African American English in the media

This week’s This American Life took on an interesting topic, having to do with identity and projection.  I recommend it to all.  But this is (mostly) a language blog, not an interesting-subject-npr blog. I bring up This American Life because I had a personally interesting experience while listening to this episode on my way home …

Pigs, Bears, and 9th grade philosophy of love and death

After a very comfortable two weeks away from the school, I am back to desk-warming until the new school term starts (sometime.. soon?).  I spend my time alternating between thinking about planning my lessons and actually wasting time on Reddit. Beyond that, though, I do find some time to be productive.  Recently, I've been going through all …

‘going to’ vs. ‘gonna’: The Cagematch

I was eating out with some friends the other night when one of them stopped the conversation to announce that she needed to leave. (It isn’t as strange as it might sound, her English is about the low-to-mid intermediate range, so just jumping in can be difficult).  Her reason was that she needed to wake …

On metaphor, meaning and the paralinguistic

The first time I saw this cup at one of the cafés that I frequent, I nearly laughed out loud. Specifically, I am talking about the line, about half way, that says, “Only ‘hot’ passion for ‘hot’ coffee”.  Even though it's fragmented (lacks a verb), it is a well-formed noun-phrase, so no need to get …

A descriptivist fixes your grammar

Mocking signs like this is a common past-time of native English speakers with nothing better to do than not think about the beauty of English and how or why it changes over time.  I'll admit, though, some errors can be pretty funny in our dialects.  Language is funny, sometimes. For some reason, especially amongst those …

The Hero’s Journey – Winter Camp day 2

Day 1 Lesson here For me, my winter camp finished today.  It was a four day mis-adventure, but my co-teacher was really pleased with how it went.  My version of "The Hero's Journey" involved some discussions about what it means to be a hero, some examples of heroes and a lengthy (multiple day) dive into …

The Hero’s Journey – Winter English Camp Plan

This week, I am supposed to be conducting a one to two week English camp here in Northern South Korea.  Part of an NETs contract here  is to organize and run a winter and summer English camp.  These events vary in importance, but from what I can gleen from my colleagues on the intrawebz; generally …