Grammar Police Reinforcements!

If you teach English or Writing, (or any subject that requires students to communicate in any way that should be comprehended by other human beings,) you can use this video.

After you've written helpful comments, after you've referred students to the Writing Center for LOC help, after you've diagrammed sentences, after you've shown students how to bookmark the dictionary in their browsers, after you've gone on a tirade and preached from "The Elements of Style" for an entire class... (OK, that last one might be just me,) you can use something like this to reinforce your efforts and give you a moment to regroup.

Enjoy your summer, knowing this video is now in your arsenal for next term!

Now.. if we can just find a similar video on APA or MLA formatting...

ESPN, Culture and Speaking "English" Slang

At some point in the term, when teaching rhetorics, critical thinking, cultural literacies, speech, composition, or other topics - I find it important to discuss how language is a culturally/socially constructed semiotic system. (I usually work from a broader intro that looks at how ontology, epistemology and semiology treat a "thing," but that's another story.)

I am planning to incorporate these ESPN commercials to help students think about how language (in this case, English) is a living, growing set of signifiers and signifieds. Maybe some of my colleagues in related fields would be able to make creative instructional use of these artifacts as well...

Video one is the commercial I saw first - and though I had no idea what these guys were "saying" - I got the idea: the speakers seem to be exactly alike from a first-blush broad-brush categorizing of the individuals as being from the UK - but each views the other as a polar opposite.

A Second video (now disappeared from the web) slows the action down and adds definitions to the "slang" English from across the pond.

So, don't be a right divvy - spice up your sessions with these discussion starters/illustrations. And remember which video is which, or you'll look like a proper digital plonker.

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mmm... Delicious Wordle

A Wordle representation of my delicious links... yummy!