Dec 2008 21:25:00 +0000 bureauista http://www.bureauista.com/blog/?p=41 …about working in the English Language Teaching (ELT) industry is that you have an excuse to research and write about almost every subject under the sun (apart from those that fall under the PARSNIP exceptions, of which perhaps another post at another time).

Things I have had to think about this week:

-Spontaneous Human Combustion: it can [...]]]> …about working in the English Language Teaching (ELT) industry is that you have an excuse to research and write about almost every subject under the sun (apart from those that fall under the PARSNIP exceptions, of which perhaps another post at another time).

Things I have had to think about this week:

-Spontaneous Human Combustion: it can kill your pets by consuming all the oxygen in the room.
-Ways to describe an electric toothbrush shaped like a banana.
-Knowledge management – will companies invest in it less during times of economic crisis?
-How to explain to Chinese students why English people use the term ’skin and blister’ to refer to a female sibling.
-Will students be able to label a diagram of decubitus ulcers?
-The subjunctive.

I love my job.

The best thing…]]> http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/12/the-best-thing/feed/ 8 Buzz buzz, buzz buzz in the eardrum http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/11/buzz-buzz-buzz-buzz-in-the-eardrum/ http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/11/buzz-buzz-buzz-buzz-in-the-eardrum/#comments Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:23:00 +0000 bureauista http://www.bureauista.com/blog/?p=37 Loving this post about buzzwords in education. I’ve had to sit through a lot of meetings and read a lot of emails recently about whether my editorial team should be training our writers to utilise the ESA (Engage, Study, Activate) methodology, or the PPP methodology (Present, Practice, Produce). Then again there’s TTT (Test, Teach, Test) [...]]]> Loving this post about buzzwords in education. I’ve had to sit through a lot of meetings and read a lot of emails recently about whether my editorial team should be training our writers to utilise the ESA (Engage, Study, Activate) methodology, or the PPP methodology (Present, Practice, Produce). Then again there’s TTT (Test, Teach, Test) or ARC (Authentic use, Restricted use, Clarification).

Now I’m not against theory. There’s not much I’d rather do than read a good paper on educational methodology, or sit about debating the best way to teach a language, but when I’ve got three months to get three novice writers to churn out tonnes of content, and that content has to be teachable, engaging and relevant, I go for the pragmatic approach every time. So when the conversation gets overly theoretical, my translation software kicks in:

Is there enough authentic use in this lesson? = Will the students get a chance to speak?
Are the materials engaging? = Are there lots of fun pictures? Will students stay awake?
Does the lesson flow in a logical sequence? = Will the teacher take less than five minutes to work out how to teach the lesson?
Is there an overarching outcome? = Do students get to do something useful at the end?
Has the methodology been correctly applied? = Will the teacher want to kill the writer by the end of the lesson?

Week 1 of content production nearly over – so far my three writers have produced some lovely lessons. Only eleven weeks to go.

Buzz buzz, buzz buzz in the eardrum]]> http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/11/buzz-buzz-buzz-buzz-in-the-eardrum/feed/ 4 T-shirt heaven http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/10/t-shirt-heaven/ http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/10/t-shirt-heaven/#comments Thu, 30 Oct 2008 12:20:00 +0000 bureauista http://www.bureauista.com/blog/?p=30

T-shirt heaven]]>

T-shirt heaven]]> http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/10/t-shirt-heaven/feed/ 1 Grammar Nazi’s and Punctuation Pedant’s http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/10/grammar-nazis-and-punctuation-pedants/ http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/10/grammar-nazis-and-punctuation-pedants/#comments Sat, 04 Oct 2008 19:34:00 +0000 bureauista http://www.bureauista.com/blog/?p=17 People who know me often assume that because of what I do for a living I must be the sort of person who foams at the mouth when I spot a typo in a newspaper article, or that I spend my weekends stomping about town with marker pen and Tippex, adding missing punctuation and erasing [...]]]> People who know me often assume that because of what I do for a living I must be the sort of person who foams at the mouth when I spot a typo in a newspaper article, or that I spend my weekends stomping about town with marker pen and Tippex, adding missing punctuation and erasing unnecessary apostrophes from shop signs.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

For a start, if the world wasn’t riddled with examples of horrific grammar, spelling and punctuation, I wouldn’t have a job at all. Mistakes are my bread and butter, literally.

But it’s more than that. Even though I will spend hours picking over a text to make it as flawless as possible; even though I can and do discuss sentence structure until a normal person would start bleeding from the ears; even though I regularly proofread my emails three or four times before I send them, on a day to day level, I really don’t give a flying fuck about typos, misspellings, misplaced apostrophes or less-than-perfect English.

Written English is practically impossible to master. The majority of native English speakers are crap at writing in English, crap at spelling in English and crap at English grammar. This is because English evolved from several different and quite distinct languages, and because it continues to evolve and change at a fairly fast pace. It is a rich, complex and infinitely malleable language, which makes it a joy to speak, difficult to write (unless you have a particular sort of memory and a love of form) and hellish to learn. (It is also difficult to teach, further compounding the problem.) As far as I am concerned, you are doing well if you can string any kind of sentence together in English. If you are using punctuation at all, that’s excellent; who gives a damn if you sprinkle in a couple of extra apostrophe’s here and there?

So, yes, I do see the signs in the supermarket that say ‘Five items or less’ and the traffic sign that says ‘Expect delay’s’; years of training makes it practically impossible for me to miss them, but they don’t bother me. I certainly don’t get out my marker pen or complain to the manager. I certainly wouldn’t do this. And this is mostly just a massive waste of time. As I tell all my students, learn to love your mistakes: if you don’t make em, you’ll never learn.

Grammar Nazi’s and Punctuation Pedant’s]]> http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/10/grammar-nazis-and-punctuation-pedants/feed/ 4 If … http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/09/if-2/ http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/09/if-2/#comments Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:17:00 +0000 bureauista http://www.bureauista.com/blog/2008/09/30/if-2/ … I have to remove another set of unnecessary quotation marks from a perfectly acceptable word used in a perfectly ordinary context the rivers of Hampshire will run red with the blood of innocents.

If …]]> … I have to remove another set of unnecessary quotation marks from a perfectly acceptable word used in a perfectly ordinary context the rivers of Hampshire will run red with the blood of innocents.

If …]]> http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/09/if-2/feed/ 6 Salientia micturire http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/09/salientia-micturire/ http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/09/salientia-micturire/#comments Mon, 15 Sep 2008 20:53:00 +0000 bureauista http://www.bureauista.com/blog/?p=9 My mother just informed me that she has been urinated on by a frog.

Picture by rcolonna; found on Flickr.

Apologies for the pig (frog) Latin.

In other news, I have just become aunt to a blue kitten. Congratulations Patroclus and Blue Cat! Miaow.

Salientia micturire]]> My mother just informed me that she has been urinated on by a frog.

Picture by rcolonna; found on Flickr.

Apologies for the pig (frog) Latin.

In other news, I have just become aunt to a blue kitten. Congratulations Patroclus and Blue Cat! Miaow.

Salientia micturire]]> http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/09/salientia-micturire/feed/ 5 Things your mother never teaches you http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/09/things-your-mother-never-teaches-you/ http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/09/things-your-mother-never-teaches-you/#comments Fri, 12 Sep 2008 09:46:00 +0000 bureauista http://www.bureauista.com/blog/?p=6 I can’t believe I’ve managed to reach the age of thirty without anyone telling me what mensuration is.

Things your mother never teaches you]]> I can’t believe I’ve managed to reach the age of thirty without anyone telling me what mensuration is.

Things your mother never teaches you]]> http://bureauista.com/blog/2008/09/things-your-mother-never-teaches-you/feed/ 4