Category Archives: Grammar & ESL

Editing: You’re the Professional

By on February 18th, 2011

The following is a guest post from CJ Arlotta. Every word is chosen carefully; every sentence is structured for perfection. Paragraphs are crossed out, and pages are destroyed; commas are added and omitted. Careless spelling errors are picked up by spell check, but another set of eyes is needed, for spell check does not pick up the wrong version of a word. The editing process is a writer’s best friend. Be sure to take the time to edit your work. If you have a hard time completing this imperative task, add it into your schedule. Editing isn’t something that writers …

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Organization in Writing: A Lost Art

By on December 18th, 2010

Remember the days of the five-paragraph essay? We started in elementary school learning about topic sentences and then main ideas. We threw in some supporting details, restated that topic statement and rounded that paper out. It was clean, it was simple, and yet it is fast becoming a relic we need to bring back! When you’re learning to write in a different language or looking to perfect your English structure and flow, your best friend is organization. Yet for reasons only school teachers battling standardized tests will understand, the five paragraph essay is almost gone. It’s all about the “personal …

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Help! I Is Missing Again!

By on December 4th, 2010

At lunch the other day, a group of English teachers were laughing about some of the things we find funny in student papers. Note that we weren’t laughing at students, but at how often we see the same mistakes, and one of the funniest is that we often have no idea who is writing a paper. I fully understand why this would only be funny to English teachers – we live a droll life. If you think about it, an essay or journal piece should be easily identifiable for a teacher. After all, you’re looking into the mind of a …

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The Six Biggies in Writing

By on November 20th, 2010

There are six key strategies I teach students as they improve their basic writing skills. As a writer, it’s interesting to me how well these six elements still translate to improving my work at a professional level. When you’re paying attention to these areas of your work, you’ll start to see ways to tweak your work to make it more readable. Learning more about how you write also lets you improve your writing in different areas. I’m not talking about tricks for web writing or for copywriting – this is Writing 101 – perfect for those looking to improve English …

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Slang and Other Nonsense in the English Language

By on November 6th, 2010

There was a request in the comments of a previous post about understanding and using more idioms in the English language. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to dig into some of the slang and other odious expressions we bandy about – you know, the crap we say – or the words we speak that really don’t make much sense. A quick warning – if you’re a gentle soul, some of these might be marginally offensive. If you can’t handle it or don’t care to – stop reading now! “Shut up” – Be quiet. Quit speaking now. Don’t talk any …

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Using Academic Language to Improve English

By on October 23rd, 2010

There is a strong correlation between how well you know your native language and how well you can write in English – at least formally. In essence, being highly educated in one language will make it far easier to become proficient in the English language. The root of this is the academic language that is surprisingly common throughout the world languages. Take the word “academic”: In English it’s “academic” In Spanish it’s “académico” In French it’s “académique” In Russian it’s “akademicheskih” In German it’s “akademischen” There is a significant overlap in many languages for many words in the academic, or …

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Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here!

By on October 9th, 2010

Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, get your adverbs here. Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, got some adverbs here. Come on down to Lolly’s, get the adverbs here! I’ll admit I’ve used it in the classroom more than a few times although I don’t know how much good Schoolhouse Rock really does to teach teenagers anything about the parts of speech. Don’t know what I’m talking about when I refer to Schoolhouse Rock? Try this on for size and then let’s talk a bit more about how to use adverbs in your writing. Schoolhouse Rock on Youtube For those of you out there working on …

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Message to Non-Native Writers: Market Yourself, Not Your Country

By on September 25th, 2010

I just spent more than thirty minutes looking for an example to use in this post. The original plan was to take a comment or sales thread from a popular internet forum and point out some areas where the English phrasing could be improved to make this series a bit more “real-world”. I’ve abandoned that plan for the moment because I noticed a bigger problem for many of our writing friends who are not native speakers. They don’t appear to be wanted by those who seem to need them the most. If I were up to doing real math after …

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Posted in Grammar & ESL, Marketing |

Pronouns, Antecedents and Other Quirks

By on September 11th, 2010

Here’s one you don’t think about all the time – do your pronouns match your antecedents? Consider the following sentence I used today in class: The squirrel attacked him, and he was frightened. Yes, yes – the old attacking squirrel trick. Subject aside, the pronouns are words like him and he. The antecedent in this case is the squirrel or an anonymous him. That’s the trouble with this sentence, actually. The antecedent isn’t very clear. In fact it isn’t clear at all. Today a group of teenagers stared at my screen in the typical teenage way. They were only politely …

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Everyone Get Their Red Pen – This Is a Big One!

By on August 28th, 2010

It’s easy to get frustrated with the complexities of the English language, especially when it becomes clear that many native speakers still struggle with certain words and phrases. How is a non-native speaker supposed to handle herself with the language when the supposed experts can’t? So native and non-native English speakers alike – be aware of this (very) common usage problems: “Their” means MORE than one. It’s fun to spot the misuse of “their” in articles, websites and posts of very respectable writers – I’ve even caught myself on this one once or twice, and there’s no telling how many …

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