Someone's been watching too many sunday morning pundit shows...

[n2doc]

[CTyankee]

1. I was in the uncomfortable position of trying to explain those two inanities

to my ESOL class of Intermediate/Advanced learners last Saturday. I can tell you I got some blank looks. The first one I could "sort of" explain it as "when you are finished or something is done)but the second is gibberish. I confessed to the class that it really didn't mean anything, except for politicians looking for an excuse to do nothing about a serious problem...

[myrna minx]

2. Idioms are such a challenge - I had a friend who taught English to

French teens had an awkward time trying to explain the difference between "sleeping in" and "sleeping around". Ha.

[CTyankee]

4. Ah yes, prepositional phrases. I do LOTS of them.

I had a Visiting Scholar to Yale Law School from China in my ESOL class a few years back and he was mystified by "catch on fire" or "catch fire." His wife was downright disdainful of the idiom "holy shit." She was snippy, "How can this BE?" Another of my Chinese students was a woman who wanted to know if it was illegal for her to shoot a squirrel in the city...

[immoderate]

3. I have a Libertarian friend who engages me in arguments frequently...

...at which point I kick his ass. Always. I know this when he changes the subject.

He claims that he uses techniques that he learns from my thrashing him to engage others. Firstly, I don't really believe that, but who knows why people seek arguments?

On the other hand it does make me test some of my assertions to inoculate them against a kind of symmetry that makes them susceptible to being turned around. I always get to hear my own points reversed on me some time later. Usually it's inappropriate, but sometimes arguable. To him that's a point.

My friend is also convinced that you can win any argument if you can formulate superior language. I try to convince him that language and ideas are connected, he ignores that. :)


--imm

[GeorgeGist]

5. Thank you n2doc for all that you do to encourage sanity.