Rebecca Garland 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
As regulars might know, I’m a work-at-home mom and a work-away-from-home mom, too. I normally teach during the day and then get two boys to bed before settling down for three or four hours of writing most nights at the computer. It makes for a full day, but it’s so nicely organized and routine now it works for me. Today though, in honor of my
Anyone who properly cares for children works hard. It’s a world of sacrifices and rewards, but there’s very few mothers who don’t sleep well once the angels are tucked into bed. I’ve never lain around wishing I’d been busier on a particular day. But there does come a time when you realize that having a freelance career, and in my case a daytime career, on
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
It’s that special time of year again! Orders are up slightly, time is decreasing dramatically and best of all – the kids are home! Having the kids home is both a blessing and a curse. The days are great fun filled with ornament making and breaking and dessert-face-stuffing, and the nights are filled with work to make up for the lack of time during the
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
I had a hysterical working mom experience this week. Others might have found it horribly offensive, but I’m the type to crack up at even the slightly amusing and this went well beyond slightly… The biggest little man in my life brought home some library books from school yesterday. He’s in kindergarten this year with weekly trips to the school library. Like we do every
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”:
There is a huge focus on full-time freelance careers with conversations often centering on how quickly a writer (or designer or coder) can run away from work and stay at home being creative all day long. Understandable, but I don’t think it needs to be a universal message. Writing full-time is not for everyone, and it’s certainly not for me. Freelancing Full-Time There is no
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
Let’s pretend for a second that I’ve heard tales of a child who was home-schooled for years and just joined a high school last year. So long as we’re pretending, we should also pretend that his mother is trying to “help” him graduate at 16 so a very close, practically inseparable, friend of mine now has a 13-year-old freshman. It’s a good thing y’all are
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
The modern woman is supposed to have it all! I have it all, for the most part anyway, and I can tell you that the joy and satisfaction that is supposed to be encompassing my very being right now is nonexistent. Having it “all” is a bunch of bullshit. Do I hate my life? Nope. I like it. But I fully realize that my life
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
I read a comment on a financial blog written by a woman who resented her situation in life. She hated being the primary breadwinner and having almost sole responsibility of her child. She hated that her husband (who she didn’t actually hate, by the way) couldn’t seem to get it together and didn’t have the ability to support her while she stayed home. She had
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
A few days ago I considered cussing out anyone who would listen, grabbing some beers and sliding down my boy’s plastic slide to enjoy the temporary benefits of being totally irresponsible and free. Of course this was not really an option – I don’t have beer in the house and the plastic slide wouldn’t hold my weight. However, I did do something about being overwhelmed
Those writers who speak English as their second (or third, or fourth) language can come from any country, culture or background, so everyone experiences different sorts of issues in their writing that stand out to native audiences. Believe me, the natives aren’t perfect either. Understand, of course, that native audiences aren’t always right, and they certainly aren’t perfect, but if you’re working for US-based clients
My husband worked at home exclusively for more than five years. During this time he kept the kids a fair amount while I taught, but it never ceased to amaze me how much he wanted to hide the kids from his business associates. In his mind and perhaps the minds of others, it was only a “real” job if he could fool everyone into thinking
Non-native writers face discrimination online. Much of this negativity come for failing to write English “properly” – at least according to prospective clients. Looking been around various forums and markets, I’ve come across more than a few exclusionary advertisements about “native English speakers only” and such. Is there a reason so many jobs are asking for native English speakers only? Absolutely – and I’ll tell
It’s almost time to start another year! Parents and teachers know exactly what I’m talking about. They live in my universe where January is simply part of winter break and the REAL year starts in mid-August or early September when kids go back to school. In this family, I always go back to school and I’ll have one heading off to kindergarten *stifle sob* and
Yesterday I got a searing headache. Headaches aren’t usual for me and this one had a cause that was very easily identifiable and I should have known better. It wasn’t lack of water or lack of sleep (for once.) The IRS hasn’t called lately and the scale isn’t too horrifying for the week. The cause of this particular headache was my children. The worst part?
If the idea of an all-nighter fills you with excitement and gritty determination to see it through to morning with coffee, sugar and a big welcoming bed the moment the project is finally complete – you’re not a parent. Or at least you’re not the parent looking forward the 6 A.M. wake up call every morning of the week, every week of the year you’ve
It’s a joke on too many shows these days that the alien or the foreigner learns English by watching MTV or the equivalent. It might have been marginally funny the first time, but it’s way past time for that joke to be over, and the underlying message is actually rather dangerous for those who are trying to sound like professionals. It’s hard to learn real
In our last installment, we established that all mothers tend to judge each other from time to time. Okay, you’re right – you don’t, but the rest of us at least recognize that the thoughts cross our minds from time to time. I think I might be worse than most because I deal with the product of poor home lives more than most adults (I
It’s not a secret that moms have to work hard to not openly judge other moms. You see a parent disciplining a child in a way that you’re not comfortable with and immediately you’re thinking about that technique and what sort of mother would do such a thing and how you would never in your lifetime even consider….etc…. Judging is insanely easy to do, and
Ah, the idiom. If you’re not up to date on your English class vocabulary, the idiom is the phrase that makes no literal sense but we use all the time anyway. So let’s catch up! No – that doesn’t mean we should run like the wind to join the rest of the group – it means we should talk. See? No sense at all. Oh,
For some it’s a dream, for others a necessity, but it can be tricky to find an ideal situation for work-at-home moms and they don’t usually mind. There isn’t much about parenting that’s ideal, after all. For the record, Carol Brady had the ideal set-up. I keep waiting for my Alice to come to cook, clean and offer sage bits of wisdom while I do
It’s secret time! It’s been my experience that we all have a few dirty little secrets stashed away, and working from behind a computer screen lets us get away with a few harmless fibs every now and then – not that I would lie. I really do still look like that picture I posted from ten years ago…before two c-section deliveries…really, I’m still that hot!
If you’re looking for an easy way to dress up your writing and to improve its readability in English, your sentences likely hold the answer. The fluent reader chunks text as she reads. This means that sentences should flow naturally as she’s reading and be easy to put together into sections or phrases. If the sentences are malformed or worded unnaturally, they become a challenge